They never disappoint! Yet another dumbass teacher story! In this episode, second graders are asked to draw what they see in the clouds. Junior learns the hard way, at an early age, not to see the wrong thing.

Two more tangentials:

- Can someone tell me what a "permanent record" really is?

- Is there a way we could, as soon in their development as possible, identify those individuals who should be kept far, far away from positions of authority?

"Can someone tell me what a 'permanent record' really is?"

It used to be an empty threat. Now I'm not so sure.

The hits, they just keep on coming! This one from Britain, where a grammar school student put a pie in a teacher's face as an end-of-year prank. Said teacher was not amused. Police were invited.

Comments are all over the place. The best one, from someone called Clarinoprimo, reads in part:

Everyone loses here. The pupil (an 18 year old - not a child) ends up looking like a brainless thug, the teacher ends up looking pathetic, the school ends up looking petty and the headmaster ends up looking like a total pillock, because it is blindingly obvious that where 'pranks' are allowed to happen, someone somewhere is going to take it too far.

I don't know what a pillock is, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to look like one.

Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky, but if some 18yo punk shoved a pie in my face, he'll be lucky if all I did was call police :/ ... that's not a 'prank', that's assault, in my day we would never dare do something like that.

"... in my day we would never dare do something like that."

I'll bet your principal never looked like a pillock, either, which is apparently a bad thing, like being a wazzock or a plonker.

Permanent record, at least in my Northern Nevada School district, is the digital and paper file that is created when a student enrolls and to which are added all Discipline actions, all testing results academic, emotional, physical, everything. Due to FERPA, no one except necessary school personnel and parents can see those, without a court order, and unless law enforcement was involved, those records except for transcripts remain unknown to anyone outside of the district and family Then there is the State Data, and nobody knows the full extent of that and I guess it costs a lot to find out:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/13/nevada-school-to-dad-pay-10k-to-see-data-tracking-on-kids/

But the “Permanent Record” is only for school use here in NV, except the transcript

Another smash hit from your local elementary school... And people wonder why bulimia exists.

"And people wonder why bulimia exists."

See comment above about forever barring some people from positions of power.

The original retailed at four dollars during the 1964 Christmas shopping season. According to www.in2013dollars.com, that would be $30.17 today. I never actually had a G.I. Joe growing up, but knew plenty of kids who did. I thought the space capsule was way, way cool.

Joe's creator, Hasbro executive Donald Levine, died last Thursday at the age of 86.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pakistan-woman-stoned-to-death-by-family-for-marrying-man-she-loved/article18862192/

It is impossible to force a person or a country to change.

I do wonder if the Islamic world would take notice if we simply did not continue to give money or buy oil. When asked why, simply state that it was not deemed to be in our interests.

Wonder if they would change on their own accord.

As for the costs to us? We should already be self-sufficient and I bet we voters can ensure that it does not cost us too much to become so.

> It is impossible to force a person or a
> country to change.

Well, that's it, then... Time to close all our schools.

> Wonder if they would change on their own accord.

This is just so fucked up.

Tell us about your understanding of the flow of history, Bobbers. Explain how currents of wealth, nutrition, safety and literacy have painted our planet in such diverse ways, and how culture has impeded or assisted these flows.

> those records except for transcripts remain
> unknown to anyone outside of the district
> and family

Then why are they kept?

As for the costs to us? We should already be self-sufficient and I bet we voters can ensure that it does not cost us too much to become so.

Not really, if I I had an oil well I'd sell it on the open market and make as much money as possible, not sell exclusively to Americans at a discount

A motherfucking Sandra Fluke canvasser just knocked on my door, called me by name, and asked who I was going to vote for. I said "Anyone else" and chased him off with a curse. By the time I realized (20 seconds) I needed to knock him to the ground and find out how I got on his list, he'd fled the neighborhood without a trace.

Fluke's office has no street address or phone number.

That woman is filth.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/bullied-15-year-old-hangs-herself-and-leaves-harrowing-note

Eh... Our numbers are down across my adult lifetime. Because after all... We're Americans.

Or is there some specific point you want to make, Lobster? (Some personal anecdote, some tragedy in your personal life for which you'd want a sympathetic hearing?)

Listen, an American teenager is going to kill his- or herself next week, too. And the week after that. And it's going to be tawdry and unnecessary.

Do you want (or expect) that we should be pornographically entranced by the bathetic media coverage which will certainly follow this oncoming, if unpredictable, tragedy?

OK, let's start with this one, the one from your link:

Delille’s mother says she was aware that her daughter had been made fun of, but she didn’t know how bad it actually was.

“She mentioned here and there when kids made fun of her,” said Delille’s mother Amy Hall. “She didn’t clue me in to how bad it was.”

[1.] Where's Dad? Why isn't her father interviewed, or even mentioned?

[2.] Why wasn't her mother "[clued] in to how bad it was?" Was she busy working or something?

[2a.] Is it probable that this kid is from a broken home? Would this child have had better tools to deal with these challenges from her peers if she'd had a fully-rounded home life?

I guess what I'm asking here, Lobster, it what do you want to do?

Because we notice that yesterday's suggestions for the comfort which you might have offered Lonely Rodger did not inspire you.

