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tallmike wrote:

suthdj wrote:From what I see the boys hands never left his side. Is being a teenage butt(being nice) grounds fot getting punched? Now I don't think teachers should be defenseless but here it appears she punched in fear not because he touched her.

You do not have to touch someone before they are allowed to defend themselves. If you approach me in a way that makes me believe you are intent on doing me harm, I am not going to wait for you to hit me before I react.

His actions were threatening, is it really so surprising that she felt threatened?

This

RottenApple wrote:Texas schools currently allow for corporal punishment. It has been left up to the school districts themselves to determine if they will administer it or not. HB359 codifies this and allows parents/legal guardians a way to opt out. It passed May 27th, 2011 and has been sent to the Gov.

For my part, I take my queue from my father. If my child has done something that requires a paddling, the school should call me and inform me about it. I will come down to the school and, in front of the teacher, principal, or whomever, administer the paddling myself. If a teacher laws a hand on my child, they better be prepared for me to lay my hands on them.

Incidentally, in my home, the only "crime" worthy of spanking is lying. For every other issue we have other punishments that, for the most part, are quite effective.

I generally agree with you on spanking, but this incident was not a "spanking" nor "corporal punishment" this was - IMHO - a teacher using legally justifiable force to defend herself from the unjustifiable and illegal use of force by a student. This was not "punishment" this was self-defense and easily meets the standards of immediacy and reasonableness as spelled out in Texas law.

suthdj wrote:From what I see the boys hands never left his side. Is being a teenage butt(being nice) grounds fot getting punched? Now I don't think teachers should be defenseless but here it appears she punched in fear not because he touched her.

The simple test for justification is this: put yourself in her shoes.

Suppose you're a 64-year-old woman and a 17-year-old male nearly a foot taller than you does exactly what you see on the video: cursing, gesticulating, backing you into a corner, and closing distance so as to take away any reasonable "comfort zone" or "personal space".

Now suppose this happened not between a teacher and student in a classroom, but between a 64-year-old woman and a 17-year-old man at a shopping mall?

Would the woman then:

reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful force

Now let's add in the egregious defiance of authority and say this same 17-year-old in same hypothetical shopping mall does the same thing to a 64-year-old female security guard, or to a police officer?

What would happen if that punk did the same thing to a cop?

And why should the schoolteacher be forced to react any more passively?

Yep, and now that the prosecutor has ended the witch hunt against the teacher, he should prosecute the student as an adult for felony assault.

If you're not sure if this is "right" for a teacher to strike a child in this situation, just put this same scenario in any other public place: A 6-foot-tall teen-age "man", curses at a 64-year-old woman, gesticulating wildly as he closes to striking distance and gets right into her face, still shouting expletives, and (this part is in dispute) actually puts his hands on the woman.

In any other place, the woman's RIGHT to retaliate in self defense would be obvious. But because she is a teacher and the aggressor is a student, many in our society think her self defense actions are "wrong". This is likely because nearly everyone has either been a student or parent of a student, but very few go through the daily tribulations of being a teacher. And most forgot to put themselves in the teacher's shoes in such scenarios.

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