Thursday's Most Active Posts

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "School punishment" and posted in the "Elementary School-Aged Kids" forum. The original poster explains that her 2nd grade child got in trouble for talking during lunch and will have to eat lunch alone for a day as punishment. The original poster says that her child is well-behaved and this is a first offense. Therefore, the original poster thinks the punishment is inappropriate, she says that her child is very embarrassed by being forced to eat alone, and that prior for leaving for school the child was crying about being punished. The original poster asks what others think. Most posters agree that being forced to eat alone as a result of talking during lunch is an inappropriate punishment. However, most of those advise just accepting the situation and using it as a lesson about how life is not always fair. Many posters are in disbelief that children are supposed to be quiet during lunch and either think this is a ridiculous expectation or that there must be more to the story. The original poster clarified later that the children were told to be quiet for the entire lunch as punishment for being noisy previously. Many posters weighed in with posts that on the surface appeared to be reasonable, but were actually based on a false understanding of events. For instance, many posters accused the original poster of undermining the school's authority, even though the original poster stated several times that she had not contacted the school about the episode and had told her child to accept the punishment. Similarly, the original poster was repeatedly criticized for wanting her child to go unpunished, despite multiple posts by the original poster saying that she fully supported consequences for her child. It was just that she believed that this punishment which singles out her child for humiliation by being put on display eating alone was not appropriate. Quite a few posters focused on the child's reaction which they considered out of proportion to the punishment and wondered if the original poster was feeding the child's reaction with her own concerns.

The next most active thread yesterday was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Yesterday was a day that ended in "y" which means we are apparently required by law to have a thread asking former President Donald Trump voters about Trump. This particular version of this perennial topic was titled, "People who voted for Trump in 2020–would you vote for him again?" To be honest, the political forum is almost useless these days with the quality of discourse below what would be expected in most high schools. For instance, one poster said that he would vote for any Republican rather than Biden because of the "charade" that "interest rates must be kept low". Just hours before that post, the Federal Reserve had raised interest rates, something it has repeatedly done recently resulting in interest rates which were basically zero a year ago increasing to about 5% now. If this is that poster's idea of keeping interest rates low, I would hate to see what he thinks keeping them high looks like. Similarly, another poster says he will vote for any Republican because under Biden, "the economy has gone into recession". Factually, the US is not in a recession and the last recession occurred during the presidency of Donald Trump. I suppose it would be uncharitable of me to suggest that all Trump voters are similarly uninformed, but there is little in this thread to disabuse me of such a thought. As is normal these days, few posters have much to say in support of Trump. Rather, several posters want to discuss other potential Republican candidates or prefer to simply bash President Joe Biden. Fairly quickly the thread turned into a debate about abortion, a topic that seems to be injected into almost every thread these days, even in other forums. As such, an already tedious thread became unbearably repetitive and I locked it.

Third was as thread titled, "Seven Locks Elementary Assaults" and posted in the "Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)" forum. The original poster describes a meeting held at Seven Locks Elementary in Montgomery County. Apparently, parents are concerned about a student who has repeatedly physically assaulted their children and are upset that nothing seems to be being done about it. Multiple posters recounted attending the meeting which they described as emotional and frustrating due to the MCPS response. The only reaction by MCPS that I saw mentioned in the thread was to no longer hold such meetings in the future. I received multiple reports about this thread. Some of those reporting were concerned that the child might be identified. To the credit of all of those participating in the thread, nobody even came close to doing such a thing. Because the child in question was described as having special needs, some posters were concerned that the thread might increase ill feelings towards children with special needs. One poster went so far as to create an entirely different thread asking that others report this thread. While I understand this concern, my reading of the thread suggests that posters are understanding of the child's problems and are placing blame elsewhere. For that matter, blame is spread fairly widely, but most of it is focused on MCPS's disciplinary policies. Parents feel that nothing is being done and their children are unsafe. Teachers complain that administrators don't support them on disciplinary issues. School administrators say that higher ups in the school system don't authorize punishments and do nothing other than hold photo ops and take selfies. Everyone complains about a shortage of specialists and special education teachers. With all of this leading to a loss of faith in the school system, many posters urge that the police be contacted in response to assaults, though some posters respond that even this is fruitless. The thread also attracted the attention of local news reporters, two of whom posted asking for people to contact them for articles they were preparing. Many of the posts addressed similar issues in other area schools, beyond MCPS in many cases. Repeated threads on DCUM suggest that schools are in crisis these days and are only going to get worse. It is all very depressing.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "So, what is a ‘good family’?", the original poster says that she thinks she knows what is meant by "a good family" but wants examples and would like to know if her family is a "good family" and how to make a "good family" for her children. Answers range from still being married to being financially responsible. Many focus on stability and a lack of drama. Others cite being helpful to neighbors. Several posts reference an outdoor wedding which I assume alludes to something of which I am not aware because I have no idea to what the posts are referring. One poster says this is a case of "knowing it when you see it". I really tried to take this thread seriously and give it a fair shake, but I lost the battle. Ultimately, this thread is ridiculous with posters listing such things as "two good cars" and someone going on about "Ability to respect maps". Basically "good families" exist in the eye of the beholder and everyone has their own ideas about what defines a "good family". The only other thing I have to say is that one post made me literally laugh out loud, but I'm not going to tell you which one.