Not from the Onion....but it should be.

Here's another reason why our schools stink:

At Cramp Elementary (ha ha!) in Philadelphia, an employee's job was shifted after he made students write sentences. He inflicted, as the Inquirer puts it, "a repetitive-writing punishment" on his poor students.

Oh. My. God.

School debates disciplinary methods

At Cramp Elementary in West Kensington, there's an argument about how students should be disciplined, and veteran educator Fred Creel is at its center.

The clash between using stern, "old-school" methods, which Creel employed for seven years as disciplinarian, and teaching students to adopt "self-discipline," favored by principal Adrienne Carpenter, came to a head yesterday at a raucous meeting of more than 60 parents.

Many parents demanded the return of Creel, who was transferred out of his post to a teaching position at Cramp in October after parents complained he made disruptive students write sentences such as "I will not hit or head-butt someone" 100 times.

Officials at Cramp, a 900-student kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school, decided the writing assignments were a form of corporal punishment, and corporal punishment is prohibited by the district.

I practically spent my whole youth writing sentences!

I should sue!


- posted by total @ 2/19/2004 07:23:00 AM .