Attack on Teachers

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The ongoing and escalating assault on primary- and secondary-school teachers is not a pretty sight. Holly Houston is a post-traumatic stress specialist. She counsels teachers in Chicago public schools and reported, “Of the teachers that I have counseled over the years who have been assaulted, 100 percent of them have satisfied diagnostic criteria for PTSD.” It’s not just big-city schoolteachers traumatized. Dr. Darlyne Nemeth, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said last year, “I have treated many teachers with PTSD, and I am currently following a few of them.”

A Philadelphia seventh-grade girl with a history of incidents against her teacher sprayed perfume in the teacher’s face after telling her that she smelled “like old white pussy.” After telling her classmates “I’m about to kick this bitch’s white ass,” she shoved the teacher, knocking her to the floor. In 2014, a Philadelphia 68-year-old substitute teacher was knocked out cold by a student. Earlier that year, two other teachers in the same school were assaulted. By the way, Philadelphia schools employ close to 400 school police officers.

In a school district near St. Louis, teachers have had pepper spray and dog repellant sprayed in their faces. A Baltimore teacher had his jaw broken. In Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. A 325-pound high-school student in Houston knocked out his 66-year-old female teacher. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked each day of the 2011-12 school year.

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What about student conduct in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s? Don’t take my word. Ask black congressional representatives, 46 percent of whom were born in the ’20s, ’30s or ’40s. Start off with Reps. John Conyers (86), Charles Rangel (85), Eddie Bernice Johnson (79), Alcee Hastings (79) and Maxine Waters (77). Ask them whether their parents or kin would have tolerated their assaulting and cursing teachers or any other adult. Ask them what would have happened to them had they assaulted or cursed a teacher or adult. Ask whether their parents would have accepted the grossly disrespectful behavior seen among many black youngsters in public places–for example, using foul language and racial epithets. {snip}

The sorry and tragic state of black education and its attendant problems will not be turned around until there’s a change in what’s acceptable behavior and what’s unacceptable behavior. {snip}