what does this have to do with how adults behave. is the school yard a role model or a justification for how adults behave? i thought (hoped) i'd escaped that.

that reminds me! at my college there was this fucking crazy chinese man who barely knew english and used to throw chairs and schoolbags at students. he used to get really mad at this one kid in particular who would wind him up, i mean this kid was a real shit but i hardly think he deserved having to dodge chairs all the time. i think there may have been a serious complaint eventually and the teacher went to a chinese-kids-only school.

it really makes me wonder how and why the fuck some people get into teaching if they can't keep a lid on their issues.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that this is the essential issue with people who don’t understand that you don’t treat a child like an adult – they haven’t properly matured, and therefore really don’t understand the difference, because they aren’t very different than they were as children. Sometimes it seems to be just a stage in young adulthood, where the person has grown enough to be able to clearly see what a pain in the ass kids can be in a way they never understood before, but they haven’t grown to the point where they really understand what it means to be an adult. Sometimes it seems to last longer than that.

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well its worse, because it would never be tolerated for me to hit someone in my line of work,. adult to adult. but adult hitting children is ok. its not that we dont treat children like adults, we treat them as if they are less than adults. that they are chattel to be beaten for impudence.

or so the line of thought that slapping a child is tolerable.

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You’re right, I’m probably once again going off on a pet peeve with only the slenderest of connections to the actual thread topic. I don’t know that I’ve connected this theory I have about not really understanding the difference between childhood and adulthood to hitting before. I think there is a connection, but maybe I didn’t properly work it out before posting. It’s not exactly about treating children like adults, because that implies the benefits of adulthood as well as the responsibilities, and doesn’t address the chattel issue. It’s more about expectations – not understanding that you can’t expect from a child what you should be able to expect from an adult. It’s complicated, because part of dealing with children on a serious level (teacher, parent, caretaker, etc), includes helping them to eventually arrive at the point where you can expect of them what one expects of an adult, and often involves some type of discipline to help them get there, as well other things like an example to follow and help in understanding how they should be learning to relate and act around other people. When a person doesn’t understand that you can’t expect from a child what you should be able to expect from an adult and also doesn’t understand how to make a healthy adult out of a child, they come up with these totally counterproductive ideas like ‘a good smack’ and then they blame the kids when it doesn’t work. It’s childish thinking.

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