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Brickbats

Brickbat: Stick It

Charles Oliver | 6.14.2022 4:00 AM

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hockey stick | Kelpfish / Dreamstime.com
(Kelpfish / Dreamstime.com)

Jodi Johnson says her son Easton, 8, is anxious about returning to school after a gym teacher threw a hockey stick at him hard enough to knock out one of his teeth. Princeton Public Schools District in Minnesota placed the teacher, Kim Neubauer, on unpaid leave for the final two weeks of the school year. It later posted a note on its Facebook page congratulating her on retiring after 27 years. It removed that post after Johnson and other parents complained. In a statement, the school system said "student safety is the top priority of the Princeton Public School District."

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Charles Oliver is a contributing editor at Reason.

BrickbatsEducationPublic schoolsMinnesota
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  1. rbike   3 years ago

    I remember our gym teacher would throw a fit at least once a year in 2nd to 6th grade. Golf clubs and other items were throw while our gym teacher raged at us. Good times.

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  2. Yatusabes   3 years ago

    From the link:

    Johnson also claimed on Facebook post that she no longer can work as a substitute teacher at the school since the incident happened. She added that she didn’t want to go public with the incident in hopes that she could still work there, but “that all seems to be going downhill.”

    Mother is on FB bitching about losing her job as a substitute teacher for a dysfunctional school system, as opposed, pressing charges and lawyering up. SMH. some priorities this mother has. The boy should acquire martial arts skills and take up wrestling. Lou Ferrigno was mocked in school for his acquired hearing loss as a toddler. In response to bullying, he took up wrestling and then gym training. Worked out well for him.

  3. sarcasmic   3 years ago

    Must be nice being a government employee. Any other adult would be going up the river for assaulting a minor.

    1. MoreFreedom   3 years ago

      Yet another reason to eliminate government schools in favor of school choice. Also, this was another failure of Reason to stick in a sentence with that libertarian solution (forgiven, as Brick Bats are meant to be short).

      Look at it from the kids’ viewpoints, which include the view that government school is day jail, and they don’t like the school. Meanwhile in a private school, you could sue the teacher for assaulting you, and you know that since your parents picked this school for you, you better not get in trouble so the school calls them and threatens to expel you. That will leave your parents with the problem of finding a school that will accept students with discipline problems, like a military academy.

      Look at it from the viewpoint of the teacher. You’d be afraid of being fired in a private school, while in government schools, firings are a very rare and costly (to the taxpayer) event. Second, would you rather teach students there voluntarily, or those who are forced to be there? I can see why teachers get frustrated in government schools with the students, the administration, the union, and the parents.

      Look at it from the point of the school, for which I’ll just point out the hockey stick tooth removal occurred in a government school. The government school will try to cover it up (note their Fakebook post), while the private school would fire the teacher and have the tooth fixed with the parents’ involvement immediately.

      That’s the beauty of the free market: overall, it makes everyone more moral. Government schools are not free market schools.

      1. sarcasmic   3 years ago

        In a private school it’s more likely that the parents signed a form allowing the staff to use corporal punishment.

  4. Fist of Etiquette   3 years ago

    “My poor child was sitting in a chair alone, covered in blood, crying crocodile-sized tears,” she said on Facebook.

    Uh, thanks mom. Not sure she knows what that phrase means.

    Anyway, this is why women shouldn’t be involved in men’s sports. She didn’t even know in floor hockey you shoot the disk at the goal not the stick at the kid.

    1. mad.casual   3 years ago

      Anyway, this is why women shouldn’t be involved in men’s sports.

      Seriously, this is a minor penalty. If it happened in defensive territory, the kid gets a penalty shot.

  5. Jerry B.   3 years ago

    Seems like there’s more danger for school kids from their teachers and aides.

    https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/virginia-teacher-aide-accused-of-abusing-disabled-students-to-get-no-jail-time/3076327/#:~:text=A%20former%20teacher%20and%20teacher%27s%20aide%20in%20Fairfax,Cecelia%20Benavides%20worked%20a%20Freedom%20Hill%20Elementary%20School.

  6. John F. Carr   3 years ago

    Where does education rank on the list of priorities of the school system?

    1. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

      Education? or government sinecures…

  7. Unicorn Abattoir   3 years ago

    a gym teacher threw a hockey stick at him hard enough to knock out one of his teeth.

    Should have gotten a 5 minute major and a game misconduct.

    1. mad.casual   3 years ago

      It’s definitely a minor penalty. To conclude major, I’d have to see the replay. We don’t automatically believe the victim. This is hockey, not soccer.

