Another bullied kid strikes back
JmG
edge.
Not everyone handles the abuse well. If adults know it's happening and do
nothing to stop it, it's child abuse.
J
Dana Carpender
I'm still waiting for some high school principle, somewhere, to make
rudeness a punishable offense in his or her school. And to forstall the
question, no, I don't give a damn about their right to self expression.
A kid doesn't have the right to stand up in the middle of English class
and start screaming obscenities at the teacher, and I recognize no right
to verbally abuse other students, either.
--
Dana W. Carpender
Author, How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet -- And Lost Forty Pounds!
http://www.holdthetoast.com
Check out our FREE Low Carb Ezine!
UFO_Charlie
wrote:
>There's kind of a cycle at work in such cases. I mean, do these kids become
>nasty because they're disliked and snubbed by their peers, or are they
disliked
>and snubbed because they're nasty?
There are admittedly not too many subjects I can speak with authority on,
but this is one of them. It seems to me that it's a mixture of both, to some
degree. Some kids are just generally antisocial and nasty. The thing is,
these kids would just as soon be left alone, but when they're treated poorly
for their antisocial instincts --when other students mock and invalidate who
they are-- it angers them. For some, it angers them enough to fight back. I
would never condone an act of violence like a shooting, but being myself a
junior in high school, it's not hard to see where the aggression comes from,
or how in a select few, it translates into real, physical rage.
--
***UFO_Charlie***
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS/GG/GJ/GMU/GS d s+:+ a--- C++ W+++ N++
w+ PS+ PE- Y- t@ X+ R tv++ b++ DI+++++ G e- h* r z?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
[Discombobulate my email address to reply.]
Ixion
the
edge.
Not everyone handles the abuse well. If adults know it's happening and do
nothing to stop it, it's child abuse.>>>
All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's face,
shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting the
first one."
EdGein15
Turn me on, dead man
UFO_Charlie
>All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's face,
>shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting the
>first one."
...and then proceed to get your ass kicked.
Al Yellon
news:20010306203231...@ng-fs1.aol.com...
And here is where the other day's problem may have started. According to
what I heard, the kid was pretty much doing this, or something similar, and
then said he was just kidding around.
His friends didn't turn him in because, according to one story I heard, they
didn't want him to get into trouble if he *was* only kidding.
What do you do then?
--
**********************************
AY - Charter Member, DBFC
http://www.dbfc.org
**********************************
Al Yellon
And here is where the other day's problem may have started. According to
Big David
> There's kind of a cycle at work in such cases. I mean, do these kids
become
> nasty because they're disliked and snubbed by their peers, or are they
disliked
> and snubbed because they're nasty?
The cycle I observed was that a) new kids in school, unless extremely good
looking, got picked on no matter what. This kid was new in school this
year, having moved from MD to CA last June, b) smaller kids get picked on.
This kid was, from all accounts, skinny, short, and kinda scrawny c) kids
who are different get picked on. He was quiet, shy, and reserved.
Someone(s) made him their target.
Same thing happened to me in 8th grade, but I got big fast that year, so by
December, I was looking down on my former tormentors. There is still much
to be said for the threat of physical violence or some other form of public
humiliation to keep bullies and tormentors in line.
--
Big David
If you want to send me email, you should be smart enough to figure out how.
"There is no right not to be offended by words, actions, or symbols".
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
N Jill Marsh
face,
> shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting
the
> first one."
>
And here that would end with you in the pokey, hopefully talking to a
therapist before you went back to school. If they would take you back. If
you weren't charged.
nj"no joke"m
--
"To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying."
Big David
> On Wed, 07 Mar 2001 03:08:14 GMT, "Big David" <dbo...@etspamhome.com>
wrote:
> >There is still much
> >to be said for the threat of physical violence or some other form of
public
> >humiliation to keep bullies and tormentors in line.
> Indeed. I was a scrawny, skinny kid, too ... but in sixth grade, I'd had
enough
> of the worst neighborhood bully. Hauled off and split the bastard's lip.
> Although his mommy came over and insisted that I was always bothering poor
> Davey, poor Davey never bothered me again.
<grin> My brother (violence runs in my family I guess) had a similar thing
happen to him in middle school. The kid happened to be much older and
bigger, but my brother is a mean bastard and really hurt the kid (emergency
room, hospital stay). When his father came to talk to my dad about it, my
dad laughed at him and told the man if he didn't leave he might get the same
treatment. We never heard a peep again and my brother got left alone.
Funny how the bullies always seem to have those kind of hovering,
overprotective parents. My absolute favorites though are the ones who will
push you fight with them because they think they can win, get their ass
kicked, then try to be your buddy. Yeah, right pal, I kicked your ass so
you can be my friend.
RM Mentock
>
> Ixion <edge...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20010306203231...@ng-fs1.aol.com...
> >
> > All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
> face,
> > shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting
> the
> > first one."
