I swear, I didn’t believe I heard this right. There was an earlier story about a student who was punished for letting an asthmatic classmate use her inhaler, and I thought this was the same one. But no. Now my head is all over the place, and I am once again rejoicing at our decision to pull our son out of those dens of incompetence, abuse, indoctrination and confusion known as “the public schools.”
Anthony Ruelas, an eighth-grade student at Gateway Middle School in Killeen, Texas, watched as a classmate announced that she was having trouble breathing, gasped for about three minutes, and fell to the floor. The teacher emailed the school nurse, which is apparently the policy now. At least she didn’t sent a fax. Or a carrier pigeon.
Be still, my ticking head…
She ordered students to remain calm and stay in their seats, as they watched the girl struggle to breath like a goldfish out of its bowl.
Anthony, however, decided that his classmate needed immediate help, so he picked her up and carried her to the nurse’s office.
And was suspended from school for two days. School district superintendent John Craft did say in a statement that the district “applauds the efforts of students who act in good faith to assist others in times of need.”
I don’t even want to write about this very much; it makes my head hurt.
Fire the teacher, fire Craft, fire the school board, and find a way to educate our children that encourages initiative, compassion, courage and a sense of when authority needs to be defied.
Oh, I forgot: “We ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse,” a teacher’s report quotes Anthony as saying.
Perfect. The school can’t teach him to speak grammatical English, but it does want to make sure that he knows not to lift a finger when someone in in mortal peril right next to him.
KABOOM!*
Ethics Alarms 
In California, we have a law protecting adults who render aide and assistance to accident victims or medical emergencies from lawsuits. I guess this Texas school district doesn’t want Good Samaritans doing the right thing. How depressing. Maybe, one of Governor Perry’s reps could come out to the school and give this kid some kind of an award for his quick thinking.
Question: Why doesn’t this kid deserve an invitation to the White House?
He’s not Muslim enough. I mean, I know that answer is snarky… But it’s true. He’s too white. He’s too male. He checks off enough privilege point boxes that Liberals don’t care.
He’s Hispanic! But I guess like George Zimmerman, he’s “White Hispanic,” so he doesn’t get included in a favored minority.
Ridiculous.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged by the melanin content of their skin and not by the content of their character.”
I know this is a tongue in cheek question, but I’ll answer anyway:
1) Why on earth would any leftist congratulate an individual acting of their own empowerment to aid a fellow IN DIRECT opposition to demands of a central authority to wait until the bureaucrats solve the problem??? That would literally be promoting the opposite of their ideology.
2) The kind doesn’t Allah hu Ackbar enough.
3) and wasn’t abused by the police, only abused by the schools. Interesting that two of the most decentralized aspects of our governments get distinctly different attention for misconduct. Interesting even more that the attention seems to correlate to the presumed political affinities of the groups in question — education is seen to slant left and police are claimed to slant right.
Yes, I’ve heard that teachers are now forbidden to assist students in a medical emergency (too many liability lawsuits). I heard about a girl choking in the cafeteria, everyone standing around watching her choke to death. A passing ambulance heard about the situation and stopped to try to help her. By the time they got there, it was too late, she ended up dying (the EMT who tried to help was also suspended).
Oh, I forgot: “We ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse,” a teacher’s report quotes Anthony as saying.
Perfect. The school can’t teach him to speak grammatical English, but it does want to make sure that he knows not to lift a finger when someone in in mortal peril right next to him.
I do think there is a proper place for well-thought out grammatical English. Slinging your dying classmate over your shoulder while racing to get her help probably isn’t it.
Personally, I loved that line. I assumed he was making a timely, apt and hilarious “Blazing Saddles” reference.
“Personally, I loved that line. I assumed he was making a timely, apt and hilarious “Blazing Saddles” reference. .Is this a perfect example of Hanlon’s Razor
More just comic misdirection. I don’t think the kid was malicious in saying that, nor has anyone suggested that. And I don’t think I was saying the kid is stupid. I was probably tongue in cheek intimating he may have been smarter and more articulate that he was getting credit for. You never know.
Plus, “Badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!” comes in handy lots of times. It aptly describes the kid’s thinking. And not in a bad way.
Well thought out???!! I can say with complete confidence that neither I nor my sister, nor her children, nor my son, has ever had a sentence that illiterate cross their minds in their lifetime, because they knew that they would be shamed mercilessly by anyone who heard it, in school or out. Moreover, none of us would let such a sentence pass from anyone else in our presence without comment. If you have been properly and competently taught, you don’t talk like than in the 8th grade, no matter what the circumstances. There is no excuse for a student in the 8th grade to still be capable of talking like that—if that is the first construction that comes to his mind, ever, then he is the victim of educational malpractice.
Well thought out???!! I can say with complete confidence that neither I nor my sister, nor her children, nor my son, has ever had a sentence that illiterate cross their minds in their lifetime, because they knew that they would be shamed mercilessly by anyone who heard it, in school or out. Moreover, none of us would let such a sentence pass from anyone else in our presence without comment. If you have been properly and competently taught, you don’t talk like than in the 8th grade, no matter what the circumstances. There is no excuse for a student in the 8th grade to still be capable of talking like that—if that is the first construction that comes to his mind, ever, then he is the victim of educational malpractice.
