This week, Time has a chilling report on the increase in violent incidents among very young students. In Philadelphia, for example, schools chief Paul Vallas had to institute a get-tough policy after 21 serious assaults on teachers and fellow students by kindergartners last year, including one boy who punched a pregnant teacher in the stomach. This year has seen 19 violent incidents already among the under-eight set in the City of Brotherly Love. In Fort Worth, examples of the phenomenon include "a 6-year-old who told his teacher to 'shut up, bitch,' a first-grader whose fits of anger ended with his peeling off his clothes and throwing them at the school psychologist, and hysterical kindergartners who bit teachers so hard they left tooth marks." Explanations range from the plausible - violent television shows and video games, stressed-out and disengaged parents, the possible effects of day care, and a broad cultural decline in manners - to the absurd. With a straight face, some educators are blaming these tantrums and outbursts on, what else, the No Child Left Behind act! Sure, we've heard a lot of griping about the unintended consequences of NCLB, and done a bit ourselves. But we doubt that AYP pressure (which arguably doesn't even set in until third grade) is causing tykes to bite and curse their instructors.
"Does kindergarten need cops?," by Claudia Wallis, Time, December 7, 2003