> >
>
> And here that would end with you in the pokey, hopefully talking to a
> therapist before you went back to school. If they would take you back. If
> you weren't charged.
>
> nj"no joke"m
Where's here again?
--
RM Mentock
panta rhei -- Heraclitis
http://mentock.home.mindspring.com/
Falcon
>> news:20010306203231...@ng-fs1.aol.com...
>> >
>> > All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
>> face,
>> > shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting
>> the
>> > first one."
And at some point even bullies will tumble to the idea that you may be
a threat and beat the living hell out of you and leave you in a bloody
heap with a severely broken trigger finger. Then his parents can sue
your parents for threat of a school incident and win.
Ciao,
Falcon
####################################################
#### To reply via email remove "7" from address ####
####################################################
# Failure is not an option #
# It comes bundled with the software #
####################################################
Ixion
a threat and beat the living hell out of you and leave you in a bloody
heap with a severely broken trigger finger.>>>
I doubt this highly. A fruity goth boy with a crazy look in his eye can freak
out even the most obtuse mullet-sporting redneck. I've seen it happen. Though
in bars, mostly.
N Jill Marsh
RM Mentock <men...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3AA5834F...@mindspring.com...
> N Jill Marsh wrote:
> >
> > Ixion <edge...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:20010306203231...@ng-fs1.aol.com...
> > >
> > > All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
> > face,
> > > shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're
getting
> > the
> > > first one."
> > >
> >
> > And here that would end with you in the pokey, hopefully talking to a
> > therapist before you went back to school. If they would take you back.
If
> > you weren't charged.
> >
> > nj"no joke"m
>
> Where's here again?
>
Sorry. Ontario. The above has happened.
njm
--
"---for her letters to Kitty, though rather longer, were too much full of
lines under the words to be made public."
JmG
>>All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
>>face, shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting
>>the first one."
>
>And here that would end with you in the pokey, hopefully talking to a
>therapist before you went back to school. If they would take you back. If
>you weren't charged.
Charged with bullying a bully?
J
N Jill Marsh
JmG <jmg...@bestweb.net> wrote in message
news:d5bcat8dh2bdjjqdq...@4ax.com...
Death threats are taken seriously here. I don't think who is uttering them
is the biggest issue, though considering the history of most of the kids who
have followed them through recently, perhaps it should be.
njm
--
"He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of
having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself."
Tank
That's rot. I was "the fat kid" throughout my whole school life, and
a considerable time after. Add to that an obnoxious mouth and a
bad attitude, and you have a recipe for abuse.
I didn't unload on my school, why should this punk be any different?
Of course, school was considerably different in those days. I sang a
solo of "Oh, Holy Night" in my 3rd grade Christmas Program.
--
Tank
"Remember to pillage before you burn"
Jose (JRDelirio) Diaz
JmG wrote in message ...
Besides Jill's stomping grounds in Ontario, there are also school districts
in the US with "Zero Tolerance" policies, wherein *any* reference to armed
violence is considered reason for intervention against the person making it,
regardless of circumstance or justification (these are in the same league as
the policy that suspends you from school if you give a friend an aspirin; or
that suspend *YOU* for having a knife even if you have it because you were
the one who disarmed an unstable classmate). Odd, though, I've never heard
of a ZT policy applied against common bullies.
jrd
N Jill Marsh
Jose (JRDelirio) Diaz <jrdeli...@worldnet.removetorepyatt.com> wrote in
message news:hQrp6.8196$Ey1.4...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>
>
> Odd, though, I've never heard
> of a ZT policy applied against common bullies.
>
While I've little personal sympathy for them, I am a bit confused with just
how a school principal (or whoever makes the call) can differentiate between
violence (or the threat of such) visited upon 'bullies' versus 'regular'
kids versus 'picked on' kids. It's okay for a picked on kid to threaten a
bully, but not for a bully to threaten a picked on kid? Didn't the roles
just reverse?
nj"don't really get the whole ZT thing anyway"m
Shawn Wilson
"Tank" <alr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:985h29$509$1...@sshuraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com...
> That's rot. I was "the fat kid" throughout my whole school life, and
> a considerable time after. Add to that an obnoxious mouth and a
> bad attitude, and you have a recipe for abuse.
Ironically, given that I was both small AND anti-social, I never had a
problem with bullies. One group tried, once, but were dissuaded by the pain
of the one I could reach from ever trying again. (pinching the muscle that
extends along the shoulder from the neck /firmly/ between your thumb and
forefinger (ala Vulcan nerve pinch) is *quite* painful, and it doesn't leave
a bruise . . .)
Amy Gleason
> There's kind of a cycle at work in such cases. I mean, do these kids become
> nasty because they're disliked and snubbed by their peers, or are they disliked
> and snubbed because they're nasty?
