Off With His Head!

I do not know much about the Juvenile Court System, but I believe I witnessed first hand while on Lunch Duty why we reserve the "jury of our peers" for adults. Imagine a school playground. It is a nice, sunny day, with a light breeze carrying the sound of loud voices and laughter. The 5th grade is outside playing. On the baseball diamond there is a game of baseball going on with plastic bats and balls, surprisingly well organized. On the playground there are kids running, climbing, swinging and sliding. There are boys playing on the basketball court. There is a group of girls practicing their gymnastics. As I look around some of the shouts become more clear, "Red head!" As I locate the shout I see a girl with red hair chasing around a boy. Eventually there is a whole group of kids chasing each other, some shouting about red hair, others shouting things like, "Why did you get everyone to call her that?!" As I think about whether or not to intervene I see one of the girls run up to a different boy and say, "Whatever you do, don't say 'red head' or 'ginger' around Ashley!" Which of course means that he promptly looks over and yells, "Ginger!" and the chasing starts all over again.

As I watched this play out, I realized that this is how 5th graders socialize. I remember many similar situations on the playground when I was younger. For whatever reason, that seems to be part of our learning process on how to gain the attention of others. 

Fast forward a bit and they are lining up to go inside. I notice that one of the classes seems to be having a hard time and that one of they boys in that class is standing about 10 feet away from the line. Part of the class is yelling at him to line up so that they can go inside, the other part of the class is yelling things like, "Just leave him alone!" (Merciful, right?) They continue, "If he doesn't line up he doesn't deserve to eat, but we don't have to worry about it." (Nope, not merciful.) Then the first half starts yelling, "He needs to line up or go to skills!" The second half responds, "Just leave him, he can stay outside and not eat." By the time we get inside the kid is refusing to go into the lunch room, "I don't deserve lunch apparently, since I didn't line up I don't deserve to eat!" 

As I watched them all eat and tried to pretend that I wasn't starving, I thought about how we learn to behave socially. I thought about how it is such a long and awkward process since we start out fighting for attention in somewhat rude and inconsiderate ways. How even mercy is something that we have to learn, and if not mercy, at least finding a consequence that fits the crime. I thought about how good it is that in those situations teachers get to choose the consequence and not a jury of their peers, because apparently staying 10 feet back from the line is a crime punishable by skills without lunch. Finally I thought, "I am so glad I am not in that phase anymore!"



Note: I really have no idea what the name of the red headed girl is!