Duct Tape Fixes Everything

I noticed an item in this morning's paper saying a family is suing a teaching intern who duct-taped a 6th-grader to his chair, also covering his mouth with tape, when he and others were too disruptive during a movie.

Well, first of all, let me make it clear that I don't condone this as a disciplinary measure in school. But I can't help but notice that all -- or at least most -- the stories on this 2005 incident dwell on the teacher's actions. That's probably proper, but a little part of me kept asking: What about the kids? There wasn't a whole lot of discussion of how disruptive they were, or how consistently they were disobeying the teacher, or how frequent such discipline problems are in classrooms today. And few seemed to suggest that the 6th grader might, just might, share a little bit of the responsibility for the incident. By 6th grade, a child certainly should know right from wrong, and should have developed a decent measure of self-control.

Maybe I find myself thinking this because I grew up with a father who took the approach of: "If I hear you got a spanking at school, you'll get another one when you get home." I was expected to behave. His attitude was that if the teacher thought I was stepping out of line, then he'd assume that was indeed what I had done. I never found out if he would follow up on that threat, because I never got spanked at school. But that was the point, wasn't it?

Yes, there's something wrong when a teacher feels such a loss of control over her class that she resorts to duct-taping children to their chairs and shuts them up by duct-taping their mouths. But I also think there's something wrong when parents think they can benefit by going to court over such an incident. And I'm left wondering if, in any way, the child was forced to take responsibility for his misbehavior in the first place.