“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”? I don’t know the race of the good Samaritan. But from the construction quoted alone, I suspect he wasn’t being ungrammatical, he just was not speaking Standard American English, but probably a variant of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). He speaks a dialect of English, and you are focusing on the fact that he did not switch from his dialect to the standard English dialect in an excited moment.
You probably did not grow up speaking anything other than the Standard English dialect. Which is fine (though you would be in the minority in the US). But it makes just as sense to critique the boy for that as it would be for an Irish-American for saying something like, “Have you change for the bus on you?”. Standard English is rarely spoken in casual conversations, usually only seen in writing.
Nope. Can’t excuse illiteracy as “dialect.” That’s just rationalization and legitimizing linguistic incompetence. Giving it a name doesn’t validate it. That sentence, with ain’t and double—triple?–negatives is what school should be teaching NOT to use, ever. Your logic is what gets articulate kids beaten up. The reason such incompetent speech is wrong is that it communicates badly. I’n sure there’s a name for communicating in grunts and clicks, too. It’s not “Standard English.” It’s “English.” The sentences used is “uneducated English,” and not having it drummed out of you will cost jobs, respect and money over a lifetime.
Song lyrics are poetry, and anything goes. Schools need to teach that, too. Mick Jagger wrote and sung “I ain’t got no satisfaction,” but he’s an educated man, and wouldn’t speak like that even under stress.
Nope. Can’t excuse illiteracy as “dialect.” That’s just rationalization and legitimizing linguistic incompetence. Giving it a name doesn’t validate it. That sentence, with ain’t and double—triple?–negatives is what school should be teaching NOT to use, ever. Your logic is what gets articulate kids beaten up. The reason such incompetent speech is wrong is that it communicates badly.
Well, he’s speaking, so it isn’t “illiteracy.” “We ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse,” is a perfectly cogent sentence. I doubt any listeners had any trouble discerning his intent with those words.
I’n sure there’s a name for communicating in grunts and clicks, too.
It is called Xhosa, and it is not considered a variant of English.
It’s not “Standard English.” It’s “English.” The sentences used is “uneducated English,” and not having it drummed out of you will cost jobs, respect and money over a lifetime.
Pretty much every linguist will disagree with you on this. Very few Americans actually speak the Standard American English dialect. It is considered rather stultifying to hear. It is far more commonly written. But each form of English dialect has it’s own pronunciations, grammar, and spelling. There is no “incorrect” English, unless one is attempting to speak/write a particular form of dialect and violates the grammatical rules of that particular form.
Song lyrics are poetry, and anything goes. Schools need to teach that, too. Mick Jagger wrote and sung “I ain’t got no satisfaction,” but he’s an educated man, and wouldn’t speak like that even under stress.
“Is You Is, Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” As Standard English is the current accepted dialect for those in power, I agree that students who are unfamiliar with the dialect should be taught how to speak/write it, and contexts in which it should be used. Oh well, I guess it ain’t over till it’s over! Or is it, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks?”
Yogi Berra dropped out of school in the 7th grade, and sounded like it. In his field, it didn’t matter.
Go ahead, keep excusing minority students talking like that, and then tell me it’s racism when they don’t get hired. An employee who speaks like that signals that the enterprise hires uneducated dolts. Blunt, imprecise language is swell for communicating simple-minded thoughts.
Go ahead, keep excusing minority students talking like that, and then tell me it’s racism when they don’t get hired. An employee who speaks like that signals that the enterprise hires uneducated dolts. Blunt, imprecise language is swell for communicating simple-minded thoughts.
I think the point is, it is racism, at the root of it. There is nothing inherently superior of one dialect over another. And opinions on dialects tends to track one to one with how we feel about the majority of the speakers of that dialect. We think of speakers of an upper-crust British English dialect as being smart, and formal. Jamaican dialect speakers as easy-going and cheerful. Australian dialects as exotic and brash. And people who speak African-American Vernacular as dumb and uneducated, though we like it well enough in music.
But I would venture to say that most speakers of AAVE can code-switch as necessary into Standard English, it just isn’t their native tongue. And like in most cases in times of high excitement, they will revert back to their mother dialect to express themselves.
“I think the point is, it is racism, at the root of it. There is nothing inherently superior of one dialect over another.”
Balderdash. That is exactly the same as the argument that all cultures are equal. Cultures determine values, schools are there to teach those values. The United States has a language of business, of discourse, and communication. As a culture, it decides what is “superior.” Double negatives, street slang and punctuating sentences with “and I’m, like,” or fuck is inferior—it is not acceptable in professional settings, nor in sales, not in public service. So it is, by definition, inferior.
Teaching a child otherwise, as apparently you would, condemns either him to diminished status and opportunity, or the culture to deteriorating respect, civility, and communication.
If I had to pick the perfect example of how liberal cant has lead into destructive, cultural dead ends that harm minorities disproportionately, this might be it.
The United States has a language of business, of discourse, and communication. As a culture, it decides what is “superior.” Double negatives, street slang and punctuating sentences with “and I’m, like,” or fuck is inferior—it is not acceptable in professional settings, nor in sales, not in public service. So it is, by definition, inferior.