      1. Unicorn Abattoir   3 years ago

        Kid should have just dropped the gloves and taken care of it himself.

      2. Dillinger   3 years ago

        (assuming there was blood) it’s an auto-five

        1. mad.casual   3 years ago

          *Assuming* there was blood is believing the victim. Admittedly, “A stick was thrown and an 8 yr. old lost a tooth” is a exceedingly impartial reading. A minor is not an impartial call based on that impartial reading. If the stick slipped and the coach wants to bench that player for the rest of the season, that’s their call. I’m going to need to see the blood or at least hear the zamboni driver tell me there was blood on the ice before I get any more impartial at home, with the TV off.

          1. Dillinger   3 years ago

            the Zebras always buy the “I’m BLEEDING!” cries. Terry Gregson was the worst

          2. Stuck in California   3 years ago

            I just thought about something — aren’t 8 year olds pretty much always loosing teeth? I remember more than a few of us in elementary school having a smile like a hockey player in between the baby teeth and adult teeth age, I just don’t remember specifically what those years are.

            If that’s the case, it could be flopping. I mean, it’s probably good that you don’t hit a kid with a hockey stick unless he really deserves it and all, but if that tooth was on its way out anyway, it’s a different thing than if it was proper slashing and popped out an adult tooth.

  8. Brandybuck   3 years ago

    I didn’t have a gym teacher in second grade. I’m a big confused. Is this a New Jersey thing? Start the regimentation early? I didn’t have an actual gym until seventh grade. And then my gym teacher was literally an ex-marine drill seargent.

    Yeah, we had little league and pop warner and stuff, but that was extra-curricular. Instead we went out to the playground where I teacher would teach “P.E.” by having us play dodge ball and other violent games.

    1. mad.casual   3 years ago

      Is this a New Jersey thing?

      No. Remember the Presidential Campaign on Physical Fitness? Yeah, it’s been working out.

    2. GroundTruth   3 years ago

      Uh huh…. 5th grade …. Elwood Clark “5 minutes out for bellyaching”. I don’t know if he had been in the marines, but I think he was a WWII vet with PTSD. I guess I should cut him some slack for what he likely did and experienced, but it was a bit much for a 10 year old.

  9. Hank Phillips   3 years ago

    Here is a 2A case for allowing kids to pack heat in incompetently-run, violent government schools! That child abuser could’ve been “retired” way earlier.

  10. Think It Through   3 years ago

    What a hoser, eh?

  11. Ragnarredbeard   3 years ago

    So why is the teacher only suspended? Seems like a clear case of both assault and battery. Mother should be pressing charges. And suing the school.

    1. mad.casual   3 years ago

      Seems like a clear case of both assault and battery.

      Based on what evidence? The kids’ mom?

      I agree with the suspension and the DQ from future employment out-of-hand, but hefty portion the bullshit we’ve been through in the last 2 decades has been the direct result of #believeallmoms.

      1. Stuck in California   3 years ago

        There was a video.

        That said, even the guiltiest of guilty are presumed innocent until convicted. If it’s that obvious, you can prove it via due process, whatever it is. Instant justice is just ripe for abuse.

        1. Stuck in California   3 years ago

          OK, after typing that I sat through the obnoxious commercial to see the video.

          The teacher was tossing the stick to the kid. Like “here, catch” tossing. The kid whiffed it, caught the end in the face, then ran off like a little bitch.

          Bad judgement (you should know when a kid in your class is a fucking whiny botard like that) but not exactly malicious.

  12. Dillinger   3 years ago

    isn’t having a hockey stick thrown at your baby teeth part of the curriculum in Minnesota?

    1. GroundTruth   3 years ago

      No, just north of the border where hockey! is the national religion.

    2. CE   3 years ago

      Not a hard requirement, but likely to happen at some point anyway.

  13. Diane Reynolds (Paul.)   3 years ago

    Princeton Public Schools District in Minnesota placed the teacher, Kim Neubauer, on unpaid leave for the final two weeks of the school year. It later posted a note on its Facebook page congratulating her on retiring after 27 years.

    Toxic masculinity. Oh, and she enjoys Qualified Immunity. Where’s my breathless article on the horrors of Qualified Immunity for teachers?

    1. mad.casual   3 years ago

      I don’t think you appreciate how truly terrible the spate of movies where a heroic teacher loses her pension two weeks before retirement because she knocks a kid’s tooth out would be.

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