Safe or sorry? Rights,responsibilities and retribution—the new three Rs of education in New Zealand?

A school is a microcosm of society and thus is subject to the problems existing within society generally. The rights and responsibilities of persons outside the school gates apply within the school also. The school environment is unique in that not only is a young person compelled to attend but he or she must spend a great deal of each day within the school's jurisdiction. May it then be argued that there is an enhanced responsibility of schools towards the emotional and physical welfare of their students in relation to matters within their control? This article will examine whether a New Zealand public school has a responsibility that extends further than a moral duty for the safety of its students. Particularly it will consider a school's potential liability in respect of the various forms of student‐to‐student bullying and harassment. It examines the potential for an action against a school under human rights legislation, at common law, and in criminal law.     

Parental Responsibility

Families are the first level in our society with the responsibility and authority to prevent substance abuse by their children and to intervene if their children become involved. They are responsible for exemplifying and teaching the values of drug-free lives for their children. These responsibilities are more than the practice of good parenting skills. They are inherent responsibilities recognized by society and by law. Supported in their efforts by community services, parents must be encouraged to fulfill their roles and to recognize themselves as accountable.     

II. Family and Parental Responsibility

Families are the first level in our society with the responsibility and authority to prevent substance abuse by their children and to intervene if their children become involved. They are responsible for exemplifying and teaching the values of drug free lives for their children. These responsibilities are more than the practice of good parenting skills. They are inherent responsibilities recognized by society and by law. Supported in their efforts by the community, parents must be encouraged to fulfill their roles and to recognize themselves as accountable.     

School liability for student injury from school violence: comparison between South Korea and the USA

This paper examines school liability for school violence-related student injury in South Korea and the US. The study found that the US courts considered only violence-related behaviors of the perpetrator when judging whether violence can be foreseen; thus drug abuse or verbal abuse by the perpetrator were not considered as a part of his/her violent history. On the other hand, the Korean courts considered perpetrators’ nonviolent behavior, such as low academic achievement or negative attitudes toward academic work, as indicators of violent history. Regarding the extent of school liability, while in Korea, schools were not held responsible for injuries to non-school-related persons caused by their students’ violent acts in public, in the US, the court required schools to take legal responsibility for such cases happening during field trips. These findings help to reconsider school liability for school violence and generate suggestions for more reasonable and universal legal standards.     

Empty Ethics and Reasonable Responsibility: Vocabularies of Motive among Law and Business Students

Despite professional nonns of being socially responsible and providing service to the underprivileged, the attitudes of law students toward ethical duties and public service bear similarities to those of business students. Using data from multiple interviews with luw and business school students at one university, 1 find that these attitudes develop in response to the expectations of peers and professors during school experiences. Ethics courses are marginalized by the schools, and courses focus on such pragmatic issues as the professional code of conduct (law school) or how the appearance of social responsibility affects the bottom line (business school). Provided with little guidance on what they might do when they encounter real ethical dilemmas, students karn vocabularies of motive concerning how lawyers and managers should balance profits, cany out responsibilities to various stakeholders, and weigh ethical concerns, and they then moderate their own expressions of extreme self-interest or self-sacrifice. Both groups learn to maintain social responsibilities only within reason, emphasizing the separation of work from personal convictions. These elements have implications for the perfonnuwe of public service in their future careers, as well as for a scholarly understanding of professionalism.     

Unique Role of the Court

The court is a unique and vital institution within the American system of government. The court's fundamental responsibility is to assure that all members of society are protected under law from harm by others. Juvenile and family courts have, within this system, the equally important responsibility to protect the best interests of children, families, and communities. These responsibilities convey to the courts a role vital to our anti-substance abuse efforts on behalf of society and especially on behalf of children and their families. Such efforts must recognize the existence of non-traditional, as well as traditional, family units within today's society.     

IV. Unique Role of the Court

The court is a unique and vital institution within the American system of government. The court's fundamental responsibility is to assure that all members of society are protected from harm by law. Juvenile and family courts have, within this system, the equally important responsibility to protect the best interests of children, families, and communities. These responsibilities convey to the courts a vital role on behalf of society and especially on behalf of children and their families, to reduce the harmful effects of substance abuse.     

Making the State Responsible: Intersex Embodiment,Medical Jurisdiction,and State Responsibility

Through consideration of new developments in the United Kingdom's intersex policy, this article traces the ways in which responsibility is produced, naturalized, and avoided by individuals, institutions, and the state. Jurisdiction is identified as a barrier to the attribution of responsibility that must be overcome to achieve progress in relation to the needs of intersex people. By bringing together jurisdictional analysis and vulnerability theory, this article demonstrates how the state has traditionally abrogated responsibility by compartmentalizing specific practices as governed by medical authority. It highlights that such accounts mask the role of the state in the creation of jurisdiction and the ways in which governance is conducted. Challenging these boundaries allows vulnerability theorists to move the state towards greater levels of responsibility. By combining these theoretical tools, the article enhances the practical utility of vulnerability theory and advances an important agenda for intersex people.     

