A great article telling both sides of this issue. This issue is becoming very important. Educators' hands have been tied behind their backs with strict laws against spanking to the point that teachers are afraid of students. Lawsuits have been mounted, tarnishing teachers' respected profession.
Parents are exacerbating the problem. On one hand, they want teachers to not only teach the curriculum but also make them a good citizen of the society, but, on the other hand, they also help their kids destroy the lives of good teachers (I'm not talking about those teachers who take advantage of their status as an authoritative figure to abuse their students, e.g. having a sexual relationship with them).
Parents don't have time or are just lazy so they hand this crucial duty of raising a good citizen to teachers but when teachers do take some kind of action, e.g. the teacher in the article tells the kid to not throw a perfectly good banana & make him take that banana out of the garbage & eat it, she gets suspended & reprimanded. Her colleagues' response was "grin & bear it." That's not a solution.
This article started with a case that 2 high school students took their school principal to court because he was planning to put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking at the prom. The students won the lawsuit. Now that's become a precedent, all other schools in Ontario have to follow this rule & not put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking. Although, those 2 kids discussed the matter with their peers for 2014 prom & nobody drank & the whole event went smoothly, but would all high school students in Ontario discuss not drinking with their peers? Obviously, not.
Now, although, those students won the case for all the high school kids in Ontario, but what happens when a high school student is sexually assaulted because he/she was drunk OR he/she dies from alcohol poisoning OR he/she drives off the school parking lot while heavily drunk & kills someone in a drunk driving accident. In some cases, the school administration might be held responsible for the deaths, & even if they don't, they may still have to spend money, effort, & time to go through the whole lawsuit process.
The cases in the article highlight the problem that society seems to be bending to the rules of kids. As a OISE psychologist says that kids are still kids & they don't understand the ramifications of their actions. They haven't gone out into the world & seen that there can be very dire consequences of actions. At the same time, they can argue that adults also don't think thoroughly the consequences of all their actions; all the way down from a hillbilly to all the way up to government leaders. That's one reason, why our world is in this mess.
Anyway, in the light of Islamic teachings, kids should know their rights BUT they should also know their obligations. Everyone has rights AND obligations.
Also, in the light of Islamic teachings, capital punishment should be allowed to discipline kids & raise a good citizen for the society. What kind of a society will we be forming when parents show to their 9 year old kid that throwing perfectly good food is not only ok but if someone reprimands you for doing that, we should stick it to him/her. Heck, parents & their kids are now cyberbullying their teachers. Teachers & parents should be allowed to hit kids, if necessary. As that teacher says in the article that there will always be bratty kids, & they need punishment, not coddling from the society & their parents.
Punishing the wrongdoer is a cornerstone of our civilization, regardless, of ethnicity, race, language etc. In the name of justice, we punish the wrongdoer, like locking up a criminal. Heck, countries go to war & thousands die in the name of justice & punishing the evildoers. Similar to that, kids need to be punished, according to their severity of their wrong actions, so they understand what justice is & their actions have consequences.
Challenging authority for the right reasons is not only needed in our society but should be encouraged. BUT, a line should be drawn. Challenging authority while you are doing something wrong (underage drinking, wasting food, disrespecting teachers, bullying others etc.) is not only wrong but you need to be heavily punished, so you remember that punishment for your future.
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Teenagers used to be second-class citizens whose rights were, in effect, whatever their parents decided they were. And kids, for the most part, accepted that. But, like all teenagers who have challenged authority, Millennials & Generation Z have started pushing back & the balance of power is shifting. “Young people today are much smarter & more aware of their rights than may be fashionable to admit,” says Sukanya Pillay, executive director & general counsel for the civil liberties group [Canadian Civil Liberties Association] ... . “They’re not taking things lying down. They’re not just going to accept whatever’s prescribed to them.” Kids these days know their rights, &, for better or worse, they’re defending them. And winning.
The United Nations had declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, which “really created an excitement,” says David Morley, president & CEO of Unicef Canada, who remembers watching people march through the streets in Brazil in support. Though it may have had more significance in the developing world, where exploitation, health care & education were a concern, Canada wasn’t immune from its effect. For one, the Children’s Aid Foundation was established to support the most vulnerable children in society: those in the child-welfare system. “That year fundamentally changed the way the world thought about the rights of children,” says Morley.
