THE ISSUE: The Milwaukee School Board is considering the use of handcuffs in detaining supposedly dangerous students.
Whoever first decided to label school as a prison wasn’t kidding – at least in the case of Milwaukee Public Schools.
According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Milwaukee School Board approved the first steps toward a policy allowing handcuffs to be used on “unruly” students.
These students include those “whose behavior is considered dangerous to themselves or others,” according to the article.
However, four newly elected school board members will have to vote on the issue when their term begins before the policy takes full effect.
Still, who is in the position to decide whether a student is a threat? If a threat is considered that extreme, police should be brought in anyway.
Clearly this policy steps over the line of discipline and into the mold of corporal punishment. Spanking isn’t allowed in schools, and neither should handcuffing students.
On top of that, there will no doubt be lawsuits in the near future if this policy is fully enacted. Parents won’t want their children to be subjected to prison-like punishments.
The bigger issue that comes out of this misguided approach to discipline is the lack of adequate resources that could be used to help these children grow as people and students.
The Milwaukee School Board is taking an unnecessary, authoritarian approach to a problem that should be corrected by investing more money into the public school system and other forms of learning.
Teachers should not be looked at as disciplinary drill sergeants. Allowing them to use handcuffs to scold children can have dire consequences for those kids’ faith in learning and the education system as a whole.
The scariest schools are sometimes not found in inner-city Milwaukee, but rather those in middle- to upper-class suburbia, see Columbine.
Schools always strive to create a positive learning environment for all students and this policy will do nothing but pollute and eventually destroy that goal.