The Climbié Inquiry - Context and Critique

The inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié was portrayed as the most wide-ranging inquiry into failure to protect a child. It was instrumental in the development of the new safeguarding agenda and joined-up children's services in the Children Act 2004. Both its process and outcome appear to fit with New Labour's agenda for joined-up government. A social constructionist analysis reveals it as a narrower project which ignored key issues and failed to make links between government policy, the law, and local authority action. Three issues -i) parental responsibility, ii) treating intra-family child abuse as a crime, and Hi) local authorities' responsibilities for family support -exemplify the inquiry's restrictive approach and the impossibility of joined-up services if central government seeks to retain authority without taking responsibility. Despite its success in changing policy, the Climbie Report shows again the inadequacy of such inquiries as a basis for reform.     

论教育机构的侵权责任——以《侵权责任法》为视角

教育机构对未成年学生的侵权责任,迫切需要法律予以规范。《侵权责任法》依据未成年学生的年龄把幼儿园、学校或者其他教育机构的责任区分为三种情况,在责任的构成和分配上更趋于精细化,强调学校对未成年学生的保护职责是一种教育、管理职责。本文对未成年学生与教育机构的法律关系进行了分析,论证了未成年学生与教育机构侵权责任的过错认定标准,列举出善良管理人注意义务的范围,以期更好地保护未成年学生的各项权利。     

Social capital,individual disorders and property offences

This paper examines the relevance to delinquency of social capital that is directly embedded in the relationships that teenagers have with peers, parents, and those in positions of authority and those indirect social capital that teenagers may benefit due their parents' relations with their school or friends. The analysis employs data from the Canadian National Survey of Children. The study shows that personality traits are the most important predictors of property offences. Nevertheless, we also show the importance of social relationships embedded directly in individuals themselves and these are more important than those embedded indirectly through their family. Well connected youth with good friends and quality teachers commit significantly less property offences when controlling for personality traits and parents' social capital.     

Back to school for parents: implementing responsible parenting agreements and orders in Western Australia

Managing student behaviour is a primary task of principals and teachers, but it is not their responsibility alone. Parents are also responsible for their children's behaviour inside and outside school. As primary educators and caregivers parents have a duty of care and are responsible for nurturing, disciplining and socializing their children. In the wake of growing concerns about the apparent increase in antisocial behaviour inside and outside schools, the Government of Western Australia is planning to introduce the use of responsible parenting agreements and orders, modelled largely on UK policy. The aim of responsible parenting agreements and orders is to provide a statutory mechanism for directing parents to take responsibility for their children. The goal is to reduce truancy, antisocial behaviour and juvenile crime and to improve children's socialization and school performance. The Children's Court will be given power to issue orders that impose certain requirements on parents regarding the upbringing and discipline of their children. The purpose of this article is to examine the Western Australian government's policy on responsible parenting agreements and orders and their use in the school context. The article first provides an introduction to the role of parents in the area of school discipline, followed by an analysis of the State Government's discussion paper Parental responsibility orders and an overview of the proposed legislation. The discussion then focuses on the application of responsible parenting agreements and orders within the school context as a strategy for engaging parents in improving school discipline.     

Knowledge of child abuse and neglect in nursing students: Assessment and perspectives

Misdiagnosis of child abuse and neglect can delay early treatment. Some authors have pointed out that nurses can miss child abuse and neglect diagnoses due to a lack of knowledge. It is unclear whether the lack of knowledge is due to students' insufficient preparation in nursing school and/or a deficiency in continuing education. An 18-item questionnaire was administered to final-year nursing students to assess their degree of knowledge on child abuse and neglect and to evaluate if the lack of knowledge was due to insufficient teaching/training during nursing school. The students were also asked to evaluate themselves by assigning a score to their knowledge. A statistical comparison was performed to define whether sufficient/insufficient results were associated with the following variables: sex, pediatric or general nursing student, attending pediatric lectures, training in pediatric wards/ambulatories, and attending specific lectures on child abuse and neglect. The study population comprised 175 students (154 females, 20 males, 1 unknown). Exactly 66.3% of the participants had ≤9/18 correct answers. Of all students, 77.7% self-evaluated their level of knowledge as ≤5/10. The comparisons yielded statistically significant differences between the groups with sufficient objective knowledge and those unrelated to training in pediatric wards/ambulatories or pediatric nursing students. Overall, there was little objective knowledge on the subject, which may be related to insufficient teaching/training in nursing schools. Useful corrective strategies include further teaching on child abuse and neglect, preferably using a practical approach. Further, common teaching/training programs should be conducted by both pediatric and general nursing schools.     

Citizenship in schools: the gap between theory and practice

Upon leaving school, young people are expected to play an active part as citizens in a democratic society. Are schools providing them with the tools to do this? Citizenship is taught in schools, but to what extent is it practised? Many safety issues concerning student behaviour and student conflict confront school authorities. In what ways are students learning to take responsibility for the safety of their school environments? Generally, schools in New Zealand and in comparative jurisdictions continue to operate on a traditional authoritarian hierarchical basis. Within these structures students could rightly feel that schooling is something which is ‘done to them’ rather than their being engaged as active participants. School authorities have a moral and legal responsibility to maintain a learning environment which is physically and emotionally safe and free from hostility. Traditionally reactive measures such as searching, drug testing and exclusion are used by schools with the aim of fulfilment of that duty. Research indicates that these measures have met with limited success in terms of school safety, and that in any event they may expose school authorities to challenge from students on the basis that their rights have been violated.     

