Two students attacked Germantown High's Frank Burd after he confiscated an iPod in class, officials said.
By Joseph A. Gambardello and Robert Moran
Inquirer Staff Writers
A popular Germantown High School teacher was assaulted by two students and hospitalized after he took an iPod from one during class yesterday, officials said.

Frank Burd, 60, was in a hallway after his 11th-grade math class shortly after 11 a.m. when he was confronted by the 17-year-old student who brought the iPod to class.

A 15-year-old student joined the confrontation and either punched or helped to trip Burd, who fell and hit his head against a locker, said Fernando Gallard, spokesman for the Philadelphia School District.

Burd, who has been active in local theater productions, was taken to Albert Einstein Medical Center with two broken bones in his neck and a gash to his head, said Paul G. Vallas, the district's chief executive.

"They decided to wait until class had been completed, and they decided to assault the teacher outside class," Vallas said.

The students, whose names were not released, fled the high school and were later arrested, police said. Both students, who were described as special-education students, were being interviewed last night at Northwest Detectives.

The 15-year-old, a ninth grader, was in the process of being transferred to an alternative disciplinary school when the assault occurred, Gallard said. He had been transferred to such a school during the last school year.
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These students are getting out of control, attacking teachers when they take away something they damn well know they shouldnt have in the first place.

Give them a math test. Afterwards administer severe beatings, with the guy whose test score was lower getting the worst one.

If all they can understand is violence, they have to be taught in their own language.

Quote from: James McMurrayGive them a math test. Afterwards administer severe beatings, with the guy whose test score was lower getting the worst one.

If all they can understand is violence, they have to be taught in their own language.

There were only charged as Juveniles and thank god they wont be going back to the school.

The teachers neck was broken but he apparently is going to be ok.

Just the other day I was talking with a friend of mine who has two kids(one 8 one 13).  His youngest liked this girl (young love is so cute, right?).  Well, apparently another kid liked her too, so this other kid pulled a knife on him and told him to not talk to her or he'd kill him!  Holy shit!  Back in my day you had a few stoners and maybe a bully or two, but this???  These damned kids are animals!

Something is to blame with these kids' piss poor behavior and it's probably the parents (or lack thereof).

Kids these days!  Why, back in day...

!i!

Quote from: MegamanfanJust the other day I was talking with a friend of mine who has two kids(one 8 one 13).  His youngest liked this girl (young love is so cute, right?).  Well, apparently another kid liked her too, so this other kid pulled a knife on him and told him to not talk to her or he'd kill him!  Holy shit!  Back in my day you had a few stoners and maybe a bully or two, but this???  These damned kids are animals!

Something is to blame with these kids' piss poor behavior and it's probably the parents (or lack thereof).

I have to say I agree that its the parents fault.

Also, I am glad you guys are being more mature, I posted this same topic on rpg.net and the idiots are already calling me a troll.

God, I am begining to hate that place.

Well, I dunno if things are so much worse than they were in our day, or if memory bathes everything in a rosy glow of nostalgia.

I grew up in a very protected suburban setting, and so my initial reaction to (for instance) the drawing-a-knife story above is "Wow, that's crazy!  I never had anyone draw a knife on me at school!"  But then, when I thought about it, I had to admit "Oh yeah, there was that gang of kids who invaded our playground that one day ... and there was that crazy kid in the hallway that one time ..."  So, in fact, I had similar experiences twice.  Yet my general sense of school is one of stolid, boring, safety.  The experiences obviously didn't effect me as much as a kid as they would as a parent.

So are things really worse than in our day?  Or are we less able to ignore the problems when we're grown up enough to feel like we are responsible for the world they're part of?

I grew up in  aschool where I received at least one group beating a week if I wasn't alert enough to avoid the gangs, all because I'm not brown enough. I don't think things are much worse than they used to be, they're just more public now.

Oddly enough, the high school I went to in a small town had an opposite ratio. My middle school had 6 whites and my high school had 6 non whites. The high school didn't have any racial violence at all though. We had more than our fair share of hicks and rednecks, but for some reason racism wasn't an issue. What kind of music you listened to determined who hated who there.

Quote from: TonyLBWell, I dunno if things are so much worse than they were in our day, or if memory bathes everything in a rosy glow of nostalgia.

I have an excellent memory of my childhood, including not only the bad but things that I didn't understand then but do understand now.  Yes, memory bathes things in a rosy glow of nostalgia but the very real difference was that when I was a child, parents wouldn't automatically defend their kids and adults who complained about children were not automatically told to mind their own business.  There were commercials when I was a kid that told kids, "The most important person in the whole wide world is you!" and the focus on self-esteem has only gotten worse.  That's not how you create a well-socialized child.  That's how you create a narcissist.  And if you watch sports or wrestling or movie stars, humility is dead as a virtue.

Children also seem to no longer just "Go outside and play!"  A few years ago, there was a power outage in my neighborhood late in a weekend morning.  Suddenly, I heard children all over the neighborhood outside playing, that I had never heard before.  The children didn't suddenly appear with the blackout.  They'd always been there but just didn't normally play outside.  It was like that episode of the Simpsons where the parents turn off the TVs and suddenly the neighborhood is full of children playing outside, rubbing their eyes from their unfamiliarity with the sun.  There are plenty of reasons for this (e.g., safety, parents' jobs, the coarsening of public spaces), but I doubt that the absence of unstructured and unsupervised interaction with peers doesn't help a child's social skills, either.

Clearly, this example is representative of all young persons alive today. Because if it's not, it's yellow journalism.

Well at the middle school I work at the students are allowed to listen to their iPods in math class if they have head phones, after they have recieved instruction. Kinda weirded me out since before this I was working in the Algebra support classes (read: endanger of failing) where this wasn't allowed by any means.

The kids I see during my lunch break aren't playing sports so much as talking, holding hands, or very often playing their PSPs and Gameboys, or rocking out with an iPod. Very different from what I remember of middle school, which often involved bullying, sports, a chess club, an archery club, and Magic the Gathering as the main past times.

I can only imagine the students, attacking an instructor. Ouch! Some of these kids have gotten detention for bringing switchblades to school. Not that I blame them. Three months ago one young girl was sexually assaulted by a man, while she walking home from school. He wasn't caught, at least not that I've heard. The students have been advised to walk in groups now.

I honestly don't buy the whole "things were as bad in our day" line. There's no way that's true, because THESE days, the sense of entitlement, the glorification of violence and misogyny, the utter lack of respect or fear of consequences in young adults, much less kids - this thing is far wors that is was back in the day, and destined to get worse, IMHO.

Quote from: WerekoalaI honestly don't buy the whole "things were as bad in our day" line. There's no way that's true, because THESE days, the sense of entitlement, the glorification of violence and misogyny, the utter lack of respect or fear of consequences in young adults, much less kids - this thing is far wors that is was back in the day, and destined to get worse, IMHO.

Then your opinion is wrong, and does not derive from a true evaluation of either the past or the present states of the world.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineThen your opinion is wrong, and does not derive from a true evaluation of either the past or the present states of the world.

Opinions can't be wrong, that's why they're not called facts. But thanks for trying to set me straight. I didn't try to correct your opinion, evn though I felt you were wrong, I merely put in my .02Cr. But I guess some people are just compelled to be right. That being the case, we are left to assume you did not express an opinion, but a fact.

So, Mr. P - where is your research and data backing up your assertion that things aren't worse than they used to be, back in the good old days?