Frazz by Jef Mallett for December 06, 2016

If kids could leave the room just cause they felt like it there wouldn’t be many in the room.

One day she’ll learn to appreciate bladder control.

Ah yes…bladder control. My bladder knows exactly who is in control…(and it ain’t me!)

The problem is that too many kids just “go to the restroom” to get out of class. And stay there for 10-15 minutes. Others like to “go” with their friends, and it becomes a social/goof-off situation. So it has to be regulated somehow. (Yes, I work in a school, and these are real concerns with a large segment of the student body.)

For children just about any order is gratuitous if they don’t like it.

We’ve covered this topic before, and I made a similar comment — somewhere out there in the webosphere is a now classic one panel comic with a student walking down a school hallway carrying a sign that says (approximately) “I’m missing vital instructional time because I have to tinkle” I have confidence that someone here with much more tech savviness than I can ever hope to attain will find and post it for all to enjoy.On a side note — there was a time when I had a clean, unused toilet seat that I converted into a hall pass for such purposes. Its presence cut down on the ‘need’ noticeably. Sadly, some administrator took it away, claiming that it caused embarrassment (DUH!).

Yes, yes, I know that it’s a standard right-wing mantra that “the public schools are utter catastrophes”, which is how you hope to con the public into believing that the proprietary ones perpetrated by the GOP’s business donors and the parochial ones perpetrated by the GOP’s religiot donors are the only solution, and we need to kill off the public schools altogether. But those of us out here in the reality-based community realize that your “diagnosis” is utter hogwash.

They suck needed money from the public schools.

Night-Gaunt49

That’s the idea. If they can return to Georgian and Victorian periods where only the wealthy were educated, they could get back their hereditary aristocracy and rule the people.

Hey, guys… There are many conservatives out there that believe strongly in public schools. I’m one of them. I do believe that the Federal government ought to loosen up control; local control is best when it comes to public education. And I am all for accountability. But many public schools in America do a great job of educating children. Even with kids being taken out of school for a week or more to visit Disney World or the beach.

As for today’s comic, kids often do try to resist any restrictions. Just last week, with the temperature turning colder here (40° F), we had several students try to go against our common-sense dress code and wear shorts. (Our policy is that students may wear shorts when the outdoor temperature is predicted to be 70° or higher. Our principal is usually flexible with 65 to 70°.) And if one student is given permission to go to the restroom, suddenly half the class asks to go to the restroom. Even when another teacher had the class stop at the restroom before they come to me. And don’t even get me started on pencils or tissues…

" Local control is best when it comes to public education". This is a standard, mostly conservative, opinion. But I frankly don’t so any justification for it. People like local control because it lets them push their point of view on the kids. This does not seem to me to be a positive. The biggest problem I see is it lets schools teach Intelligent Design.