An administrator at the Atlantic High School in western Iowa has been placed on leave, pending an investigation into the alleged strip-search of five female students.
via KXKT-FM thekat.com.
The noteworthy part of this article? The image associated with it on the news site:
Also, if/when I have kids, they’re going to know damn well that those kinds of shenanigans are not acceptable. Just thinking about this is making my blood boil with the rage of a thousand suns.
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WTF is wrong w/ people? Who thinks this is ok? It would never, NEVER, occur to me to do a strip search on a student of mine. Something has gone terribly wrong. As teachers, and administrators, we’re supposed to help our students become literate, well-balanced adults. We’re not supposed to be degrading them, trying to find anything we can to get them in trouble. God forbid they should ever ‘get away w/ something’.
Alright. I can see I am probably about to walk, head first, into a maelstrom of flaming for this one, but to be honest, I’ve personally known too many kids who stole things, and denied it vigorously, right up until the stolen item was pulled from their underwear, to automatically presume that this was an unnecessary act of degradation, or just someone trying to find a way to get them in trouble.
I’m not saying that I think this was right either, I just don’t know enough about the circumstances of the case to make any kind of rational judgment call, but the one thing I do know is that kids will be kids, and they do not always make the smartest decisions.
I think that too many people react as both you and Tiki did, with emotion, and with perhaps not enough questions about whether the act was justified or not, given the circumstances, and this may actually be just as bad for the kids well being as being too hard on them.
It is easy to get lost in the anger of the humiliation the kids must have gone through, and forget that there are two sides to raising kids. Yes, the idea is to help them become literate, well balanced adults, but in order to do that, they also have to learn that there are consequences to their actions.
Letting them get away with things is the worst possible way to teach them that. However I also recognize that it is sometimes better to let the guilty go free, than to punish the innocent. So at the end of the day it requires a judgment call.
Often times I see parents getting soo engaged in the idea of their childrens right to privacy, or freedoms, or their right to do what would be considered an “innate” right by any reasonable adult. But the truth is, they are not adults. Many of them generally do not yet know how to handle the respobsibilites of freedom of choice, and it is the parents job to teach them.
As children, those freedoms should be privileges that are afforded as a result of showing character and responsibility. They cannot just be given away, otherwise they may never be appreciated. This means that, as a parent, it is sometimes your job to violate your childrens comfort zones in order to teach/discipline them. There should be no refuge for knowingly doing the wrong thing.
This is where “tough love” becomes very important. Yes, it will hurt, both you and the child you are punishing, but you do it hoping that in the long run they will learn a lesson that will make them better adults.
Again, I am not saying I condone what was done. I don’t know whether it was justified or not. I’m simply pointing out that I don’t think we have enough detail about the incident and any past history it may have, to automatically condemn it either.
I believe my contention is primarily with the assumption that the school administrators have the right or the permission to compel children to remove their clothing in any situation. They simply should not have that authority, and it should be handled by the police if there’s a serious belief that a crime has been committed.
My high school had a “resource officer” that was always on campus, and even if they didn’t have one of those, a cop should only be a few minutes away. I automatically condemn anyone that abuses their authority in this manner.
I see… So then would you be OK with it if the police performed a strip search if it was deemed necessary?
if the police deemed it necessary, sure. I doubt they would though, and if they DID find it necessary, I’m sure that there would be parental involvement.
also, it gets really cramped after about four replies, but I’m not sure what the solution would be.
The nested response thing, I haven’t been keeping up to date on whether it is an addon or is integrated into WP, but it might work better if it was recoded so the paragraph for the replies sit underneath the avatar, and use the full box width, as opposed to to the right of it. That’s eating a whole lot of space…
As tiki said; it’s not up to a teacher or administrator to strip search any student. There are limits and this is waaaaaay beyond it. I have no problem w/ searching students’ lockers or backpacks, but not their person. If it is so serious, then the school can call the police (which has happened at the high school I taught several times). I’ve been a teacher for more years than many of you guys have been alive and have never thought, “I wish I could do a strip search on student A”.
Of course teens do shitty, illegal things and we try to make the consequences known; but I think we can come up w/ something better than Zero Tolerance and strip searches.
My immediate reaction may have appeared emotional only, but I’ve been dealing w/ kids being kids in and out of school and I KNOW we’re moving in the wrong direction w/ our kids. We are not making well-balanced adults; we’re creating dysfunctional barely-adults.
Oh and the last student I read about being strip searched was because the principal thought she was hiding rx strength ibuprofin on her body ‘somewhere’ and ‘dealing’ it.
I guess I see what you and Tiki are saying, but at the same time, how do we handle situations like these?
From what I have seen, it is not enough that consequences be just made known. Most of the troubled kids I have known will always push the envelope to see how much they can actually get away with.
IE, if they know they will never be strip searched, then they *will* hide any contraband they may be carrying on their person.
It seems like the only time they do not is if they *know* that 9 times out of 10, they will get caught, and the consequences will be *severe* If they do.
So I guess I don’t quite understand what your objection to a “zero tolerance” policy is. Would you prefer a “3 strikes” policy, or is there other detail about it I am missing? I don’t see it as unreasonable to require that your students not deal drugs, and have an extremely distasteful deterrent. Like a trip to the police station for a full body cavity search or something.
Probably not over something like ibuprofen, but if kids are dying because of some some student selling some hard core drugs, or maybe even bad drugs, is it not worth it to prevent the deaths that could result? It almost seems to me like we are nowadays more worried about their dignity than their wrongdoing.
I agree. If they’re dealing hard drugs, the police should be called and a search (locker, book bag, and even person), if deemed necessary by the police, should be done. I think it would prolly be most appropriate to do a body/cavity search at the police station.
It’s just the circumstances that would require a strip search are so few that it shouldn’t be a consideration for the school. I’ll also bet that none of the people performing the searches that we’re discussing have been trained to do them.
Point taken… 🙂