a mental capacity or mental condition that would qualify them to be "special ed" if they were in a public school.

What is the solution? I stand by what I offered in 1999, 100 plus school shootings ago:

Prayer and "Whoopass"

As I was sitting through the honors program at a local middle school the other night, the overall length of the program gave me about an hour of idle time, something I rarely get. As I read and re-read the program to have something to do, it hit me as to what is wrong with our schools today as far as the elevation of violence. In the program, there was a list of all of the faculty members. In looking at the list, one position leaped out at me: "Time Out and Attendance Teacher." What the hell is "Time Out?" I'll tell you what it is if you don't already know: It's when a teacher takes a misbehaving student, sends them down to the "Time Out" teacher so they can "reflect" on what they did wrong. Does it not occur to anyone but me this might just give this student time to think of what they need to do to GET EVEN?

We've become a generation of new affluence. I don't know of hardly anyone who doesn't have a better lifestyle today than what they had as a child. Thusly, many people do not want their children to endure the hardships they had as a child. Teachers today in elementary schools are many times confronted by "problem parents" before they encounter "problem children." Parents today are quick to go confront a teacher over minor discipline - a big departure from my generation. In my generation, we had no school shootings. In my generation, very few parents ever confronted a teacher. In my generation, we had PRAYER AND WHOOPASS!

Do any of these "problem parents" who don't want their children to have any type of corporal punishment ever stop to think we did not have school shootings back when we had "Prayer and Whoopass" in our schools?

When I was in school, we had plenty of both. My elementary school was not a "Christian School" by today's standards, but we had classroom prayer every morning, and old Miss Boyd taught our mandatory weekly Bible class. I can still remember her shouting out the books of the Bible like a football cheer as we were made to memorize them. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, somebody somewhere complained about having their child having to take Bible class, so it became where a student could bring a note from their parent and get out of taking it. Well, I saw this as an easy way to get out of work, so I forged a note, signing my mothers name to it, and got out of Bible class. A few weeks later, a woman who attended our church called my mother and asked why she had written a note to exempt me from Bible class - seems her child had given her the old "Joe's mother let him get out of it" spill. You know what this minor little infraction of mine got me? I got a good dose of Prayer and Whoopass, and I sure didn't forge any more notes from my mother! To be honest, I didn't mind the prayer part, but the "Whoopass" part always got to me.

What is it going to take to turn things around? Well, unfortunately, it has taken a recent tragic wake up call at Columbine High School to get the country's leaders at least thinking about what to do. Stricter gun control, though maybe needed, is not the answer. Parents supporting discipline, and letting God have a foothold back in our schools is the answer - because as I said in the beginning of this article, when Prayer and "Whoopass" was in our schools, there was no such thing as school shootings.

Any comments? Contact Joe Kirkpatrick at:
tristateim@aol.com
.