... In 1984, the Young Offenders Act established a separate justice system for children between the ages of 12 & 17, recognizing that they did not have the same moral, intellectual or emotional maturity as adults. The 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s most widely ratified treaty, recognized “that childhood is entitled to special care & assistance.” A decade later, after a Charter challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which permits spanking, the Supreme Court of Canada set out new boundaries on the use of disciplinary force against children.
... today’s youth have grown up in a wildly different environment than previous generations. “We always hear about how kids don’t understand privacy rights because they’re ceding their privacy with social media & Facebook.” But Pillay sees Twitter, Instagram, & Snapchat as a testing ground where kids are introduced to the concept of rights by trial & error—who can see what they post, whom they can block & whom they can delete from their online lives.
Today’s cohort of teens is the first to grow up almost entirely in a digital, post-9/11 world. Because of their technological sophistication, they can witness & participate in conversations about rights, whether the topic is invasive anti-terror legislation or WikiLeaks & government secrecy. “We’re facing mass state surveillance,” Pillay says. “There’s a trickle-down effect. In schools, administrations are taking a more heavy-handed approach to the students. But the students, exercising their democratic rights, are saying, ‘Wait, that’s not right.’ ”
Parents are still the gatekeepers for their kids’ rights because, until they’re 18 or 19, depending on the province, kids can only launch lawsuits through a litigation guardian. That’s usually an adult, but, in the case of emancipation—where a minor is an adult in the eyes of the law—young people can act on their own.
... in December [2014], another New Jersey student, a 21-year-old who lives with her grandparents, successfully sued her divorced parents for nearly $17,000. In a blog post called “The age of entitlement,” her mother describes her daughter as a hard-drinking, rebellious runaway who managed to spin the law to her advantage. “She doesn’t want a family; she wants money,” her mother wrote. “And the courts have told her that this is completely acceptable.”
Never have young people had so much power, but most don’t grasp the need for great responsibility. Michele Peterson-Badali, an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education psychologist who specializes in children’s rights, says there’s a gap between young people’s awareness of their rights & their understanding of what it entails: the responsibility to respect the rights of others. “They might think they’re savvy & act like they’re savvy, but they’re not,” she says. “Even at 16 . . . few kids will understand that rights are a bounded entitlement. I can’t do whatever I want. I can’t say things that are hateful. I can’t hurt somebody.” And that’s what throws adults into an uproar: if they’re still the same old irresponsible, mischievous & occasionally nefarious kids, why hand them so much power? “There tends to be a gut reaction on the part of adults to feel threatened by the idea—‘these kids, they have too many rights,’ ” says Peterson-Badali. “I think that’s a misconception.” The trick, she says, is to ensure kids properly appreciate what rights really mean.
These days, they’re learning much of what they know from television & YouTube videos. “We’ve interviewed thousands of children, & I haven’t met one who knew their rights,” says Katherine Covell, co-founder of the Cape Breton University Children’s Rights Centre. The centre developed a curriculum that incorporates rights-based case studies & role-play exercises & shopped it around to schools, but Canadian educators weren’t interested. “If you’re going to respect the rights of the child, you have to listen to them & give them opportunities to express their opinions,” Covell says. “A lot of teachers were wary of that.” British schools, meanwhile, embraced the program & saw a drastic transformation over its 10-year implementation: bullying all but disappeared, discipline issues dwindled & children performed better academically. “You can’t just have Rights Week or Rights Day,” Covell explains. “It’s not a quick fix.”
Along with the recent swell in cases involving children’s rights, there have been abuses. Children, exercising their new-found power, can subvert the laws to serve their own malicious, if not criminal, purposes.
It was April 2012 when Ontario teacher Susan Dowell learned this the hard way. When the Grade 4 students walked into their music class at a school north of Toronto to find Dowell was the substitute for their regular teacher, they immediately started horsing around & putting her patience to the test. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. My intuition told me to nip that in the bud,” says Dowell, 52 ... . She sent 4 kids to the office. After the bell, Dowell moved on to cafeteria duty—or, as she describes it, “being thrown into a pack of wolves.” As she watched over the screaming, food-flinging masses, a boy walked by & tossed an uneaten banana into the trash. “You don’t throw perfectly good food out,” she told him. “Take it home or eat it or save it for after school.” He took the banana out of the garbage, peeled it, took one bite & threw it back in.
