<p>That is about what principals and supers caught embezzling from the district do get in our neck of the woods. For the bad apples, the game of musical chairs misses on key component … they forgot to remove the missing chair. There is always a district that is willing to overlook the past and one that is more than willing to bury the problems as long as the culprit resigns without … too much noise. </p>
<p>Accountability is a very, very dirty word in these circles. And, for the record, why is anyone surprised that students act like spoiled country club members if we continue to build them schools that look like palaces.</p>
<p>It’s a shame so many of you are not shocked by this behavior. Doesn’t say much for what you/we are faced with day to day.</p>
<p>I thought the worst part of the story was the teacher, when she told one of the cheerleaders to get off her cell phone during class, was told to “shut up”. As far as I’m concerned, the kid should have been suspended for that alone. If my kids ever spoke to a teacher like that, they’d be grounded for a couple of months, regardless of what the school did. </p>
<p>I just can’t fathom how kids could act that way, nor how the administrators/parents condoned it. And the parents must have condoned it for a very long time for the kids to even imagine this was an acceptable way to treat other human beings.</p>
<p>i am shocked by girls and by the parents and school staff for letting obviouslly obnoxious girls to rule the school…and now they are “shocked” </p>
<p>all the pictures did was put a public eye on a group of families - parents and children and school staff - who were arrogant and felt entitled - and I bet the school will feel a sense of releif having those snots gone for a month</p>
I agree with these statements a bajillion percent. In fact, I spent the better part of my fall battling a public school district administration which not only tolerates but CONDONES pathetic and school-inappropriate behavior by allowing it to be featured (and lauded) in our district’s yearbook. The hundreds of parents and I who fought this failed miserably, but I still consider it worth our efforts to make a stand. We were right in every way but legally.</p>
<p>Given how easily a Google search would turn up a lot of unfavorable information about her, I doubt the letter of recommendation is worth anything. If employers are checking out facebook and myspace for dirt on recent college graduates, surely they’d do a little basic Googling about employees applying for other jobs. I know I’d do such a search.</p>
<p>The writer goes on to comment on the parents:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess I’m a prig, too, because it amazes me that parents think this is okay. I know my D is 24, so maybe we missed the worst of this, but she still doesn’t dress or behave like some of these children are allowed to! I know I’d never stoop to a “well, everyone else is, too” parental cop-out. </p>
<p>Both of my kids have had issues (boy, have they) but our guidance and expectations for them did not change according to what society has decided is the new norm.</p>
<p>Some things never change. As my mother used to say back in the 60s–if they’re doing that in Middle School, what are they going to be doing in High School? </p>
<p>I don’t know how much of this problem is child-generated and how much is societal or even parental encouragement, but kids need to be protected from growing up too fast. You can only hope they will get smart before they get in trouble.</p>
<p>I read that NY Times column, too, garland. I’m appalled by what these teenage girls are allowed/encouraged to do. There are crazy parents everywhere. I heard a mother here refer to her 11-year-old daughter as a “sex kitten,” and mention her “cute little b**bs.”</p>
<p>Given how easily a Google search would turn up a lot of unfavorable information about her, I doubt the letter of recommendation is worth anything. If employers are checking out facebook and myspace for dirt on recent college graduates, surely they’d do a little basic Googling about employees applying for other jobs. I know I’d do such a search.</p>
<p>Youd think
Three years ago our large urban district spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a headhunting firm to find school superintendent candidates.