Teaching a child otherwise, as apparently you would, condemns either him to diminished status and opportunity, or the culture to deteriorating respect, civility, and communication.
Whatever. I’ve already stated that I believe that children in the United states should be taught how to use Standard English, and the contexts in which it would be appropriate.
“The United States” doesn’t really decide anything. People in power decide things, and the rest of us are forced to go along and make our own accommodations to those in power. As a culture, we are actually quite fine with double negatives, profanity, and the like. However, it is not appropriate in some contexts. So yes, children should be taught those contexts. Standard English is often not appropriate in some contexts either. Try talking with your friends and your wife speaking actual Standard English. They will probably wonder if a robot or alien has taken over your body.
Speech is culture to some extent, and how we feel about speech directly reflects how we feel about the speaker. You are just outlining circular reasoning. The dialect is inferior because we say it can’t be used in public speaking, business ect. It can’t be used in public speaking, business etc because it is inferior. Welp.
Are you really saying that there is no meaningful space between strict Standard English and ungrammatical, crude, English? Culture is about drawing lines, and it is a lot easier, and a lot more effective, to teach students to speak one way, the right way, in school, and let them develop casual methods of communicating as the choose. No wonder so many people sound like hicks and fools on TV, if they are taught only to use good English–not “Standard English,” but grammatical English, under certain circumstances.
Your theory has no benefits, and all detriments. Why would you, or anyone, advocate it? Learn to speak. Speech isn’t culture “to some extent”. It is culture.
Are you really saying that there is no meaningful space between strict Standard English and ungrammatical, crude, English? Culture is about drawing lines, and it is a lot easier, and a lot more effective, to teach students to speak one way, the right way, in school, and let them develop casual methods of communicating as the choose. No wonder so many people sound like hicks and fools on TV, if they are taught only to use good English–not “Standard English,” but grammatical English, under certain circumstances.
Americans are made up of many subcultures. People aren’t developing “casual methods of communicating as they choose.” Most pick up the language/dialect from their family and the community around them. It is part of their culture. As much as a Spanish speaker who grows up in a Spanish-speaking community, or a French speaker in a French community. AAVE (or any other English dialect) is not ungrammatical. It has its own grammar rules which are different than Standard English’s grammar rules, but it is entirely possible to speak or write it “wrong”, if that is what a speaker or writer was intending. It isn’t a free-for-all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English
I agree that not all languages are created equal. Effective communication requires a few subordinate skills based on semantics (navigating within a paradigm) and empathy (shifting between paradigms). One such skill is translation, the ability to convey a set of ideas to someone who has an unfamiliar paradigm and to understand ideas they express in that paradigm. Another is background, the ability to recognize semantic cues (e.g. grammar and etiquette) and use them to create a desired impression on someone else, which is necessary to smoothly blend in with one’s surroundings, putting others at ease by appearing to be similar to them. People need to develop the power of communication in order to interact with others, and therefore regardless of how they prefer to speak, they need to be able to shift to different methods of speaking depending on the context in which they find themselves. That is the virtue of linguistic descriptivism: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Or, as my grandfather likes to say, “…as the Romanians do.”
That said, linguistic prescriptivism has virtues of its own, when correctly employed, which is rare. Language is important because it is based on semantics, which is the simplification of interactions and which usually brings with it the concept of designating anything as “proper”. Labels and names are not hard limits for thought, but they shape it by making some thoughts easier than others. Any concept for which we have a word becomes easier to think of, because we can call that concept and associated ones readily to mind instead of retrieving each concept individually. It’s the difference between using the word “bird” and describing the animal’s characteristics anew each time you want to talk about it. The latter is possible, but people might have trouble thinking about birds and what they are like.
If, however, you have a word or phrase that describes an inherently flawed concept, you might not realize it because the use of the word glosses over the fallacy. Absolutes often do this, such as “invincible”, ‘infallible”, et cetera; they imply a counterexample is impossible, but one cannot be certain of that, only that it hasn’t happened yet. If you have a word that has an ambiguous meaning (or even mutually contradictory meanings, another pet peeve of mine), you might accidentally use an argument which relies on it shifting its definition, another fallacy. See the so-called paradox of “intentionality”, a philosophical word that exists solely to create this “paradox”. A word that binds together multiple concepts that themselves don’t have words prompts people to conflate those concepts even when they manifest themselves independently (“masculine” and “feminine”, anyone?). Alternatively, you might simply not have a word for an important concept, and so you would have to concentrate on a train of reasoning for a long time before you recognize what’s wrong, if you even picked up that something was wrong in the first place. Imagine having to criticize an ad hominem attack before anyone had come up with the convenient label “ad hominem.”
Picture if you will, a person who refers to inanimate objects as “shit”, people as “bastards” (which itself became an word of contempt, growing out of referring to a child out of wedlock, another sloppy conflation of concepts), and uses derivatives of “fuck” multiple times a sentence in a sort of emotional inflation. These people exist. Their use of words of contempt as everyday vocabulary blurs the line for them between what they interact with and what they dismiss (though there are sometimes exceptions when a person uses “bastard” as a term of endearment for close friends). They aren’t in the habit of describing things they respect in different terms from things they disrespect, so they don’t tend treat things they respect much differently from things they don’t, though they do treat things differently depending on how they feel at the moment. They often have trouble putting things in perspective, because they don’t have any other words for things. Any task or behavior that they use their semantics for becomes sloppier because of their lackluster lexicon.
