by Dmunster on Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:39 am
This was actually my school district growing up (Fairfax Co., VA) and it is perenially ranked among the best in the country. That said, each school has too much autonomy in policy making decisions and not enough district oversight. This really all boils down to the school being too crowded and the teacher not having enough bandwidth to police and judge each incident as it comes up. This is Vienna though. A very affluent area of Fairfax. I highly doubt there are any kind of dangerous "gang signs" being thrown about.
That being said, I remember the wild days of Middle School... "Pantsing" chicks in P.E. was the shit. Just come up behind an unsuspecting bird and yanking down those loose gym shorts was very prevelant. I cant imagine how that would go down these days... Then the hallway team beat down teams. We would pick two teams about 10 each and if we saw someone from the other team in the hall, during class mostly (less teachers to stop us), team one and tyeam two would go at it. No face hits or anything that would really send someone home but lotsa punching in the legs, arms, chest, etc. You did not wanna travel the halls without a few mates. The worst that came of this was a kid broke his finger on a water fountain.
Middle school is a gray area. Kids becoming teens is a really akward time and we do need to keep somewhat tight reigns on them. Shit, I got kicked out of school for a day because I refused to turn my Slayer shirt inside out, citing my freedom of religion. "If I wore an 'Jesus loves me' shirt to school you wouoldnt have me turn it inside out." LOL.