Again, really interested in how you come to the conclusion that they “hid behind union skirts” and “checked the collective agreement” based on what you read. I take it you honestly believe those things.
But the fact that they were prepared to dive, and were issued a direct order by their captain not to dive, in my mind, shows that management and regulations were at fault. Not the divers, who were more than willing to dive (and in fact were getting ready to do so when ordered not to).
Take a moment to read the testimony at the inquest, and then see if you still maintain that they were hiding behind union skirts and checking their collective agreement.
Is the word “heroic” an appropriate term to apply to this situation? I feel this junior manager (vice principal) inspired the word-smiths and twitters to action by bantering about the emotionally powerful term, heroic.
Then, if this boy had not acted as he had it appears there would have been no action. Follow me on this…
The teacher, in the very same room, did not notice the jabbing and poking going on. OK sure. This is entirely plausible.
The same teacher, in the very same room failed to notice one boy had put another into a headlock. Hmmm, this seems odd. Really odd.
The very same teacher, in the very same room was not alerted to multiple students voicing the presence of a knife. What?!! Really? Wait! What!!??
This teacher does happen to notice one boy tackling another in the room and notifies the office. Is this teacher just coming out of a coma?
The vice-principal (don’t worry, I got this) informs the boy and his mother that he should not be jumping in and acting like some hero. He should have alerted a teacher (or awaken one).
The big issue arising from all this is…teachers don’t want to promote heroics in school. Litigation, you know. What??[/quote]
If not heroic, what word would you use? Serious question.
I follow you quite well and I believe with all of my being that this boy did the right thing. The question is… How do you manage this in schools? Do teachers say yes to this or do they discourage it? In a schoolyard fight do we ask the kids to get involved themselves or go and get help? Years ago my son got hell at school for being in a fight in which he was standing up for someone else. Isn’t that brave, heroic or whatever catch phrase you want to use? Bottom line- you can’t reward kids for putting themselves in harms way in that environment. I absolutely love that they do it but also understand that you can’t encourage kids to put themselves in that situation. I know that there are current or former teachers (Mig, DWhite, etc) that frequently post and browse this forum and I’d be interested in hearing what they have to say.
Violence by any other name is still violence: whether it is called heroism or something else. (As an aside: how much true heroism involves physical violence?).
The question should be how much violence do we tolerate in our schools, when and why? How much violence do we tolerate in general. When and why?
Hide behind the skirts of anti-union beliefs or a general distrust of teachers if you must but unless you can clearly outline how much violence (and the nature of that violence) should be tolerated and accepted in a school / classroom situation then aren’t you just engaged in name calling….a very basic (but happily lacking in physicality) form of violence?
By the way….isn’t it about time we began to trust teachers to appropriately deal with violence in the classroom so they can be allowed guns…just like they’re pushing for in the US? Tolerate a little….tolerate a lot? A very slippery slope indeed.