Then of course, you have the opposite problem of language done poorly, where people with an overabundance of words create artificial separation between concepts that are actually the same, allowing for doublethink via euphemisms. Politics (“It’s not discrimination; it’s affirmative action”) and religion (“It’s not neglect; it’s honoring people’s free will to hurt each other”) are guilty of such artifice, though they also employ the fallacies mentioned in the previous paragraph, e.g. “I did not have ‘sex’ with that woman,” “God is always ‘protecting’ us.”
Grammar and syntax are necessary for ensuring other people understand what you mean (does “Me eat one hour” mean I ate an hour ago, I will eat in an hour, or I will eat for an hour? Or am I the one being eaten in the past, present, or future?) but a decent vocabulary for critical thinking (which is not taught in school) is important to help you understand what you yourself mean, when you think of your feelings, opinions, category judgments, or inferences of causal connection.
In conclusion, I don’t really care what’s “proper” as long as people can understand each other and avoid sloppy thinking, which practically necessitates that something be considered proper for everyone to learn, though it need not be used in every situation. Sloppy thinking exists in people with excellent and poor grammar alike. I pay much more attention to how much a person’s thinking is affected by their emotional state and whether it is consistent than to how much their verbal expressions conform to an arbitrary set of rules. My answer is my usual one. Neither the enforcement of a rule nor the lack thereof will make anything better, but rather making people better will make the dispute irrelevant. Ultimately, to make society function effectively people must become skilled with both semantics and empathy (and analysis, and all the rest of the mindsets).
Terrific explication, and a Comment of the Day. The linguistic value of precise speech and thought was something I was going to add to the deery exchange, but I didn’t have the time to do it properly—which you did.
In the spirit of Godwin’s law, can we describe a new law?
“Deery’s law”: given a period of time involving a conversation with Deery, at some point, Deery will make the discussion about racism.
Except…I didn’t bring up racism, Jack did.
Go ahead, keep excusing minority students talking like that, and then tell me it’s racism when they don’t get hired.
Nice try though.
Texagg04’s law: given a period of time involving a conversation with Tex, at some point, Tex will personally insult someone with whom he disagrees, rather than rationally arguing the point.
Hardly an insult. It’s a pretty apt observation. If there’s a comment thread involving you, more often that not, that comment thread will be pushed towards discussing racism.
Nice try though.
Except, once again, I didn’t bring up racism.
As for other threads, I often participate in threads involving police brutality and BLM, as those topics currently interest me. I think racism, as a subject, would probably come up on those threads whether I was there or not.
And your comment on your “observation” was clearly not meant as a compliment, so Tex Law strikes again!
Have a good day.
False dichotomy, tiger. Nice try though, that my observation isn’t a compliment, doesn’t mean it is an insult.
Deery’s law will be amended: In any discussion involving deery, over time, the discussion will devolve to racism.
That should assuage your angst over this particular instance.
But to be clear, you already were angling it that direction before the actual word “racism” popped up.
“As a thread involving Deery grows longer, the probability of the thread becoming a discussion about racism approaches 1.”
Thank you. It’s clearly been awhile or forever since I’ve had to write postulates or theorems or whatever.
But what’s the causal mechanism? I’m leaning towards a selection bias, wherein deery tends to show up in conversations that involve value disagreements and culture shock between different demographics.
I don’t really care how it came up. I’m bound to answer questions to the satisfaction of the questioner. Asserting that a point is irrelevant because the person raising the point does so frequently, even if you think they’re often wrong, is an implicit ad hominem argument. If you want to say that racism is irrelevant to this conversation, and if you can back that up, fine. I think it’s a legitimate question here, but my take on linguistic prescriptivism/descriptivism is soon to come.
So only people who speak like you and your family well educated?
Kids trying to save his classmates life and you’re picking on him for not speaking the kings English.
Thank god no one held Faulkner to that standard. lol
Not everyone speaks English the same way. It reminds me of people who get pissed when they hear someone say Ax instead of Ask not knowing that Ax was the original pronunciation and in most isolated rural parts of Virginia it remained the pronunciation until the last 50 years.
Not the point. Kids should be taught to speak correctly; it’s teh school’s job. I didn’t criticize the kid—it’s not his fault. I do criticize the teacher and the school. In my school, I’d have been more likely to be sent to detention for using a double negative. If they are, they do, and by the 8th grade, that should be learned. You NEVER talk like that. “AX” is a regionalism, not bad English.
I have read sociologists who argue that white enabling of poor speech habits by minorities is subtle and planned racism and cultural sabotage. I don’t know if it is or not, but I know I can’t be accused of it.
No but you can be accused of being a snob, which you’re not, but you do act like one some times. Like now.
My mother had to act as a translator between my Brooklyn born father and my south western Virginia born Great grandmother because they spoke too different dialects of English .
Just cognitive dissonance. I have learned that people who express themselves less than ideally can be sharp, witty, perceptive and admirable in every other way—but I have to remind myself not to be put off by the language errors, and they are errors. It is an advantage to students to be taught so it isn’t a two stage process, and instead of fighting a bias against non-standard English, gain the benefit of a positive bias in favor of someone who speaks correctly.
