To think behaviour in USA schools is better than UK?

[NowIknowMyEFGs]

Any Americans on here who can tell me what behaviour is like in high schools in the states? In the UK it's pretty dire, bad language is rife, treatment of girls by boys is obscene, vaping in the toilets, rogue students wandering corridors, uncontrollable classes etc

Right, but you are surely aware that it is an issue at many schools? Unless you have never seen the news or spoken to anyone who attends any school but the one near you. So the issue of school shootings is still relevant to op’s assumption that all schools in the US have much better behaviour than all schools in the UK. It’s unlikely that her generalisation has any truth in it when I’m at least some schools in the US have students who get shot to death by classmates.

Of course, if she had said ‘aibu to think behaviour at mathanxiety’s American school where nobody has had any gun violence issues since 1873 is much better than the school where my son got stabbed by another student’ then she may have had a point. But saying a country where there are known gun culture problems which affects schools must have better behaviour in every single school than any school in the UK is of course ridiculous.

Why do Brit’s in Mumsnet seem to spend so much time on American Facebook groups?
Serious question.

You all seem to dislike and look down on Americans yet can’t seem to stay away from their Facebook groups and can’t help but ask dumb questions on Mumsnet and then go on a tirade of how crap America and American are.

Every few days there’s make her stupid question and then a bunch of ignorant Brits come up with stereotypes and dumb responses.

My daughter has recently started working for an American airline at a UK airport (we're Scottish). She said her American passengers are unfailingly polite, and that you really notice how passive-aggressive we Brits are by comparison.

Rather have kids being told to fuck off than being shot!

It's not an issue at 'many schools'. The US is a huge country. There are hundreds of thousands of schools.

The issue of school shootings is completely irrelevant to the issue of behaviour inside schools. It's as irrelevant as the issue of car crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists and moving vehicles in the streets outside schools.

The fact that there are gun culture problems has absolutely nothing to do with behaviour in schools. I don't know why you're mentioning them in the same post. They're not related.

Every time the topic of the US comes up on MN, someone says, "But school shootings!" and there goes the discussion. From there on, it's "Lalala school shootings, lalala", fingers in ears... Nobody can see further than that single phenomenon, and it is trotted out on virtually every thread to do with the US, as if it proves something about every single aspect of American life.

School shootings say nothing about the ordinary daily life of 350 million people in America, and they say nothing about behaviour in American schools. They are actually an unusual phenomenon (in a huge country with hundreds of thousands of schools) arising from the confluence of varying degrees of misogyny and self-hatred on the part of the gunmen, and certain cultural elements swirling around guns and concepts of power and identity. The perfect storm is a rare thing.

It's usually not students who are responsible for school shootings. And nobody has said what you allege has been said in your last sentence there.

I remember a thread not too long ago here on MN where a lot of British MNers mentioned that their schools do active shooter and other emergency drills. Cue shock and disbelief.

The point being that actually, British schools do active shooter drills.

Also, metal detectors are not a thing in a huge number of schools. They tend to be found in inner city schools.

Not to put too fine a tooth in it, but the focus on school shootings is very much a focus on sensational, unusual news. Shootings and stabbings and beatings related to gang life in inner cities claim a lot more lives than school shooting incidents do, and gang activity - vice, drug sales, protection rackets, intimidation of law abiding citizens - blights communities and affects lives in certain parts of American cities to an infinitely greater degree than the threat of a very rare school shooting. This isn't an aspect of American life the very caucasian-centric and sensation-obsessed BBC chooses to report on, obviously.

I would think students shooting other students in school does have something to do with the behaviour in schools if I’m honest.

And someone has said that. The OP has said it. She asks if behaviour in American schools (all of them) is better than behaviour in British schools (all of them). This is of course ridiculous.

And in my past experience (living in the Midwest so very possibly different to wherever you are) school shootings very much affect the lives of American people. Even if it’s simply requiring children to participate in school shooting practices etc. Regardless, the point is that if even one student at one school in the US shoots one classmate, that pretty much puts an end to the op’s point that behaviour in every American school must be better than behaviour in every British school.

I have quite a lot of family and an old school friend who moved to the States. It's such a mess there they re removing their children from schools.

But again, it's a generalisation about a country of 330M, where schools aren't controlled by the national government--how do you know this is representative?

I think the OP was daft, but this is no better. Depending on who you talk to here they're removing their kids because of CRT and gender ideology or because they want to put up the Ten Commandments and arm the teachers.

Every time the topic of the US comes up on MN, someone says, "But school shootings!" and there goes the discussion. From there on, it's "Lalala school shootings, lalala", fingers in ears... Nobody can see further than that single phenomenon, and it is trotted out on virtually every thread to do with the US, as if it proves something about every single aspect of American life.

the visual of this made me smile - so true.

Because it was the only autism face book group,
it that I could find that has parents and carer,s that are facing similar challenges to me
but on that note I could ask why do many Americans spend so much time on mumsnet ,which is a UK based forum.?

