Political Correctness strikes again (Pt 7 .. No Sex Dolls in School)

Back in twelfth grade, we performed a play in school. It was an old Greek anti-war piece (the Iraq War had just started, and emotions were running high), and we put a lot of effort into it. For the introductory scene, we thought we'd do some grotesque war images, and we used whatever kinds of weaponry were available to us - a baseball bat, an axe, and a classmate of mine had two old, non-functioning carbine guns from the First World War. We went to the parking lot and got them from his car. Two mothers stared at us, shocked, and asked: "What are you doing there?" The first amok run at a German school ever had just taken place maybe half a year ago, and before that people had thought of such things as an exclusively American thing. You can imagine that people at our small and extremely well-to-do school were over-cautious. We explained to them that we're using them for a school play, and they let us go. Later on the way, the janitor saw us, smiled and said: "So it's starting here too, huh?"
Why wasn't he alarmed? Because he knew us. And that's the morale of this story: If there was actually some kind of relationship between pupils and school staff - including janitors - maybe such things wouldn't happen. But they do, because schools are too big, people are too afraid of each other and the role of schools as a social environment is being ignored.
 
Bingo! Now, I'm not saying I want to be a teacher, but I think some of them think of themselves as wardens, and have to keep the power. The ones that show personality get to know students seem to have better results. Again, easy for me to say, because we have classes of 40-60 kids. I wish GK was on lately- it always seemed like he got along well with his students.
 
Wasted The Great said:
because we have classes of 40-60 kids.
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That's exactly the problem. We need more schools, and more teachers.
 
Unfortunately, its just not probable in today's society/economy. When I was in school, we had about 20 kids to a grade, and 8 schools in the county. As the schools became pressed for money, they merged school districts. Now, I think we are down to 3 schools in the county.
 
The last few posts make me grateful that I go to a smaller school. I know all the faculty (including janitors). Sadly we got a new principle who insists on making the school bigger than it should be. About a year ago he opened up the school to tons more people. Requiring us to have more teachers and even that didn't make classes smaller. My history class at the beginning of the year was roughly 40 people. Once things got sorted out it did shrink but I think only by 10 people.
Wasted The Great said:
Bingo! Now, I'm not saying I want to be a teacher, but I think some of them think of themselves as wardens, and have to keep the power.
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And that's how I think my history teacher felt. Before the class shrunk, most of the class the first week was the teacher getting mad at students not paying attention. In fact by the end of the year we are at least a month behind the other history class. So we missed at least a month of learning. So I think the worst part about big classrooms is it makes it harder for the teacher to teach the class. My language arts class was much smaller, I counted maybe 11 people. And it was such a better class. Lessons were quick, and we got a lot done. In the last month of the year (when classes usually do nothing) we got through 2 books and had many discussions on them.
 
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