It’s no different, is it, from teaching kids to stand up straight, look people in the eye, practice good hygiene and be respectful?
I spent some time managing in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Fort Mac, which I will further shorten to Mac is actually the capital city of Newfoundland. It’s in the wrong province, Newfoundland doesn’t actually control it, but as a percentage of the population, Newfoundlanders (Newfies) make up one of the biggest slices of the pie. (Or at least they did before oil tanked and the jobs dried up.)
Newfies always impressed me. It takes a lot of gumption to pack up your household and move 2000 miles to a place where night can last two months (Mild exaggeration. Only mild.) for the chance at a good job and a better life. But they as a group tended to be some of the poorest educated mushmouths I’ve ever talked to. Lovable mushmouths, friendly mushmouths, hardworking mushmouths, but I can talk to people who speak English as a second language easier than some coastal dialect.
I remember this one guy. He says to me “M’n debays onto debah n ave someeers.” And I nod politely, and walked away. It took me about an hour to decipher that he’d asked me out to get a beer.”Where you to, and how ya’t?” was usually the second thing they’d say into a phone, after “Hello.” and of course, the tried and tested job interview line: “Newfies is hard workers.” I once asked one of them what school was like for them, and if their teachers spoke like that. And he said no, they learned proper English in school, but it didn’t stick.
I suppose a part of me realizes that you’re right, and schools should teach kids properly, but at the end of the day I don’t think we can get away from the fact that kids are more likely to speak the same dialect that’s spoken at home. You might be flailing at windmills on this one.
Maybe the student did speak grammatical English, then the teacher wrote it down later as she would have said it.
Not unlikely.
Double negative!!! 😛
Nothing is wrong with double negatives.
Don’t think I didn’t see what you did there.
Observation one: brain dead teacher leaves medically distressed student on the floor;
Observation two: brain dead teacher angry at student for disobeying “order” to remain in classroom;
Possible conclusion one: brain dead teacher distorted student quote to make him look like illiterate, disobedient punk.
—
Possible conclusion two: student had minor stroke at brain dead teacher’s brain dead actions; could not formulate grammatically correct sentence due to said brain damage.
Good theories all.
Apparently he said “fuck” to the teacher, which I would have no more done as a student than try to eat my desk. But that’s just good ol’ non-standard English, deery tells me.
“Fuck” is standard English. It is considered profane however. But considering the teacher seemed perfectly willing to let a student die right in front of her rather than break protocol, perhaps it was entirely called for.
Do we know what context he used that word to the teacher?
Apparently, “f—k that we ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse.”
Well at least he wasn’t personally cursing out the teacher, just cursing at the ridiculous instructions.
Agreed. Although, if he had cursed the teacher for such nonsense, he shouldn’t have been suspended but given a Congressional Medal of Honor (Honour?).
jvb
“Look at [him], a prisoner of the gutters,
Condemned by every syllable [he] utters,
By rights [he] should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.”
Even I have a sense of humor, once in a while. 🙂
I guess we really are one country separated by a common language.
jvb
I am abashed that I failed to quote that first…
“If you spoke as she does sir, instead of the way you do, why you might be selling flowers too!”
I am amazed that this view of language, which is as true then as kit is now, would ever be seen as anything but common sense.
Jack,
So I beat you to it; he, he, he! 🙂
“If you spoke as she does sir, instead of the way you do, why you might be selling flowers too!”
“I am amazed that this view of language, which is as true then as it is now…”
That may be true, but have you heard some of the basketball and football players speak off the cuff? What about talking to some computer programmers? in some ways it might actually be less true today than it was then. 😉
Jack,
I’ve got some of my favorite photos from a production of that show that I directed in a Facebook photo album, check it out. Bet you can identify the spots in the show where the photos were taken. 🙂
My very first detention ever was for calling a teacher a shithead.
In my defense, he kinda, was.
In my mother’s defense, the hour’s detention was the lightest part of what I got.
When I saw this article on CNN.com, I could just hear Jack’s teeth gnashing and the wheels in his wheelhouse turning. And the poor Good Samaritan kid is dealing with a learning disability.
I don’t want to appear vindictive, but really I only hope the next person passed out and dying while waiting for an email from the school nurse is that teacher or that principal.
I wonder if public schools are obsolete.
http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/needed-new-model-public-education.html
I really wish I was the parent of either the kid who needed help or the kid that gave assistance, or both.
I understand following rules, but such blind adherence to ignorant policies put in place that actually encourage teachers and students to ignore a student when the direct health and welfare of that student is in immediate jeopardy is detrimental to the education of our youth, it’s a serious liability problem, and it’s MORALLY wrong!
F’ing dolts!
After seeing this same type of incompetence time after time when my kids were in public school, I established one rule for them. In the event of a school-wide emergency, head for the nearest exit. Do not wait for anyone to instruct you on what to do next.
Situations like the one you describe are becoming more frequent while the level of common sense, ethics and intelligence among those in charge precipitously drop.
Common sense is fast becoming an uncommon virtue with people becoming “sheeple.”
Also more votes for Donald Trump.
“God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.”
