Coral Rhedd

Oops, seems I did not phrase things well. That pop history you read here and there dies hard. What I should have said is the the French and English introduced bounty scalping to the North American Continent. Here is a link by the expert that will give you the skinny: http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_034800_scalpsandsca.htm

Thanks klanger for your precise reply.

Actually, I think power, racism, and who was where first, and how others came to be here may have something to do with violence in the U.S. Americans are more violent over all. They have a much higher murder rate for instance than most nations. Is the reason (culture and history): Environment Or genes: Heredity. That is an appropriate question if one assumes there is a reason for everything. The modern term real estate may have nothing to do with it, but territoriality may.

Dak, I think that is an excellent idea.

Of course! Only by now they surely must have acquired cell phones.

Over land. It was all about racism, power, and property.

I think there are things I just do not understand about Catholicism. I did read at nytimes.com today how one cardinal all but said that it was important not to have birth control in order to teach the world compassion for the poor. I guess he may have never been poor. Children suffer when their families live in serious poverty. They are not object lessons for the rest of us; they are individual humans who haven't enough to eat or proper medical care or sometimes even sanitary water. If in all these years human beings have not learned compassion, having more children born into poverty is not likely to teach it.

That's nasty. Why did they kill them?

This is an interesting insight. In the U.S. we have always had movies with some degree of violence. But twenty or thirty years ago, it was unheard of for a hero in a movie to use a gun as a first resort. Good guys did always use their fists first. That changed gradually after the movie Dirty Harry IMO, when the Clint Eastwood character all but begged the bad guy to try his weapon so that he could shoot him. I am not making any definite claim for the influence of that particular movie. I am just saying that the culture seemed to be much more accepting of the good guy using a gun to settle the problem of the bad guy. Another powerful movie was Death Wish with Charles Bronson which glorified violence. Understand that I am not saying that these sort of movies influence a culture as much as I am saying they reflect one. In the very visible mass slayings they almost all took place in states where there is easy legal access to guns. Other states are more restrictive. Again, I am not blaming guns but only saying that you can't shoot people without one. Serious criminal elements know how to get around gun law restrictions but kids are not so resourceful. In most of the high profile slayings, the kids got the guns (rifles really) from the easiest place possible: Their homes. Now do not mistake me for an anti-gun fanatic. I am not one. As a matter of fact, I now own two handguns. I have been around guns all my life and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of their influence. You are no doubt right. But in my opinion, if we have violence in the schools, the more immediate solution would be to somehow change the schools because changing poverty, culture, or families is much harder. If I were to comment further on the federal government here and the public schools, I would more correctly begin another thread. It is really too complicated and messed up to explore here. What do you do with children with serious mental illness or behavior disorders? Are they mainstreamed? I wish I could say that I thought this was the solution. A few years back the school superintendant tried to institute uniforms in all schools. The compromise solution was that parents in middle schools could vote. So there are middle schools with uniforms and those without. Just anecdotal, but I found the schools with the uniforms had the worst behaved students. I refused to substitute at one of them. Nice site and it seems like a very nice school. Are there many racial tensions in Australia? I am afraid I am very ignorant, but, in Australia, did you ever have slavery, violent conquest of native people, or reservation-like areas where native people were confined?

Klanger, sorry to hear about your dreadful experience, but you have me curious. My daughter caught chickenpox at age 5 two weeks after she broke her arm and then 2 weeks following she had pneumonia. I know how she broke her arm. I know how she caught the chickenpox. But could the pneumonia be related to the chicken pox or was it just a coincidence?

Yep. And a good thing we have those. I was going to do a job placement for a guy with a "mental disability" by placing him in a high school cafeteria as a lunchroom attendant but his counselor and I became suspicious when he seemed so hostile to both of us and we found he had been fired from his telemarketing job for verbal aggression towards his female supervisor. We checked the sex offender's registry and sure enough, there he was. We like to think the schools would have caught it in a background check, but I have enough to worry about already.

