Saturday, August 23, 2008

"yelling" is corporal punishment

In today's New York Post, Michelle Malkin published a piece titled: "Classroom Chaos, Corporal punishment is not the problem." Ms. Malkin says: "America's problem isn't that we're too tough and cruel in the classroom. It's that we've become too soft and placative, too ashamed and timid to assert authority and take unilateral action to guarantee a secure environment. Exactly where the human rights groups want us."
Has she even read the NYC Chancellor's Regulations A-420 and A-421? What planet is she living on? In NYC, yelling at students is now considered corporal punishment. What teacher will risk being "rubber-roomed" in a learning environment where even raising your voice is a basis and grounds for charges?
I am so sorry, Michelle Malkin. Teachers will follow the Chancellor's regulations and carefully choose their words and speak in a soft and measured tone of voice when speaking to students. Anything more can result in a 3020-a. The road to being fired is not pleasant. And even if the laws changed and were more flexible as you appear to be suggesting, no teachers would engage in any form of corporal punishment and risk having their own beating by students videotaped and being shown on YouTube.

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