Mark Twain
I’m not reading the non-grammatical as a great sin/error, here. That belongs to the teacher/superintendant/etc. At that age, I would have deliberately used ‘bad’ English for dramatic emphasis, without swearing. (swearing at the nimrods who would rather she choke to death would be very tempting)
What is unclear about…
“Perfect. The school can’t teach him to speak grammatical English, but it does want to make sure that he knows not to lift a finger when someone in in mortal peril right next to him.”
Is there a word of criticism of the kid in that section? I don’t see it.
That’s more a comment on the virulence against the bad grammar. Grammar can be taught, even late. But good sense and compassion are the laudable things.
Virulence among the other commenters, that is.
It’s virulence against the obscene fraud of the public education system. The grammar is just a symptom.
Yep. Bureaucrats at work. Did you read that, after the school suspended him, the school contacted the mother to figure out why he was not in school? Here is a link (I know: It’s Breitbart, so don’t cyber-yell at me):
http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/01/23/hold-another-texas-student-suspended-for-helping-classmate-having-asthma-attack/
This is an alternative school in Killeen, Texas, near Dallas. This student, who appears to be Hispanic, apparently cursed out the teacher when he helped the girl to the nurse’s office. She emailed the nurse and waited for a response, which is the school’;s protocol (now that is a skull crusher). The teacher got angry when Anthony took action. Anthony’s comment: “f—k that we ain’t got time to wait for no email from the nurse.”. Frankly, the teacher needed to be cursed out and led away in shackles, nevermore to visit stupidity on the wards in her class, and any school board that came up with that protocol should be incarcerated. In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does, sir”>
jvb
This made me cuss a blue streak when I read it a few days ago. I was a school nurse for 8+ years in CA so I feel qualified to address this. First of all, an asthma attack is an emergency & must be addressed immediately according to every guideline known to the medical community. Where I practiced, we preferred that kids carry their inhalers as long as they were responsible not to lose or share them so they could get that needed medicine quickly.
Second, an email? Really????? For a medical emergency? Simply asinine. The nurse should have been called or paged overhead if necessary to get her there ASAP. Not to mention if someone passes out from lack of oxygen, even as a nurse armed with meds I’m going to call EMS for backup. What this young man did was simply common sense & right. What a foolish policy. They are very lucky she survived. Schools have lost their damn minds. I hope they hear it from the parents & community loud & clear.
Lack of common sense kills.
You know everyone; I really don’t give a damn how Anthony phrased his sentence, under the emergency circumstances we’re lucky that he said anything coherent at all and didn’t stutter or stammer uncontrollably trying to get words out or curse out the teacher! Anthony had the personal fortitude to stand up and do what was right in-spite of the instructions from the teacher and the ludicrous school district policies. We need to sing his praises regardless of how he talks; that’s how you teach people/students to do the right thing instead of being worried that they will be called out for not speaking well or punished for helping to save someone’s life.
The discussion on how Anthony talks is a distraction and is diminishing his strength of character that drove him to act in support of his own morals and do what was right, plus it takes away from the needed discussion surrounding the facts that the poor school district policies and the ignorant programmed reaction from the teacher might have allowed this student to die on the floor..
I’ve heard trained professionals that stammer when faced with an life threatening emergency, this student spoke up, he was understood, he acted on his morals and did what was right.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I’ll climb off my high horse now.
Sorry folks for venting like that, I should have cooled down a little bit more before typing.
My sincerest apologies to everyone.
Zoltar,
No apologies are necessary. I, too, couldn’t care less if Anthony spoke in Klingon. He took action, the proper action, when some idiot teacher couldn’t assess the situation coherently to aid a student suffering from an asthmatic attack. He should commended for doing the right, honorable, moral, and ethical thing, and not suspended because he had the unmitigated temerity to curse in a classroom. Anthony probably realized that the school district is run by buffoons and is simply sitting at home playing his XBox. Well done, school. Well done, indeed.
It seems that we are teaching school children to comply with authority regardless of whether the authority is right or wrong. We are enforcing compliance. The teacher, presumably an adult with a college or university degree, submitted to authority, to the central authority’s instructed course of conduct to the detriment of a student’s medical needs. The teacher is complicit in encoding her students with the duty to bow to authority at all costs.
While Anthony got booted out of class for a few days (either for cursing or breaching protocol), the other classmates learned a terrible lesson: question authority at your peril. Big Brother is always right, even when he is wrong, and Big Brother is always watching you. The four most depressing words in the English language are, “He loved Big Brother”. That is where we are headed, and it is coming from the central planners. Bernie Sanders openly advocated supreme central authority during the CNN townhall fireside chats yesterday to cover health insurance premiums: “Yes, we will raise taxes. Yes, we will…. We may raise taxes but we are also going to eliminate private health insurance premiums for individuals and for businesses.”
Thanks John but the apology was just as much for me as it was for others; I don’t want to start reverting to old ways that I’m trying to leave behind me.
One other person that needs to be fired is the Chief Information officer for the school district if they signed off on the primary use of email in life threatening situations. Email is not a guaranteed service. It is best effort.
Everyone from the teacher on up should be criminally charged with reckless endangerment.