The well-publicized cases here, or at least the ones the media often hype are the dramatic ones which include mass slaying. Overwhelmingly in the U.S., the violence that is most prevalent in schools is gang-related I will venture to say. It is gangsters or wannabes who cause these problems. When schools go into lock down around here it is because someone thinks Eastside has infiltrated Westside or because some jock dissed some gangster and now they have to have a pissing contest. Threats are made. There are weapons or rumors of weapons. There is lockdown and the police come and parents get frantic and the gossip flies. Two days later the principal issues a statement that it was an isolated incident and that there are no organized gangs in his school. Then the coverup begins -- complete with reassurances that all is under control and that the isolated troublemaker has been expelled. Lies! All lies! Here are some facts: Most kids who become involved in these instances are either in gangs or trying to be or they are in another socially-approved gang called high school athletics. The troublemakers are often also in classes for the Behavior Disordered. The B.D. kids are part of Special Ed. Special Ed students net the schools a larger per diem of federal money. Because of this federal money, the schools are not expelling these kids. They are practically recruiting them. If they are truant, special counselors go to their homes to see what the problem is and how they can be wheedled back into attending classes. It is true that the drop out rate is appalling, but the Special Ed system here is really broken. Kids are not given the classes or even the special help the state mandates. So the system is underfunding Special Ed while at the same time trying to spend as little of the federal money as possible on it. Take classes size. The state mandates no more than 25 students in a regular classroom and many fewer, depending upon the type of Special Ed students in the class. My friend teaches a Special Ed class and she has 30 students in her class rather than the mandated 20. Here is an example of how greedy the admin is for these federal funds. Mexican students legally in the U.S. (and some illegally) who are not fluent in English (and many are not) are placed into Special Ed classes even though they have no learning disability. (Indeed they are not even tested; instead they make up a disability or disorder.) This is against the the guidelines. It also robs them of an education that would benefit them. Who do they meet in Special Ed classes? Gangsters often. Do you imagine that Special Ed is reserved for the mentally retarded and the syslexic? Think again. Kids with drug trouble, home trouble, and violence problems are channeled there. So is poverty a problem? It is inasmuch as poor schools do not have the tax base of other schools and therefore must resort to trickier methods to balance the budget. Are guns a problem? They are inasmuch as you cannot shoot people without them. Are cliques a problem? Is a gang a clique? When you mix kids who have access to all the advantages with kids whose parents cannot afford basic dentistry and medical, you're going to have envy and class divisions. Is bullying a problem? When I was a substitute teacher I saw it on a daily basis (and sometime I got bullied). I was supposed to report it to admin but if I did, it kicked me in the butt because they made it clear the failing was mine. Not reporting meant I would be called again. Reporting meant I might not. But this isn't only the experience of subs. Regular teachers deal with the same thing and they too are discouraged from reporting. Don't know how it is in you guys neck of the woods. Hope it is better. For those who are wondering how things got in such a state, I live on the Mexican border. We are like Mexico, inasmuch as mostly laboring and service jobs are available to all but the very well-educated or well-connected, the gangs from down there moved up here, and practical rather than idealistic considerations rule. You cannot get appointed dog catcher in this town unless you know someone with power. There is open street prostitution on three of our main streets. You can get layed for $10. Drugs are readily available and cheap. And modida rules.

I am curious John about whether you would characterize racial or cultural tensions as less in Australia? What is your theory about why American schools are more violent?

1. Bodily. 2. Those fade. 3. Not to shock you but I sat on mine. However' date=' I didn't weight much at the time. 4. What's wrong with locks? You must have a very different system. No. I have never been a social worker. I am now a government contractor working with people with disabilities. My work that you are referring to is in advocacy, in which I have held a paid position and am now a volunteer. Most social workers I know here are overworked, underpaid, and underqualified. I have yet to met one actually in the employ of CPS that I would term proactive. No one is going to take a child away from their parent solely on the basis of room cleaning issues. That would just mean unnecessary paperwork. That said, here on this forum (where no one really knows who I am) that, as a professional group, I don't care much for social workers. It is true that sometimes their power goes to their heads. However, in CPS, they usually control themselves be cause the professional and legal repurcussions of not doing so are great. They are much more likely to err in failing to protect children than overprotecting them. Apparently, in Florida, they lost track of several children in foster care. One may be dead. I think here that they are more likely to lack people skills than anything else. People often go into professions for which they are unsuited. However, our system does not encourage extra vigilance. Caseloads do not allow it. Please see hoho's post about not fighting one's parent. Should you be investigated, be polite and be cooperative. Jump through the hoops and you will have your kid back -- if indeed the child is ever taken away. In situations where one is dealing with an authority that could ruin one's life forever, it only makes sense to be cooperative rather than combative. Anyway, that is how things work in the U.S. I can't say a thing about elsewhere. In the U.S., there are several layers of protection for parents. The work of social workers is evaluated by Citizen Boards, CASAs, doctors,psychologists, attorneys, and a judge, and a chain of supervisors. We even have watchers to watch the watchers. Nobody rubber stamps anything. You were referring to spousal abuse with this question. In the U.S. awareness was raised in the sixties. Enforcement has been a slower process, the spouses abused now have legal protections and various social programs that did not exist before. What you are overlooking with this statement is the fact that children are not their parents property and are entitled to legal protection. No doubt, different nations and cultures have different definitions of what constitutes illegal force. No one who is employed and wants to keep their job is immune from repurcussions. LOL! How're you going to avoid crusaders? Annihilate them? Competing interests are part of any system or government that provides a modicum of freedom. Would you slap them in jail? Eliminate their right to free speech? Shall we design a special mark that they must wear on their foreheads that indicates a nasty ole crusader?