Particularly as you find us Brits so ignorant?

There are not many Americans spending time on mumsnet.

You do have some Americans living in the UK or married to Brits spending time on mumsnet but the average American does not spend time on mumsnet or even talking about about Brits on the internet the way we seem to do. It’s like a strange obsession and we seem to take pride in proving we are better than Americans.

I’m a Brit and I find this very very strange.

Yeah, I don’t think there are many Americans on Mumsnet. The spelling of the name would preclude it from many Americans’ interests for a start. I’m a Brit living in the US, that’s why I’m here. Obviously occasionally an American unconnected with the uk does pop up on here, but it’s not frequent.

I am confident based on what the other folks who live in the US on this thread have said, that they are mostly British as well. As someone who lives in the US, I make that analysis based on their use of language (linguistic structures such as vocabulary and spellings), as
well as sometimes their usernames.

I don’t understand all the hate against the US. It wasn’t like that when I first moved here.

I don't think many Brits spend time on American FB groups?

If you're not in Britain anymore why post here and not on Babycentre or such like?

I found MN based on an article in The Economist six or seven years ago. I have no personal connection to the UK. I took a look, liked it here, and stayed. I agree that this is probably not frequent.

I don't understand the hate either. Americans generally think quite well of the UK, and don't consider it our place to criticize how you do things there.

Yes they do and there have been many threads creating where OP asks questions off something they saw on an American Facebook group or watching American movies to shows etc.

The fact remains Brits on MN spend a lot of time talking about and bashing Americans. Every other day there a new thread with a silly question and everyone piles on with random stereotypes to insult Americans.

I do think the American education system has surpassed that of the UK. I think Americans expect more of their kids, the British system babies them too much, there's too much teaching to the test and not just teaching the subject and letting them sink or swim on their own merits. I think too much of the British system worries too much about kids enjoying school and being happy instead of concentrating on preparing them for leaving school and moving into the adult world where their employers are going to expect them to get on with their work.

Yeh cos school shootings are inconsequential compared to bad language right?

You cannot be serious.

I taught for 27 years in state schools inner city Glasgow never been in a school you describe. "Rogue students wandering the corridors" eh no. Security entrances and CCTV

I find it odd that you can be so dismissive of school shootings.

@SmurfHaribos i find it odd that you are so dismissive of traffic accidents as a cause of death and injury to young people. Far more so than guns in America.

but traffic accidents don’t grab headlines while gun incidents do.

let’s be clear that the majority of Americans would prefer more gun restrictions. Politics sucks and prevents sensible reforms. But foreign media does massively overstate the relevance in day to day life of Americans and their children.

meanwhile the day to day experience of American students is better 99.99% of the time than their uk peers in terms of quality of education

@SmurfHaribos - I'm more concerned about the constant gang violence that doesn't get reported, and the reason it doesnt get reported.

Apparently the British media doesn't care much about quality of life in inner city America, or the toll gang violence takes in terms of lives lost or massive levels of individual trauma in inner city communities. Issues like that which are ongoing and seemingly impossible to cure have a far worse effect in the long run for the communities affected than the risk of school shootings.

I live fifteen minutes on foot from a part of the neighboring city where gang related shootings are an everyday occurrence, along with all the rest of the crap that goes along with gang presence. Forgive me for being more concerned about that than the infinitessimally small risk of a school shooting.

It depends what area you're in.

Wealthier neighborhoods, better schools.

The average school shooter is not a current student at the school where the shooting takes place.
School shootings have nothing to do with behaviour in schools. Behaviour in school encompasses respect for self and others. There are schools in typically gun-supporting regions where behaviour in schools is perfectly appropriate and where school shootings have never happened.

I live in the midwest. My kids went to school in RC and public schools there. Up to the Columbine incident, they did not do shooter drills. They did both fire drills and tornado drills, though, from kindergarten on, and fire and tornado drills continue - do these count as potentially traumatic experiences? I know one of my DCs in particular had a lot of anxiety about tornadoes, but even though we've never had a tornado in this particular area and the schools they went to have never suffered a fire, I think it's wise that everyone in a school knows what to do in an emergency, regardless of how worried a fire or tornado drill makes any individual child.

They also test the public tornado alarms on the first Tuesday of every month at 10am - the alarm sounds like an air raid warning, the kind you hear in movies about WW2. Freaky.

School shootings do not 'affect' everyday life, whatever 'affect' means, in your post. People get up in the morning and get on with their days.

During the Cold War, kids did nuclear war drills and got on with their lives. I'm old enough to remember Mutual Assured Destruction.

Kids in Britain get on with their lives too, in schools where shooter drills are done.

People in Northern Ireland got on with their lives for the thirty years of the Troubles.

Elsewhere in the US, there are people living in regions where there are volcanoes, earthquakes, devastating hurricanes, regular tornadoes, floods. And there is traffic everywhere.

People can quake in their shoes and get paralysed by fear about every single thing that could go wrong in the course of their days. Most people don't. They get on with their lives.