“It is a brand new day,” said Sheriff Wayne Ivey, “where school discipline is gonna be put back in place in Brevard public schools.”
On Thursday, The New American published a piece on how even young children are sometimes now attacking teachers in school, emboldened by the handcuffing of teachers who, afraid to enforce rules, then “outsource” discipline to the police. But that’s about to change in his jurisdiction, said Sheriff Ivey of Brevard County, Florida. It’s not clear precisely what the new discipline standards will entail and how much of the new “stick” will be wielded by teachers and how much by cops, but Ivey seemed to be implying it would be a collaborative effort.
Florida Today reports on the story:
Standing outside the Brevard County Jail Complex, Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced what he called a “brand new day” for discipline at schools across the county.
Accompanied by school board chair Matt Susin, State Attorney Phil Archer and school service workers union representative Dolores Varney, Ivey on Monday decried what he called “the failure of the school discipline program here at Brevard Public Schools.”
That, he promised, would change “starting right now.” Ivey spoke in a live video posted on the sheriff’s office Facebook page.
“If you’re a little snot that’s coming to our classes to be disruptive, you might want to find some place else to go to school because we’re going to be your worst nightmare starting right now,” Ivey said.
Ivey’s video pronouncement about school discipline comes after the swearing in last week of two new school board members, both endorsed by the sheriff and Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Susin being chosen as the board chair.
… Susin said the board will sit down with the unions and state attorney at an emergency meeting next week to create the “most prolific policy the school district’s ever had.” Any new policy would need to be approved by the school board.
As is common now, Brevard County certainly has its hands full with student misbehavior, with Florida Today relating there were 1,470 criminal, violent, or disruptive acts reported at the county’s schools for the 2020-2021 school year alone.
Ivey’s press briefing came just after the newly-elected traditionalist school board members ousted liberal schools superintendent Dr. Mark Mullins. And of the sheriff’s resolute statements, comments he made referencing corporal punishment raised the most eyebrows.
Misbehaving students “know nothing is going to happen to them,” Ivey passionately lamented. “They know they’re not going to be given after-school detention, they’re not going to be suspended, they’re not going to be expelled. Or like in the old days, they’re not going to have the cheeks of their a** torn off for not doing right in class.”
School “discipline is gonna be put back in place in Brevard public schools,” the sheriff elaborated. “We have a school board that stands behind this; we have our teachers union that stands behind it. I can tell you that our team, all the way from the state attorney, from school district security, to the principals, to the teachers, we’re all tired of this disruptive behavior” (video below).
While what the sheriff expresses is just common sense, the focus on corporal punishment can distract from the main point. To wit: Whatever the type of consequences, the fear of them must be sufficient to deter bad behavior or there will be rampant bad behavior. This is true in or out of school.
For those fond of scientific explanations, know that famed psychologist Erik Erikson made this clear via his well-known “Stages of Psychosocial Development”: They inform that when a child is in a certain early developmental stage, he understands that something is wrong only if he gets punished for it.
This not only has implications for elementary schools — which handle large numbers of young and hence morally immature children — but all schools. For some people are stunted morally and only respond to punishment even when older.
This reality is also reflected, mind you, in Christian theology, which holds that there are two types of valid repentance. One, “perfect contrition,” is the ideal and is when you’re sorry for having committed a transgression because you know it’s wrong and you love God. The other, “imperfect contrition,” is when you’re sorry only because you fear punishment.
The latter is accepted because Christians understood what Erikson propounded long before he propounded it: that moral understanding will, like it or not, be beyond a certain population segment. Moreover, even generally “good” people will have “missing pieces” in their moral compasses — that is, many moral principles will be in their hearts so that they’ll genuinely feel bad when violating them. One or two (or more), however, may not be, so that they may know (intellectually) that violating them is wrong but not actually feel bad at all when doing so.
This is also why both love and fear of God are stressed — and it is why fear of consequences is necessary in schools. For such fear is a prerequisite for discipline and obedience, which themselves are prerequisites for learning. This is for a simple reason: How can someone learn from you if he’s not first willing to listen to you?
This is why not establishing discipline, and the fear of consequences attending it, is uncompassionate: It ensures that most children won’t learn effectively.
Of course, many will complain that they don’t trust today’s teachers — a good example of a bad example of which is here — to wield power over their kids. More sympathetic I could not be given today’s schools’ woke imperatives. But the answer then is to homeschool.
Sending one’s child to school, however, logically means accepting that the teacher needs to act in loco parentis (in place of the parent). This is necessary because proportionate authority must attend responsibility. For example, if I make you responsible for my kid — where you’re on the hook if he gets hurt — you must have sufficient power over him to keep him from harm’s way. Accepting any other arrangement would be as crazy as agreeing to walk my dog even though I forbid you to use a leash but nonetheless say, “Don’t let him run into traffic now!”
Speaking of which, a recent article of mine provided an example of a teacher who, not allowed to “restrain children,” had a young boy attack her and then run outside — and into traffic. The moral of this story:
Discipline is holy. Punishment can breed virtue. Wokeness kills.
