9-23-23 Police Investigating Officer Involved Shooting in Kea’au

[HiloJulie]

I think you should keep your soapbox at the ready all the time!

I can’t agree more with what you said, except that the psychology 101 class needs to be started around the 7th grade and continuing through their senior year. 

In looking at this guys eCourt page, it’s a life (short) story of violence. From domestic, to TRO’s to harassment. And then bail jumping. And yet his final salvation was a gun. 

I don’t know if it’s fair to say he decided to go out in a blaze of glory or was he so confident that his gun was his way out? I don’t know if you heard the latest report but one of his bullets did hit one of the policemen. Fortunately, it was deflected by hitting his stun gun holster. An inch or two difference could have left the policeman either seriously injured or worse yet dead. 

I’d also say pretty confidently that everything this guy was, he learned from his home. I don’t think school was his forte. Which begs the question as to how society can fix that. 

I’d also bet that his “family,” whatever that is, will eventually file some type of wrongful death lawsuit against the police and county.

[terracore]

From what I gathered, the deceased stopped where he did because of the units that were converging from the road so he understood that he was surrounded.

That was his chance to humble himself and admit the error of his ways but his ego got the better of him and he decided to go out in a blaze of stupidity.

Emotional intelligence and knowledge of self are life skills that if not taught at home, need to be taught at school.

So much violence could be avoided if we offered some form of mental health awareness in the form of a Psychology 101 course for maybe Juniors and Seniors.

Or if not a class, monthly meetings with a therapist to identity and treat those with emotional regulation challenges before they get out into the world and become the next headline.

We are failing our children if we do not provide them with the tools to be satisfactory members of society.

Okay, I'm done.  Soapbox going back to storage!

When I was in JR High there were at least two year-long "health" classes everybody had to complete.  Sex ed was part of it, but that was a minor part of the class.  If I remember correctly there was an entire semester devoted to mental health.  One of the topics was death and dying, the 5 stages of grief, etc, and we even took a field trip to a mortuary.  We learned the warning signs for suicide and that there was help available.  In HS there were psychology classes students could take as electives.  We were also taught about drugs, nutrition, exercise, etc, basically everything a young person needed to be physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy.

When my daughter was in HS I was shocked to discover they don't teach them anything practical anymore.

[TomK]

Just curious, TC, as I didn't experience the US educational system, but did those "health" classes involve exams or just something the kids had to attend? My impression for UK schools is that in recent times schools are funded based on the exam results they produce, so I believe there is less incentive to teach life skills but concentrate more on the subjects that are examined. UK schools have moved toward the US system over the years, for better or worse, but am just interested to learn how things used to be.

On the other hand, I just looked at my old school's curriculum. There are many more subjects now that people of my generation never studied:

https://brakenhale.co.uk/learning/curriculum

Back in the day it was humanities, maths and science with a sprinkling of other subjects (PE [2 hrs per week], religious education [1 hr a week], and ad-hoc social education [1 hr a week by age thirteen).

[terracore]

Just curious, TC, as I didn't experience the US educational system, but did those "health" classes involve exams or just something the kids had to attend? My impression for UK schools is that in recent times schools are funded based on the exam results they produce, so I believe there is less incentive to teach life skills but concentrate more on the subjects that are examined. UK schools have moved toward the US system over the years, for better or worse, but am just interested to learn how things used to be.

On the other hand, I just looked at my old school's curriculum. There are many more subjects now that people of my generation never studied:

https://brakenhale.co.uk/learning/curriculum

Back in the day it was humanities, maths and science with a sprinkling of other subjects (PE [2 hrs per week], religious education [1 hr a week], and ad-hoc social education [1 hr a week by age thirteen).

I remember being graded on quizzes, exams, essays, and presentations (each student or sometimes a group of students was assigned a topic to research and present their findings to the rest of the students in the class).  There were basic competencies every student had to complete in order to graduate and "communication" was one of them.  The presentations counted towards "oral communication", assuming a student got a passing grade on enough of them over the course of 4 years.

Of course we had shop classes too. The grade would be based on completing X amount of required projects and Y amount of elective ones. Like in metals class one of the projects required welding something specific, and the second part was supposed to enhance creativity so each student could design what they wanted and the instructor would make the grade on the quality of the welds etc. I remember in woods class a lot of the kids made "tobacco" pipes.

[TomK]

Did you get graded on coursework? I think that's what you are saying. All our grades came from final exams, at least up to age 16. Even 16-18 courses were almost entirely based on final exams. I did study geography at that stage and that did have a project component.

[terracore]

Did you get graded on coursework? I think that's what you are saying. All our grades came from final exams, at least up to age 16. Even 16-18 courses were almost entirely based on final exams. I did study geography at that stage and that did have a project component.

I think the grading was up to the individual instructor.  Some of them put heavy weight on the final exam to determine the grade, others weighted it less.  In college some of courses were entirely graded on a mid term and final exam.  I had one course that was really easy and all the test questions came from the text book.  The instructor more or less just read highlights from the textbook, so the class was a waste of time.  I literally only attended class on exam days and he was okay with that.  I had another course where the instructor who thought so highly of herself that she rated attendance so highly that every absence lowered your final grade by one regardless of how well you did in everything else (like if you missed 2 days the highest final grade you could achieve would be a "C").  Because I was working full time and missing days was inevitable, I transferred to another class after the first day and learning her absurd policy.