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Volume 27, Issue 12, october 28, 2004

Opinion

Readin’, Writin’ and Wrasslin’?

mugBryan Goodland
Columnist

Apparently elementary schools are teaching more than the basics we all grew up with. Today’s students are getting visual lessons in hand-to-hand combat, at least in Macon, Georgia they are.

Katrina Ann Rucker, a teacher at an elementary school in Macon, Ga., was charged with battery and cruelty to children for allegedly beating up one of her student’s mothers in front of her class. The mother, Luella Amica, arrived at Bruce-Weir Elementary school to give her daughter a note, and this is where the trouble began.

Upon arrival to her daughter’s classroom, Amica was informed by her little girl that the teacher had thrown her book bag into the trash can. Like any good mother, she went to the trash can to retrieve her daughter’s book bag. But, this was a mistake. Rucker, the teacher in the classroom, allegedly took the book bag away from Amica and then hit her in the back with a chair. Rucker also allegedly hit the daughter, pulled her hair, and pushed her out of the way so she could get back to beating on the mother. To top it all off she, once again, allegedly, dragged the mother out of her classroom by the hair!

This is truly a strange world when parents and children are assaulted by their school teachers. I’ve met some pretty mean nuns in my day, but they never beat up either my mother or me. It seems as thought we’ve crossed some sort of a line here. We constantly hear about assault, rape, and even murder at schools across the country. A woman in Texas hired a hit man to kill her daughter’s cheerleading competitor; high schoolers at Columbine were killed at will and the list could go on and on.

Are the problems in our schools a warning sign of what is to come or merely a mirror that reflects our society as it is? I’ll let you decide for yourself on that one.

The problem here isn’t the fact that a teacher attacked a parent, but the fact that our societal morals and graces have eroded so much that we are all walking around in an abysmal state of existence. What happens in schools are not isolated incidents, but are occurring all around the country. The children in our schools today will soon become the adults that we run into on the street. Do we really want them to be in an environment that allows or looks the other way when incidents occur? I am very worried about what the future holds for America.

Rucker should be held out as an example. She is a pariah and a danger to the children she teaches and should be treated accordingly. Of course, that is, if all the allegations turn out to be true. If they are, then the city of Macon has no choice but to prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law. Anything less will be an injustice to our children and a travesty for our society.