Three reached the final interview process, but after some community members googled them, and found that they had less than stellar records in their former districts, they one by one all dropped out.( like to the point of being bought out of their contract)
( Seattle ended up with the interim superintendent- and is now reinventing the wheel by hiring another consulting firm to do another search- whadda bet they have thrown out all the notes from the myraid community meetings just a few years ago)
The consulting firm defended itself by saying that they had checked their criminal record and that was clean.</p>
<p>I don’t know why looking for an employment record including newspaper articles about superintendents was such a difficult concept.</p>
<p>“I think that overlysexualised behavior of the girls gets tacit approval from the parents starting in middle school. I see it where we are.”</p>
<p>Many people, including me, view cheerleading as part of that oversexualization.</p>
<p>Due to the athletics involved, a case certainly can be made that cheerleading is a sport. However, if it’s a sport, it deserves to be treated as a sport instead of as a decorative activity for “real” sports, which happen to be sports with male athletes.</p>
<p>If cheerleading is indeed a sport, the cheerleaders should be experienced by themselves, not as accessories to the main event – football, basketball, etc.</p>
<p>Right now, basically, cheerleading consists of lovely girls in skimpy attire doing various routines for games that are the main event. </p>
<p>If cheerleading were truly a sport, they would be the featured activity, not an adjunct one and heerleaders would be selected on athletic talent, not on athletic talent plus looks (after all, in other sports, people aren’t selected for the team based on their facial features).</p>
<p>To take a slightly different tack, how much of this is related to our antiquated view of schools, which essentially hasn’t changed in 100 years?</p>
<p>Girls are sexually mature a full 3 years sooner than they were in 1900, when the school pattern was established, boys about 2 1/2 years. High schools were not created in any way that can be considered developmentally appropriate. (And if you look at the average age of marriage back in 1900, when the kids were much less sexually mature, it is easy to see why we have a “sex” problem today.)</p>
<p>Leon Botstein, the President of Bard College, believes that the AVERAGE 14-15 year old today can do college work, and he has put his money where his mouth is. Bard in New York takes normal, average, non-gifted Brooklyn 14-15 year olds, and provides them with a standard college curriculum, with uniformly positive results. </p>
<p>So we put the kids in institutions which deaden their minds and restrain their bodies, both infantilizing and sexualizing them at the same time. But the point being, it isn’t “early” sexualization; it is a response to cultural habits and mores that don’t match developmental needs.</p>
<p>Garland, that quote describes why I took my daughters out of dance when they hit middle school. My father remarked that they ought to put a tip jar on the edge of the stage at the dance recital. I guess I understand some girls wanting that early sexualization, but I don’t get the parents encouraging it.</p>
<p>This is a huge issue and I am glad there is a lot of discussion about it. I sometimes wonder if some of this has to do with baby boomer parents’ lack of self-esteem. A novel I read several years ago by (I think) Fred Leebron, included a statement that goes something like “We baby boomers were treated like second class citizens when we were growing up, and we are determined to be second class citizens as parents.”</p>
<p>Here is my equation:</p>
<p>Lack of self-esteem + guilt over working too much + lack of awareness of how much predatory stuff is out there compared to how things were when we were teenagers + denial + too much money, which means too much teenage access to cars = the current problem. </p>
<p>I am sure that CCers can help tweak and improve the above!</p>
<p>I can’t see how baby boomers were ever treated like second class citizens. They had been the most pampered, fawned over, self-centered, marketed-to generation up until that time and up to this day. (Those commercials with those narcissistic geezer boomers shown on tv make me cringe each and every time.) I’m sure that author is a boomer himself to hold that view. Like Al Gore invented the internet, boomers thought, and still think, they invented sex. The genie was let out of the bottle in the '60’s and now we’re facing the consequences. But have no fear, public schools will be supplying contraception and morning-after pills within the next few years for the little darlings.</p>
<p>"Bard in New York takes normal, average, non-gifted Brooklyn 14-15 year olds, and provides them with a standard college curriculum, with uniformly positive results. "</p>
<p>That’s not really true. My daughter was accepted to the school and the admissions process is quite rigorous. The testing, essays, recommendations and interviews are designed to ensure that the kids are quite smart and, more importantly, eager to accept a challenge and to work very, very hard. The school is spectacular.</p>
<p>Very, very hard work is what lots of kids would crave, if given the opportunity. (I’ve heard great things about the place, too. Botstein puts great emphasis on finding kids who are willing to do the work, but who are not necessarily intellectually gifted - which is who the magnets, Stuy etc., are meant to serve. The idea is to prove the relevance of the model to a much larger group of youth.)</p>