The following week, she was dismissed from another job because students at the previous school complained that she had used excessive force on some & publicly humiliated another. ... Her union told her to wait on word from the Children’s Aid Society, whom the vice-principal had called to sort out the matter. In the meantime, she wasn’t allowed to step on school property or talk to other teachers. “I had no support,” she says. “No one to talk to.” Eventually, she learned that the boy with the banana had told his parents Dowell made him eat from the garbage. She says the parents complained to the vice-principal, who interviewed the troublemakers sent to the office; they said she’d grabbed one of the girls by the neck. According to Dowell, no one asked for her account.
It was a month before Children’s Aid cleared Dowell’s case, allowing her to return to work. The events had shaken her, though, & tarnished her reputation. Kids & colleagues treated her differently, she says. The accusing child & parent, however, faced no consequences. Dowell’s union told her that this was the “new normal”—she would have to grin & bear it.
She did—for a while. Last year, while on a long-term placement she thought would finally lead to a steady teaching position, Dowell was accused of scratching a student. She was off work for 3 weeks. Again, the case was dropped. To this day, she doesn’t know who complained.
“Kids just have no idea of the ramifications of what they’re saying or the power they have,” she says. There have always been—& there will always be—bratty kids, but today’s parents are raising increasingly entitled children, she says. In her eyes, it’s become an us-versus-them battle, & young people now have the advantage. “When did that switch happen?” she asks. “I would correlate it entirely with when children began to understand that they had rights.”
In 2012, a B.C. student launched an elaborate accusation of sexual assault against her teacher, lifting scenes from a TV show to describe his actions & creating a fake diary as evidence. Most cases are kept quiet, & false accusations aren’t recorded, so no official statistics exist. But a 2010 Nipissing University study about a shortage of male teachers showed 13% of 223 male Ontario teachers surveyed had been falsely suspected of inappropriate behaviour. School boards, says McGill University associate professor Jon Bradley, who has spent years studying false accusations, don’t have basic policies to deal with an allegation, such as consulting all involved parties & explaining to accusers the implications of a false allegation. “It’s innocent until proven guilty. If a teacher is guilty, they can hang from a lamppost,” says Bradley. “But we need procedures.” Even in an era when kids can & do sue adults, they can do just as much damage without any legal action at all.
Parents are exacerbating the problem. On one hand, they want teachers to not only teach the curriculum but also make them a good citizen of the society, but, on the other hand, they also help their kids destroy the lives of good teachers (I'm not talking about those teachers who take advantage of their status as an authoritative figure to abuse their students, e.g. having a sexual relationship with them).
Parents don't have time or are just lazy so they hand this crucial duty of raising a good citizen to teachers but when teachers do take some kind of action, e.g. the teacher in the article tells the kid to not throw a perfectly good banana & make him take that banana out of the garbage & eat it, she gets suspended & reprimanded. Her colleagues' response was "grin & bear it." That's not a solution.
This article started with a case that 2 high school students took their school principal to court because he was planning to put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking at the prom. The students won the lawsuit. Now that's become a precedent, all other schools in Ontario have to follow this rule & not put in place a breathalyzer to stop underage drinking. Although, those 2 kids discussed the matter with their peers for 2014 prom & nobody drank & the whole event went smoothly, but would all high school students in Ontario discuss not drinking with their peers? Obviously, not.
Now, although, those students won the case for all the high school kids in Ontario, but what happens when a high school student is sexually assaulted because he/she was drunk OR he/she dies from alcohol poisoning OR he/she drives off the school parking lot while heavily drunk & kills someone in a drunk driving accident. In some cases, the school administration might be held responsible for the deaths, & even if they don't, they may still have to spend money, effort, & time to go through the whole lawsuit process.
The cases in the article highlight the problem that society seems to be bending to the rules of kids. As a OISE psychologist says that kids are still kids & they don't understand the ramifications of their actions. They haven't gone out into the world & seen that there can be very dire consequences of actions. At the same time, they can argue that adults also don't think thoroughly the consequences of all their actions; all the way down from a hillbilly to all the way up to government leaders. That's one reason, why our world is in this mess.
Anyway, in the light of Islamic teachings, kids should know their rights BUT they should also know their obligations. Everyone has rights AND obligations.