Oh! It's right there in the story! I went right over it:

In her emotional note, Delille outlined how bad the bullying was and that she had decided to kill herself not only because of tormentors, but also because of a lot of other issues going on in her life. Authorities say that Delille may have felt abandoned by both her father and her stepfather.

Emphasis: Cridmo

Amazing to see someone literally straining themselves to argue that we should do nothing to try help teens who are pushed to suicide.

You will get the society you deserve - nothing more, nothing less - if you don't want kids to keep 'snapping', DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. If you want kids to keep suffering, well, stop pretending to be surprised when some snap.

Crid, I'm judging by your responses - and how strongly you feel about it - that there is almost something personal in this for you - I am going to venture to guess that you yourself were a bully at school. And now you are hoping to feel better about it by trying to make light of the horrific consequences and carnage.

> Amazing to see someone literally straining
> themselves to argue that we should do nothing
> to try help teens who are pushed to suicide.

Maybe it is amazing, but you haven't seen that here, otherwise you'd have quoted the words implying any such thing, however passingly. You couldn't find any.

People make all sort of efforts "to try help teens who are pushed to suicide," and we're all pretty happy about those efforts. But there's no trend of accelerating death or anything. I'm not the one with strong feelings: I'm content with the ranking American culture has given to child suicide. (As is so plainly apparent in the example you offered, the problem is almost always in the intimate homes of the afflicted rather than in our broader culture.) Sitch normal: Nothing to get snotty about.

You give the appearance of being a not-very-bright guy, because you've decided to have the argument you want to have without regard to the things others say to you. Jimp has been doing this for years. Tressider used to do it all the time, too. Amy does it for four or five topics...

It doesn't matter what words we type up on the screen here. I could type something like this:

  I'm a Cranky Old Yank
  in a Clanky Old Tank 
  on the Streets of Yokohama 
  with my Honolulu Mama 
  Doin' Those Beat-o, Beat-o 
  Flat-On-My-Seat-o, 
  Hirohito Blues

  I believe timid, cowering teens
  should be harshly tormented with
  whips, knives and fire.

But you're saying it to the wrong guys. I think you need to figure who you should have said it to years ago, and go say it to them now. Or whatever. We aren't the droids you're looking for, Muffin.

(PS- I was too kind, popular and short to bully people in school.)

@"You give the appearance of being a not-very-bright guy"

Lol - OK, Crid, whatever you want to believe. That's not something I hear often. Ad hominem suits your faux-intellectual style.

@"As is so plainly apparent in the example you offered, the problem is almost always in the intimate homes of the afflicted rather than in our broader culture."

One of the two of us is 'bright' enough to understand that a problem like teen suicide can have more than one cause. Contemplate that for a while, then come back and share your expert knowledge on the causes of teen suicide.

You seem to be commenting without having read some of my comments on this subject in other threads, which is fine, but you seem to be working off assumptions that don't align with what I've written. There are nuances here that you dismiss.

@" I'm content with the ranking American culture has given to child suicide"

I assume you refer to the low ranking of importance that American culture has given to child suicide. I see that as a problem that should be changed. Yes, once upon a time society also didn't care about abused wives ... now we thankfully live in an age where we care enough to try do something about domestic abuse. The same trend now needs to occur for recognition of the abuse of children.

All I was trying to tell you is the straightforward, simple fact that if society continues to insist on assigning a low ranking of importance to the suffering and abuse of children, then stop pretending to be surprised when children sometimes snap and go on a rampage.

(Forgive the ill grammar in last sentence - am very pressed for time.)

> One of the two of us is 'bright' enough to
> understand that a problem like teen suicide
> can have more than one cause.

Turtledove, who ever said it didn't? Who are you fighting with?

> You seem to be commenting without having read
> some of my comments on this subject in other
> threads, which is fine

I'm glad you approve, because what you've said in this thread one is goofy.

> There are nuances here that you dismiss.

Nuancé is one of my favorite singers!

> I see that as a problem that should be changed.

Well, good luck. You're having a bad week, because your technique is a mess.

> All I was trying to tell you is the
> straightforward, simple fact that if society
> continues to insist on assigning a low ranking
> of importance to the suffering and abuse of
> children, then stop pretending to be surprised
> when children sometimes snap and go on a
> rampage.

Like that, see? You got distracted in the middle. Your "straightforward, simple fact" turned into a prissy scold, which is what you really wanted anyway.

Again --and these iterations grow a little less fun each time-- I don't think "suffering and abuse" made Rodgers "snap and go on a rampage." So far as I can tell, he wasn't abused in any meaningful sense, and he certainly wasn't a child. In no context can his murders be forgiven because of something that had happened to him.

Very, very few 22-year-olds have the sex lives or social lives they want to have. To describe their complaints as "suffering" doesn't make the rest of the world seem cruel: It makes their corner of it seem wimpy and self-obsessed.

Too many commenters in the recent thread complained that they'd had "no friends" as children. This almost statistically impossible. It's more likely that they didn't have the friends they wanted to have, but that's a different matter, isn't it? Maybe they wanted to be adored by the most popular boy in their class, or by the prettiest girl. Well, jeez, how come Bill Gates never answered my emails? I wanted to be his FRIEND, man....

But to whom have these pouting people been a friend?

There's too much loneliness in the world for anyone to be friendless. The affection and respect of strangers is too easy to harvest. Like most kinds of love, almost nobody gets their first, and most flattering, choice...

But that means nothing.

More here.