Another Incident In The Allentown School District

Trexler Middle school fights prompt arrests, beefed-up police presence
By Tony Rhodin | For lehighvalleylive.com

"There will be an increased police presence on Friday near Allentown's Trexler Middle School after fights on Thursday led to a lockdown and a pair of arrests, officials said."

My Comments About The Article AboveApparently there were multiple incidents throughout the school day. I as a 1966 graduate of the Allentown School District can attest some of this stuff which happened is not entirely new. When I attended William Allen about once or twice a year there was the occasional fist fight at West Park. As I grew older my stepson experienced problems on his bus up to voc-tech in Schnecksville as well as a stabbing in the leg of someone in the then famous 'cancer court' area of WAHS.

What's happening today is far different. None of these kids would dare pull this stuff off inside the high school itself. They had a certain fear of teachers who's time has long since passed. Not one time in either my, the step son's or daughter's years in high school would anyone dream of challenging authority. Nor was security required via police presence.

So What's Changed?
The majority of students come from homes far different from those I and others grew up in. The harsh reality is schools are asked to bear responsibilities far reaching from what they are legally able to accomplish. These are unreasonable expectations. Reality is legislation has tied the hands of teachers taking appropriate disciplinarity measures even if it were at risk to their own physical safety in doing so.

It started out early in the elementary grades when teachers & gym teachers physically made contact with some of these little shits behaving badly. Nobody's talking about beating kids, but sometimes kids are better handled by physical means early on when they are yet incompatible of understanding reasoning within their brains. Those days are long gone. As a result we have what we are seeing today. Guess what.. we all survived including I.

In many instances the parents complaining about the schools' lack of control are the first to complain taking away the tools necessary to do anything about early intervention. As result this is what we're seeing today. Either they or the schools need to step in early when these kids act up. If the parents won't don't expect schools to be a solution to what they refuse to do for themselves. This may seem harsh, but this is the reality of the situation we now find ourselves in.

Nobody's kid is perfect including me when I was their age.