Also, in the light of Islamic teachings, capital punishment should be allowed to discipline kids & raise a good citizen for the society. What kind of a society will we be forming when parents show to their 9 year old kid that throwing perfectly good food is not only ok but if someone reprimands you for doing that, we should stick it to him/her. Heck, parents & their kids are now cyberbullying their teachers. Teachers & parents should be allowed to hit kids, if necessary. As that teacher says in the article that there will always be bratty kids, & they need punishment, not coddling from the society & their parents.
Punishing the wrongdoer is a cornerstone of our civilization, regardless, of ethnicity, race, language etc. In the name of justice, we punish the wrongdoer, like locking up a criminal. Heck, countries go to war & thousands die in the name of justice & punishing the evildoers. Similar to that, kids need to be punished, according to their severity of their wrong actions, so they understand what justice is & their actions have consequences.
Challenging authority for the right reasons is not only needed in our society but should be encouraged. BUT, a line should be drawn. Challenging authority while you are doing something wrong (underage drinking, wasting food, disrespecting teachers, bullying others etc.) is not only wrong but you need to be heavily punished, so you remember that punishment for your future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teenagers used to be second-class citizens whose rights were, in effect, whatever their parents decided they were. And kids, for the most part, accepted that. But, like all teenagers who have challenged authority, Millennials & Generation Z have started pushing back & the balance of power is shifting. “Young people today are much smarter & more aware of their rights than may be fashionable to admit,” says Sukanya Pillay, executive director & general counsel for the civil liberties group [Canadian Civil Liberties Association] ... . “They’re not taking things lying down. They’re not just going to accept whatever’s prescribed to them.” Kids these days know their rights, &, for better or worse, they’re defending them. And winning.
The United Nations had declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, which “really created an excitement,” says David Morley, president & CEO of Unicef Canada, who remembers watching people march through the streets in Brazil in support. Though it may have had more significance in the developing world, where exploitation, health care & education were a concern, Canada wasn’t immune from its effect. For one, the Children’s Aid Foundation was established to support the most vulnerable children in society: those in the child-welfare system. “That year fundamentally changed the way the world thought about the rights of children,” says Morley.
... In 1984, the Young Offenders Act established a separate justice system for children between the ages of 12 & 17, recognizing that they did not have the same moral, intellectual or emotional maturity as adults. The 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s most widely ratified treaty, recognized “that childhood is entitled to special care & assistance.” A decade later, after a Charter challenge to Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which permits spanking, the Supreme Court of Canada set out new boundaries on the use of disciplinary force against children.
... today’s youth have grown up in a wildly different environment than previous generations. “We always hear about how kids don’t understand privacy rights because they’re ceding their privacy with social media & Facebook.” But Pillay sees Twitter, Instagram, & Snapchat as a testing ground where kids are introduced to the concept of rights by trial & error—who can see what they post, whom they can block & whom they can delete from their online lives.
Today’s cohort of teens is the first to grow up almost entirely in a digital, post-9/11 world. Because of their technological sophistication, they can witness & participate in conversations about rights, whether the topic is invasive anti-terror legislation or WikiLeaks & government secrecy. “We’re facing mass state surveillance,” Pillay says. “There’s a trickle-down effect. In schools, administrations are taking a more heavy-handed approach to the students. But the students, exercising their democratic rights, are saying, ‘Wait, that’s not right.’ ”
Parents are still the gatekeepers for their kids’ rights because, until they’re 18 or 19, depending on the province, kids can only launch lawsuits through a litigation guardian. That’s usually an adult, but, in the case of emancipation—where a minor is an adult in the eyes of the law—young people can act on their own.
... in December [2014], another New Jersey student, a 21-year-old who lives with her grandparents, successfully sued her divorced parents for nearly $17,000. In a blog post called “The age of entitlement,” her mother describes her daughter as a hard-drinking, rebellious runaway who managed to spin the law to her advantage. “She doesn’t want a family; she wants money,” her mother wrote. “And the courts have told her that this is completely acceptable.”
Never have young people had so much power, but most don’t grasp the need for great responsibility. Michele Peterson-Badali, an Ontario Institute for Studies in Education psychologist who specializes in children’s rights, says there’s a gap between young people’s awareness of their rights & their understanding of what it entails: the responsibility to respect the rights of others. “They might think they’re savvy & act like they’re savvy, but they’re not,” she says. “Even at 16 . . . few kids will understand that rights are a bounded entitlement. I can’t do whatever I want. I can’t say things that are hateful. I can’t hurt somebody.” And that’s what throws adults into an uproar: if they’re still the same old irresponsible, mischievous & occasionally nefarious kids, why hand them so much power? “There tends to be a gut reaction on the part of adults to feel threatened by the idea—‘these kids, they have too many rights,’ ” says Peterson-Badali. “I think that’s a misconception.” The trick, she says, is to ensure kids properly appreciate what rights really mean.