I think reckless endangerment is when the individuals actually create the situation that puts the person in danger; no one at the school created the student’s physical condition which is what put the student in danger, the problem is after the fact, not creating of that fact. Might be considered neglect, but that’s might be pushing it too.
Just my opinion.
Someone correct me on my opinion of reckless endangerment if I’m legally wrong.
They designed a work flow to handle life and death situations that is inherently unreliable and slow. It is defective by design and they are responsible. The IT guy should absolutely knows this. Networks are insanely complicated failure prone systems. The normals may be blissfully ignorant of the complexity of the technical world on the other side of that screen, but the IT guy is not and is remiss if he knowingly lets the administration design a system like this, where someone’s very life depends on an individual responding to an email, within seconds.
The length of time it takes an email to make it through a system is highly variable. Assuming it gets through instantly, how long does the teacher wait to see if the nurse even reads the email? How long can you hold your breath? Do you read every email that comes through within a few seconds of it showing up? What if the nurse is away from her desk? Oh, it went to her phone? How long is the update time for that? Ever see a text message arrive minutes or hours later? I have. If the nurse misses the message, how long before anyone else is notified? Are you still holding your breath?
I worked in emergency communications and text based services like email are great for lists of things, messages with lots of detailed information, but when you need to convey a simple concept like “HELP!”, voice communications are infinitely faster. Text services are supplemental.
This system was designed this way. It was intentional. Whoever did so is incompetent and should be held accountable. Maybe “reckless” becomes mere “negligence” due to stupidity.
Fred,
If you read my other comments in this thread you’ll see a pretty clear picture of what I think of the school district ignorant policy; I was only addressing your “reckless endangerment” phrase which I believe is false.
Was the teacher neglecting the student on the floor, based on what makes me the person I am, yes; however, in the eyes of the law she was probably not neglectful, she actually did something, she followed a policy (regardless of the ignorance of the policy) and requested help in the manner in which was stated by the policy. Did the teacher do enough, based on what makes me the person I am, no; however, in the eyes of the law, I don’t think we criminally prosecute people for not doing enough. We can always make claims that someone was criminally neglectful because they didn’t do enough but I just don’t believe that not doing “enough” constitutes neglect in the eyes of criminal law. Think of the consequences of a law that criminally prosecutes individuals and throws them in jail for “not doing enough”; really think about it, how would you word a that law? Was the policy criminally neglectful, for the same reasons, no.
I think of the student had sustained serious injury or actually died as a result of this incident, I think the parents would have a really good case in civil court for massive damages. There’s a big difference between civil courts and criminal courts.
No matter how much I’d like to see that teacher out of the classroom, if the school district were to fire the teacher, I think she would have legal standing to sue the district; after all, she did what they directed.
The root problem is the policy itself; the people that developed the policy were literally ignorant of how their policy could negatively impact life threatening medical emergencies when seconds can make a difference between life and death. School districts across the United States should be actively reevaluating their policies in this regard.
As an IT person who works for a school district: People FREQUENTLY make calls about technology without consulting us first. I would bet that no one in their IT department had any input whatsoever (among other things, we understand that even if an email arrives in the target’s inbox right this instant, it may not actually be read until much later). I also wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t actually talk to anyone with medical experience first.
I find the “we were following established procedures” excuse infuriating.
I’m not sure what ethical failure might be applied to the concept of emailing for the nurse but it is clearly stupidity at it’s best and anyone involved in allowing that system to be put in place without objecting loudly deserves to be torn a new one!
Beyond that, the idea that you have the nurse come to you is not all bad. What would be the situation if this young bloke had rushed the girl to the nursing station and the nurse was off putting a Bandaid on someone’s mosquito bite? You can’t say that the nurse must stay at the station the whole time; I’m not going to go into the hundred scenarios that make that idea ludicrous.
At the school my kids attended, and where my wife and daughter work, anyone needing an inhaler or an Epipen is expected to provide it and staff are trained in their operation and have parental authorisation to administer in an emergency.
As to the grammar/language issue. Surely it is a responsibility of a nation that it’s schools must train students to speak the national language. In the good old days, may they never return, you can understand regional dialects being so different that people could barely communicate but in the modern technological era that is just ludicrous. Once upon a time any radio and, subsequently, TV presenter in Australia had to have a Speech and Drama qualification. That is long gone and many of them use forms of speech that are as atrocious as those of many teachers! Thanks Zoltar for the Pygmalion quote, right to the point!
Yes, I get regional and ethnic phraseology y’all but that is a somewhat different thing from basic grammar. I love Weird Al’s “Word Crimes”.
I have a real problem with some of deery’s comments. Quoting Chaucer’s spelling as proof of something is moot, at best. Do we have a recording of Chaucer saying ANYTHING? No. Using the system of writing: “æ as in cat and hat” simply doesn’t cut it; a drunken Kiwi will still get it wrong! Many of our current problems with english stem from the fact that Johnson’s dictionary set the standard for spelling and he didn’t apply a consistent approach. Languages and pronunciations change, the English language more than some others, but that increases, rather than nullifies, the need for good grammar..
As for deery’s comment: “Very few Americans actually speak the Standard American English dialect. It is considered rather stultifying to hear. “; you have GOT to be kidding me! English is far and away the richest language on the planet; I can’t believe that even Americans can murder it so badly as to make it stultifying!
