How democratic…
Wow, I didn’t realize how democratic a school could be… We had our first “crime” at school on Friday, vandalism. Vandalism would generally be a miniscule incident at a school with 1000+ people, but in a tightly knit community of approximately 200 people and a new school, it can be a real problem.
The broken window theory could be used to explain the seriousness taken by both the Dean of Students and the Principal.
The researchers did a test. They took a nice car, like a Jaguar, and parked it in the South Bronx in New York. They retreated back to a duck blind, and watched to see what would happen. They left the car parked there for something like four days, and nothing happened. It wasn’t touched. So they went up and broke a little window on the side, and went back to the blind. In something like four hours, the car was turned upside down, torched, and stripped — the whole works.
The part that impressed me most was, in the morning, after we had our “community meeting” about the incident, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss what steps could be taken to track down the culprit, prevent an event like this from happening again and a proper punishment that should be given to the student(s). We brainstormed on a couple ideas and the staff member that was advising us reported back to the administration. The administration then took the data and synthesized it and reported back to us later in the day.
It amazes me because I have never seen this on such a large scale. I have had many classes where the students, with help from the teacher, draw up a “Class Constitution” and each student has to sign a contract that says they will adhere to all the guidelines outlined but I would’ve never thought it would be in such a large scale as used earlier today at school.