Hoho, that is a pretty large blanket statement. I know Indians and Singaporeans who would object to that statement, at least as it concerns them. Why don't you provide some evidence?

Sandi, Gary Gilmore, Ted Bundy, and Diane Downs all have/had an IQ of 131. Don't ask me how I know. Great minds and all that . . . What I find more interesting is how I test on different portions of the test: Verbal: Excellent Spatial (manipulating those forms): Excellent Logic: Good. Math: In the toilet. I always like to imagine who I would be if only I had math skills.

1) Violent homes 2) Violent cultures 3) Poverty 4) Availability of guns. 5) Bullying by exclusionary cliques or gangs. 4) Major depression. (And perhaps drugs that treat it.) Here is a link that blames poverty but it is not exactly scholarly: http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/chap-3.htm Understand that there are two types of school shootings. The media-hyped white kids in black trenchcoats kill dozens and the daily violence that takes place in urban schools all over America which is closely related to gang violence. If you are more interested in middle-class-white-kid-kills, a good read is by a guy named Sullivan writing for Rolling Stone about Kip Kinkle. However, it is also rather controversial among media critics. I can tell you it's not this reason: Marilyn Manson, Cradle of Filth or any other type of music.

In this case, the civil libertarian in me wars a bit with the child advocate. My sense is that people who are attracted to "cartoon" child porn may have some issues involving an attraction to children. In the U.S., using real children in the production of porn or the possession of such will get someone a long prison sentence. I feel this is justified because using the child in such a manner directly harms the children. I once had a rather contentious argument with my philosophy of law profession that if we deny convicted felons who committ armed robbery access to guns, it is justifiable to deny felons convicted of any sexual offense access to pornography. Note that I did not argue how this could work in actual practice. It would be extremely difficult to enforce. Communities struggle everyday with the fact that dangerous predators are released into their their cities and towns. Most of these people are usually no less dangerous than when they were convicted, but they have served their time (and usually been model prisoners) so that the system has little choice but to release them. Laws such as Washingon State has to retain these criminals are still wending their way through the U.S. court system. Making the possession of pornography by these criminals against the law is one way to deal with this problem We will never have a world in which children are wholly protect against adult sexual aggression. Educating the public, strengthening existing laws, and strengthening the Child Protective Services, is probably the best solution. At this time, I would oppose making such anime as you describe against the law if it is viewed or possessed by the non-criminal citizen. When people overstimulate themselves sexually by the use of porn, it can create problems for themselves as well as others, but I know little about this issue and it would probably belong more properly in another thread.

I think hitting is ineffective. I cannot know you, your children, or your circumstances so I would not presume to judge. I do think leaving marks, bruises, or scars is abuse.

Of course. However, I don't think you need to hit in order to accomplish this. Body language, consistency, and appropriate penalties work. Yes. Child want their parents to have enough authority over them to guide them. Children of weak parents are unhappy children. But as a child grows older a parent needs to give the child more power and authority over his own life or that child will grown up weak. Sometimes parents resort to hitting not because they are strong, but because they are weak. Not because they have won the argument, but because they have lost it. Eventually children figure this out and it is then that children lose respect. I do not mean that there should not be rules. Children around elementary school grow especially insecure if there are no rules. They want to know the right things to do. They feel protected if there parents set boundaries. They feel whiny, rebellious, or even get sick when there parents do not. I think some of the most serious criminal behavior have high heritable components so I will not argue this with except to say that the best way to stop your child from becoming a criminal is to teach and model moral behavior. I never hit. I never needed to. That depends upon what you mean by an assertive attitude. I will give an example of a weak creature. Down the street is a large Mastiff dog. You never saw a bigger dog. When I walk my German Shepherd past, that dog throws a fit. He has the deepest, loudest bark you ever heard. He jumps up and down and acts crazy. But if you listen carefully, among those very aggressive barks and growls there is an occasional, high-pitched yelp. This dog is a coward and my dog knows it. Once that dog escaped his fence and I saw a female Spring Spaniel -- not so large -- whip his a$$! When my dog walks past that Mastiff, he never barks at the huge dog and he never even raises the hair on his back. This is because he is not fooled by all the noise. Posturing and aggression do not get you much, if you are not confident in your position and authority. Aggression does not prove you are. Confidence and accomplishment does.