Those Weren't "The Good Old Days," Just the Old Days: Laura Kalman on Yale Law School in the Sixties

Laura Kalman's Yale Law School and the Sixties (2005) provides a particularly detailed and attractive portrait of the activist students at the school in these years. There is a real risk that nostalgia for the Sixties will cause law students today to be measured by this past time, even though today's students are significantly different in their response to the law school experience. Reasons for this difference can be found by looking at changes in the social meaning of undergraduate education and at the differences in economic circumstances between then and now—the warm and comforting economic circumstances of the Fifties and Sixties versus the unforgiving economic circumstances that students face today.     

Editorial

Abstract

Mentors and school heads play cardinal roles in teacher education programmes in most countries, including Zimbabwe. The side-effects of such symbiosis have not yet been investigated fully. This article used a qualitative methodological approach to investigate the perceptions of some Zimbabwean student teachers regarding their teaching practice experiences. A sample of 10 ex-teaching practice students from a teacher education college was selected and interviewed during data collection using a semi-structured interview schedule. The participants reported a high prevalence of sexual harassment/aggression of the students by the host schools' heads and mentors, irrespective of student gender. The form of aggression included seeking sexual favours and intimidation. Most perpetrators used metaphors and satirical or sarcastic language to convey their intentions. The female student teachers reported higher incidences than did the male students. Constant workshopping is imperative to remind mentors and school heads of their professional and social obligations regarding teacher education.     

Democratic Authority and the Boundary Problem

Theories of political authority divide naturally into those that locate the source of states' authority in the history of states' interactions with their subjects and those that locate it in structural (or functional) features of states (such as the justice of their basic institutions). This paper argues that purely structuralist theories of political authority (such as those defended by Kant, Rawls, and contemporary “democratic Kantians”) must fail because of their inability to solve the boundary problem—namely, the problem of locating the boundaries between different states' domains of authority in the natural or intuitive places.     

Relational Legal Consciousness of U.S. Citizenship: Privilege,Responsibility, Guilt,and Love in Latino Mixed‐Status Families

Based on interviews with 100 members of mixed‐status families in Los Angeles, California, this article analyzes how U.S. citizen children practice and understand citizenship in the context of punitive laws targeting their loved ones. Participants' narratives of citizenship as privilege, responsibility, and guilt reveal that despite normative conceptions of citizenship as a universally equal status, citizenship intersects with key social markers to determine the contours and inequalities of substantive citizenship. Specifically, U.S. citizens in mixed‐status families make sense of their juridical category when they navigate unrealistic aspirations from relatives, maintain silence about undocumented family members' legal status, manage their fear of family separation through deportation, and take on financial and logistical responsibilities prematurely to help relatives. In each of these ways, family proves to be a key site for the social and relational production of citizenship.     

Marginalization,reproduction and assaults against teachers: Ideas on the contradictions of ideological social control

Summary We have analyzed school stratification and delinquent behavior by demonstrating that the connection between the two can be explained more completely by reference to the nature and functioning of American capitalism. By way of a thorough analysis of the reproduction forces at work today in American capitalism, as well as the way consciousness is formed through the satisfaction and fulfillment of species needs and powers, our investigation linked delinquent behavior (assaults against teachers) and school stratification with the social system of which they are embedded. Concentrating initially on the structural forces at work within the labor market, we were able to uncover the foundations which mold the social relations of production. We then turned our investigation to the school, revealing how the underlying function of secondary education today is the reproduction of the social relations of production. With a thorough understanding of these two interrelated phenomena, we were then able to explain why minority students attack secondary school teachers at a higher rate than other students. Specifically, it is because of thecontradiction between the creation of a personality possessing autonomous and independent behavior traits, with emphasis on violent behavior patterns as a means of solving interpersonal problems (marginalization), and the austere authoritarian and control mechanisms of the school (reproduction).I wish to thank Nancy Gilliland for helpful comments and criticism on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Mother Abuse: A Matter of Youth Justice,Child Welfare or Domestic Violence?

International evidence suggests that in advanced welfare states the abuse of parents, most particularly mothers, by their (most frequently male) adolescent children is increasingly prevalent. In the United Kingdom, however, child‐to‐mother abuse remains one of the most under‐acknowledged and under‐researched forms of family violence. Although it is an issue shrouded in silence, stigma, and shame, the authors' work in the youth justice sphere, focusing on interventions to deal with anti‐social behaviour, suggests that adolescent violence toward mothers is a topical and prevalent issue. We identify different ways of conceptualizing it in the policy realms of youth justice, child welfare, and domestic violence. The behaviour of both child/young person and mother is constructed in ways which inform the assignment of blame and responsibility. The paper highlights the silence that surrounds the issue in both the policy and wider academic spheres, hiding the failure of service providers to respond to this very destructive form of intimate interpersonal violence.