These days, they’re learning much of what they know from television & YouTube videos. “We’ve interviewed thousands of children, & I haven’t met one who knew their rights,” says Katherine Covell, co-founder of the Cape Breton University Children’s Rights Centre. The centre developed a curriculum that incorporates rights-based case studies & role-play exercises & shopped it around to schools, but Canadian educators weren’t interested. “If you’re going to respect the rights of the child, you have to listen to them & give them opportunities to express their opinions,” Covell says. “A lot of teachers were wary of that.” British schools, meanwhile, embraced the program & saw a drastic transformation over its 10-year implementation: bullying all but disappeared, discipline issues dwindled & children performed better academically. “You can’t just have Rights Week or Rights Day,” Covell explains. “It’s not a quick fix.”
Along with the recent swell in cases involving children’s rights, there have been abuses. Children, exercising their new-found power, can subvert the laws to serve their own malicious, if not criminal, purposes.
It was April 2012 when Ontario teacher Susan Dowell learned this the hard way. When the Grade 4 students walked into their music class at a school north of Toronto to find Dowell was the substitute for their regular teacher, they immediately started horsing around & putting her patience to the test. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. My intuition told me to nip that in the bud,” says Dowell, 52 ... . She sent 4 kids to the office. After the bell, Dowell moved on to cafeteria duty—or, as she describes it, “being thrown into a pack of wolves.” As she watched over the screaming, food-flinging masses, a boy walked by & tossed an uneaten banana into the trash. “You don’t throw perfectly good food out,” she told him. “Take it home or eat it or save it for after school.” He took the banana out of the garbage, peeled it, took one bite & threw it back in.
The following week, she was dismissed from another job because students at the previous school complained that she had used excessive force on some & publicly humiliated another. ... Her union told her to wait on word from the Children’s Aid Society, whom the vice-principal had called to sort out the matter. In the meantime, she wasn’t allowed to step on school property or talk to other teachers. “I had no support,” she says. “No one to talk to.” Eventually, she learned that the boy with the banana had told his parents Dowell made him eat from the garbage. She says the parents complained to the vice-principal, who interviewed the troublemakers sent to the office; they said she’d grabbed one of the girls by the neck. According to Dowell, no one asked for her account.
It was a month before Children’s Aid cleared Dowell’s case, allowing her to return to work. The events had shaken her, though, & tarnished her reputation. Kids & colleagues treated her differently, she says. The accusing child & parent, however, faced no consequences. Dowell’s union told her that this was the “new normal”—she would have to grin & bear it.
She did—for a while. Last year, while on a long-term placement she thought would finally lead to a steady teaching position, Dowell was accused of scratching a student. She was off work for 3 weeks. Again, the case was dropped. To this day, she doesn’t know who complained.
“Kids just have no idea of the ramifications of what they’re saying or the power they have,” she says. There have always been—& there will always be—bratty kids, but today’s parents are raising increasingly entitled children, she says. In her eyes, it’s become an us-versus-them battle, & young people now have the advantage. “When did that switch happen?” she asks. “I would correlate it entirely with when children began to understand that they had rights.”
In 2012, a B.C. student launched an elaborate accusation of sexual assault against her teacher, lifting scenes from a TV show to describe his actions & creating a fake diary as evidence. Most cases are kept quiet, & false accusations aren’t recorded, so no official statistics exist. But a 2010 Nipissing University study about a shortage of male teachers showed 13% of 223 male Ontario teachers surveyed had been falsely suspected of inappropriate behaviour. School boards, says McGill University associate professor Jon Bradley, who has spent years studying false accusations, don’t have basic policies to deal with an allegation, such as consulting all involved parties & explaining to accusers the implications of a false allegation. “It’s innocent until proven guilty. If a teacher is guilty, they can hang from a lamppost,” says Bradley. “But we need procedures.” Even in an era when kids can & do sue adults, they can do just as much damage without any legal action at all.
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