The kid deserves praise for what he did but he doesn’t get a pass if he was dropping f bombs. Suspension for cursing may be a bit too much but do they have any other tools? Do they even do detention anymore?
How about. “You saved that child’s life, so under the circumstances we’ll overlook your use of a curse word.” Is that a pass or just common sense? Then, if it’s really important, at a later time when the excitement dies down a friendly chat about appropriate language to use in school might be a good idea.
Even in this discussion about mind blowing stupidity we got distracted talking about appropriate language. In an emergency appropriate language is language that causes rescue to happen faster.
A teacher who gets hung up on insane protocols and offended at coarse language used in an emergency is incompetent. Administrators who back up the idiocy are even stupider because they have time to assess what happened before they act.
Granny I wouldn’t disagree with your point on how to appropriately address the language, I think it is a fair point to consider though, if this happened outside of school, same situation, it gets a full pass, since it happened in school I think the school should address it, I think they have a duty to.
Yes Steve. This has been stewing in the back of my head somewhere and I believe that suspending this student was the correct action.
1. He disobeyed an explicit school rule designed for the safety of students – I referred to this earlier.
2. He left the classroom without the teachers permission.
3. Using obscene language in the classroom.
Any one of those would have resulted in my kids getting detention and all three combined would have resulted in a suspension.
The fact that the ’email the nurse’ rule is stupid, that the student lived and that it just happened to be the right thing to do under the circumstances is moral luck, is it not?
So, on the basis that no good deed goes unpunished, he should get suspended. I believe we have looked at this issue in the topic on Flint’s water problems. The Principal should also pat him on the back (only figuratively of course!) and say well done. He does his two days and comes back a hero.
Of course the parents of this lad and the sick girl should be down at the Principal’s office questioning the procedure as should every other parent in the school, not to mention the staff.
I’d argue that applying the strict language rules in a crisis situation involving a child is just no-tolerance, badly applied.
If a kid sees a black mamba slithering up a classmate’s leg, and says, “Holy fuck! There’s a deadly snake on your leg, hold still” and kills the snake, you’re really going to enforce the cursing rule?
As a school I think they should enforce the language rules, it may be the only thing they did right in this situation. Now given the circumstances I think suspension is too much. I think he should get a full pass on breaking the rules by taking positive action to save the girl, it was impossible for him not to break the rules to take action, the greater good.
Are you arguing that he should get a pass because he did a nobel act? Why? I would agree that his actions should be taken in account for determining punishment but why a full pass? I know it is laughable to call this a place of learning but it is, so why should they shirk their responsibility in correcting this language?
No, I’m arguing that it was an extreme situation, with fear and adrenaline involved, and holding a child to a high standard of civility when he is focused entirely on a life and death moment involving a friend is silly and pointless…and unfair.
For context, many schools legitimately incorporate email in their emergency communication plans; however, these are usually in situations where speaking aloud contributes to the emergency; ie, a lockdown, where classrooms must be silent to avoid attracting attention from some threat in the hallway. (In this case, silence was the aggravating factor!)
My local school district has handy emergency response guides posted on the wall in each room. It covers everything from tornadoes, medical emergencies, unknown persons in the hallway, good old-fashion fire drills, etc. These were put together no doubt from grants from Homeland Security. I seriously, seriously doubt that the teacher actually followed her school’s protocol. Their protocols were likely compiled using the same pool of grant money, and while there will be local variations, the basic format will be the same.
The procedure for a medical emergency is pretty straight forward:
>Page nurse/call 911 (avoid delay by requesting emergency help asap), then the office (no one likes a surprise ambulance)
>Send other students to a neighboring teacher’s room (too many cooks…)
>Render first aid/communicate with emergency personnel (First aid/CPR training is generally mandatory for professional school staff)
Some schools nearby do not have in-classroom telephones; they do have intercoms to the office, however. On the rare times that the office is unoccupied, cellphones exist.
It is, quite simply, inappropriate by any conceivable standard to ’email’ the nurse and tell students to wait at their desks while the student is lying on the floor choking on her own windpipes unassisted. We have created an entire cabinet-level department who’s most useful function to date has been to tell teachers and school districts literally the exact opposite: call for help immediately, clear the scene of so Police and EMS can enter unimpeded, and render basic care in the interim.
Did it occur to you that he usually does speak *proper* English as you are calling it, but he decided to use profanity and incorrect grammar on purpose to show his disdain for the entire situation? I mention this because that is something that I can see myself doing.
As for the boy, he was able to carry the girl to the nurse’s office? That is one strong 8th grader. Good for him.
I can agree with that analysis.
As for your last paragraph, I am disturbed that the boy was advancing the patriarchy by manhandling a woman. How chauvinist.
Beth:if he was using profanity to show disdain for the situation then he is wrong, if he is using it to provide emphasis that urgency is needed then I think it is a fair argument. An 8th grader shouldn’t get a pass for cursing.
If it wasn’t for the “aint”, the kid’s quote is actually fine. Ignoring the logical implications of a double negative, from a poetic analysis, it works.
Not only will there be “no email” in the period of time we’re waiting for this student to die, we also do not have the time to wait to find out there will be no email…
Poetically great to emphasize the insanity of waiting in that situation.