Misplaced Priorities
It has long been the case that there are three groups the Madison public school system’s board and administration don’t care about: well-behaved kids who just want to learn, teachers who just want classrooms they can control and taxpayers who just want their money to provide kids with a good education in an orderly and safe environment.
That point has been made abundantly clear over and over again, but it was driven home again today with a report on the use of “seclusion and restraint” at MMSD. The report showed that use of these measures is up significantly over the last year.
But here’s what struck me about it. The commentary in the news story focussed exclusively on the misbehaving kids as if they were the victims. One disapproving school board member suggested that the district should move to a “trauma-informed” protocol. It’s not clear what that would be, but she went on to say that a child’s poverty status should be taken into account somehow.
That’s just ludicrous. In the moment, when the kid is acting out, disrupting the class and possibly destroying the entire hour’s lesson for the whole class, the teacher is somehow supposed to first take into account the family’s annual net income?
I certainly understand that most of the behavioral problems in our schools originate with kids from families where the parents aren’t models of positive behavior, if they’re present at all. But that’s not something a teacher can fix. They can only deal with the behavior in real time. What this board member seems to be suggesting is that teachers should be even further restrained from keeping good order in their classrooms.
