LegalPenguin said:
Yeah, they's just grab the kid, or maybe beat the crap out of her, or some other solution that presents a risk of harm. Who knows.
Any time restraints are applied, of whatever sort, whether it is by hand or by handcuffs, there is a small risk of injury. It happens, especially when people, including children, resist the application of restraints. Should children never, therefore, be restrained? I think all of us would agree that such a policy would be foolish. Children must, in some cases, be restrained. If anyone disagrees, let him speak up. We need some more non-parents to ridicule.
OK. So if they have to be restrained, how should they be restrained? Clearly, the prevailing opinion is that the form of restraint should minimize the risk of injury. Correct? That is the prevailing opinion, is it not?
Well, it isn't my opinion.
The chance of injuring the child by "just grabbing her" is very, very, small. It is larger than the chance of injury posed by applying handcuffs, but it is still very small.
In my opinion, the type of restraint used should be the most effective form that poses an acceptable risk of injury. In the case of dealing with small children "acceptable" is very low indeed. However, "just grabbing her" would be well within my threshold of acceptable risk. If there were a significant risk of danger from grabbing children, most of our own children would never have made it to school age.
My outrage at this incident is not aimed at the application of handcuffs. My outrage at this situation is at the failure to apply more effective means earlier. I am outraged that an entire classroom full of kids was emptied because no one could "just grab her" and force her to stop. If she failed to stop when reasonable force was applied, then she could have been removed.
Would this have resulted in greater risk of injury? Yes it would have, but the risk would still have been very, very, small. In my youth, I saw this happen on a number of occaisions, and I can't recall any resulting injuries. I'm not saying they never happened, but they were very, very, rare.
This kid was allowed to shut down an entire classroom because there was a 0.01% chance that an injury would result from "just grabbing her". Of course, most of those injuries would be bruises. In all but bizarre cases, a dislocated shoulder would be the worst that could come about. (I obviously made up the number, but I think I could grab 10,000 kids and only hurt one of them. Maybe not. Maybe only 1,000, so 0.1%, but see below.)
Do people really care about probabilities that small? I don't think so. So what are they afraid of? They are afraid of that "expert witness" testifying in court that the rash actions of a teacher created the possibility that the child could have been harmed. And schools are so afraid of this possibility that they put policies in place that prevent effective measures to stop this behavior.
Furthermore, it should be emphasized that those policies don't even minimize the risk of injury. While that child is running about, breaking things, and climbing on furniture, her risk of injury is higher than if she were restrained by somebody "just grabbing her". However, what those policies minimize is the risk of injury
caused by school officials. If they do nothing, they are less likely to be accused of causing her injury, or of taking an action that might have caused an injury.
As for "beating the crap out of her", that has never been allowed in my lifetime, unless you count paddling in that category. If a teacher "beats the crap out of"a student, in my opinion the appropriate response is to fire the teacher, and press charges if appropriate. Instead, what would probably happen, in addition to those things, would be that the school district would be sued. So, an unruly child causes an unstable teacher to finally lose it, and do something he shouldn't and the consequence in America is that the classmates of the unruly child would lose some of their educational opportunities, because the money that could have been used to hire a replacement teacher went to the family of the unruly student.
It makes them take these situations seriously and develop sane policies, like not having teachers physically accost small children without proper training, or not building a compact car where the gas tank is placed so it will explode if you are rear-ended...
When I was growing up, teachers were trained in such areas as math and history. They had a fairly intutive grasp of how to accost small children, without the need for specialized training. I can't see the modern situation as an improvement.
