Well schooled

Tuesday and Wednesday saw some nasty school fighting at Tauranga Boys College. It started with 2 boys having a punch up on Tuesday and grew rapidly into a free for all involving a hell of a lot of students - the "Emos" against the "Maoris" was how I heard it described. It was broken up by staff and started again on a street outside the school after the last bell. One kid was apparently stabbed in the chest with a pen, which broke off. The next day it happened all over again, this time with (apparently) armed kids but the staff broke it up faster, and the smaller one(s) that followed shortly after.

Ads witnessed the first fight (he estimated a couple of hundred kids but at 13 I think (hope) that's just complete exaggeration on his part) and said it was very nasty; the one after school was witnessed by a lot of people and was in full view of the public and students from other schools being out on the street, yet there has been no statement by the school, no media attention, no newspaper coverage...nothing.

At this time when smacking children is being made a crime, where will the ability come from for parents to control their wayward teenagers who get into this sort of strife at school, and how are parents supposed to restrain and punish their out of control teens and soon-to-be-teens? The schools can't do more than exclude them, and if they chuck them out the kids just roam the streets all day pleasing themselves and looking for (and finding) more trouble that the law will not punish because they are juveniles and let's face it, no kid who is prepared to pull a knife on someone is going to be afraid of a little family group conference, are they?

The Government removed corporal punishment from schools and bred a generation with no respect for rules; it made it impossible to punish a youth for an adult sized crime and so many of our teens have no fear of the law, and now it would remove our right to smack our kids and take away the last vestiges of parental control or teaching consequences when any child can say "I'm going to tell the police/school counselor/teacher that you hit me".

This whole rampaging teenager things scares the crap out of me.

And how the hell does a school manage to keep a lid on a near riot on campus of 1600 boys where a large number of kids clashed so violently? Is this more common than I realised in my law abiding little world?

Ooooh I feel so old, 30 years ago I behaved myself because my parents taught me to do so and screwing up might mean punishment at home and at school. What's going to make this new generation behave?