Teaching seems like a frustrating job

Coming up on three generations now who are afraid of conflict.

The issue is the parents’ refusal to take responsibility for their own child’s behavior.

Which is one of the tentpole requirement of being a parent.

After all, it's just a banana. How much can it possibly cost? Ten dollars?

Expelled? If they’re Black we just send them right to prison!

Sadly this isn’t a joke

I suppose the reply could have been clipped, but there is no mention of a low blood sugar problem, no mention of a sorry l, just ‘little Timmy needs a super power not to be a violent prick’.

A reasonable place to start is teaching your kid that hitting people is wrong, remember teachers are people too, underpaid overworked people.

That's a false dichotomy. Reasonable responses are framed as either "kid has low blood sugar so I'm packing him a banana", or "sorry, we'll beat him with jumper cables". There's like 50 reasonable responses between those extremes.

Do you think that if you were teaching a class and one of the students punched you in the face so hard that they broke your expensive prescription eyewear, that you would actually just dust yourself off and go, "oh dear, you poor thing - are you acting out due to low blood sugar? I can go get you a banana".

You really think that's a reasonable response for any human?

I feel like I'm entering my old man phase, but it feels like we're teaching kids to do everything they can to evade accountability as a rule.

You sound angry. How about eating a nice banana instead?

Yes, depending on the age and if police are on campus. Police tend to be permanent on some campuses for "security" but schools with them statistically show a much higher rate of incarceration. Although expulsion is also a fast track to prison, too.

Unsurprisingly, police tend to be in predominantly black schools, although even in desegregated schools (for which there are very few), it's black students most likely to get in trouble for acting out. Socioeconomic status accounts for some of this, though.

Bananas piss me off.

"He may be hungry from the bus ride and is acting out from this." That is where low blood sugar is referenced.

https://youtu.be/Ueu9A9S6HD0

Did none of that which we can see. The email is cropped.

Accidentally skipped that entire line, reading is hard.

Man it's hard to teach non-violence in an age of violence and emotional deregulation.

Do you just never know the size of anything?

Have you tried putting them in the other end?

People will do anything but seek out a therapist.

Bananas are a lot more affordable (for now).

I don't think this is evading responsibility. I think this is a family who can't afford mental health care for their child, and the school system is ill-equipped to handle it.

Well yeah, accountability only gets you in trouble. There's no incentive for taking accountability.

There's no "at least you were honest." Even if someone unintentionally makes a genuine mistake, they'll burn for it if it's ever pinned to them. Just fade into the background and don't attract notice to yourself, cause as soon as you accept blame for one thing, people will use you as a scapegoat for everything else that goes wrong.

Don't practice self-awareness, it'll only get you punished. Don't feel remorse for your actions, it'll only get you punished. That's the prevailing and all-pervading messaging these days. Do you want to be the sorry sucker to try to reverse that trend?

The authorities never accept accountability, they just pass the buck to their subordinates. Everyone seems to follow that example, and the buck gets passed down until it can't go any lower and the person at the bottom gets stuck with the hot potato.

This behavior is continuously reinforced by society. Anyone who expects it to be otherwise learns their lesson real quick. Never admit to being anything less than perfect, or else the consequences may follow you for the rest of your life.