Through a significant portion of my education, especially from 4th - 9th
grade, and again my senior year of high school, I was snubbed and disliked
by my peers. A lot of it had to do with the fact that my parents couldn't
afford Guess jeans, the other part had to do with the fact that I was a
bright student. Despite the snubbing, I never became nasty. I was never
nasty to begin with. Kids are cruel. It's how they learn boundaries.
Despite the fact that I had precious few friends growing up, certainly
less than this kid in CA, if the number of "friends" on the news is any
indication, I never felt the need to hurt any of the kids who hurt me.
Something deeper than teasing is going on with these kids. There is no
easy answer.
L & k,
Amy
Big Iron5
>>> > All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
>>> face,
>>> > shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're getting
>>> the
>>> > first one."
>
>And at some point even bullies will tumble to the idea that you may be
>a threat and beat the living hell out of you and leave you in a bloody
>heap with a severely broken trigger finger. Then his parents can sue
>your parents for threat of a school incident and win.
Not that you could support the latter nonsense with a citation or anything, of
course.
rob...@bestweb.net
>Besides Jill's stomping grounds in Ontario, there are also school
>districts in the US with "Zero Tolerance" policies, wherein *any*
>reference to armed violence is considered reason for intervention
>against the person making it, regardless of circumstance or
>justification (these are in the same league as the policy that
>suspends you from school if you give a friend an aspirin; or that
>suspend *YOU* for having a knife even if you have it because you
>were the one who disarmed an unstable classmate). Odd, though,
>I've never heard of a ZT policy applied against common bullies.
That may have been irony, but I'll bite. It's because idenitifying bullies
requires judgement, and the whole point of 0 tolerance is to abolish
judgement.
Robert
Rob Novak
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.01030...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> Despite the fact that I had precious few friends growing up, certainly
> less than this kid in CA, if the number of "friends" on the news is
any
> indication, I never felt the need to hurt any of the kids who hurt me.
>
> Something deeper than teasing is going on with these kids. There is
no
> easy answer.
Different people have different mechanisms for dealing with personal
rejection and stress. If your parents were supportive and gave you a
place to go and vent your frustrations, you're probably better off for
it.
However, speaking from the other side of the fence, I was the typical
geeky kid in school. Away from home, I was physically and verbally set
upon by my peers because I spent too much time doing "nerdy" things like
reading, studying, and messing with electronics and other toys. At
home, my father was a perfectionist in the most pure sense of the word -
nothing should ever be less than 100%, nothing should ever go wrong,
no-one was allowed to make a mistake. Between being a social outcast
and whipping boy because of my need to be perfect, and the consequences
at home of being anything but, the pressure was ridiculous and I had no
outlet.
After a couple years of this, I had reached a breaking point. At 14, I
cleaned out my room, gave away my meager personal effects, and planned
how I would kill myself. Someone talked me out of it. Several months
later, I had a literal breakdown after another physical bullying attempt
and completely lost it. I remember becoming completely detached from my
body as I watched myself, on autopilot, hit the chief instigator in the
mouth so hard his braces came through his lower lip.
No one bothered me after that. I've never had another incident like it.
I eventually learned to deal with the assholes of the world. My parents
finally learned that their kids were human and that our lack of
perfection didn't diminish them personally. I was fortunate that
turnaround came at that point. The situation could have become much
worse, had it persisted.
You see, some folks in our society are bereft of compassion for fellow
humans. Adolescents are notorious for being amazingly self-centered,
not caring a cuss for anyone but themselves. It's part of growing up.
However, some cross the line to being predatory. These young predators
use violence as a tool against their peers, and it becomes the only
language they understand. Sometimes they pick the wrong prey - the kid
who doesn't have the coping skills, who lets the pressure build to the
breaking point. Eventually, the kid snaps and you have a seriously
violent episode.
The wrong way to think is that it's got something to do with the kids
that crack. When we haul off the kid who gets pushed to the point of
making death threats and allow the predators to continue, we don't solve
the problem. We've turned the victim into the cause, and let the real
perpetrators perpetuate the issue.
Kids that go postal aren't the disease. They're a symptom of a much
larger syndrome - a syndrome where "different", "odd", and "scary" kids
are allowed to be abused by their peers. The supposedly adult
authorities aren't taking steps to keep the predators at bay. In
essence, we're shooting the fox for having the temerity to nip back at
the pack of hounds who've cornered it.
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- B. Franklin (Historical Review of PA)
http://ugotawanit.homepage.com
Mirhanda Sarko
>
>Kids that go postal aren't the disease. They're a symptom of a much
>larger syndrome - a syndrome where "different", "odd", and "scary" kids
>are allowed to be abused by their peers. The supposedly adult
>authorities aren't taking steps to keep the predators at bay. In
>essence, we're shooting the fox for having the temerity to nip back at
>the pack of hounds who've cornered it.
YES!!! If I hear one more person pass off this predatory behavior by
flippantly saying "kids are cruel" I'll scream! Kids are a lot of
things...they are dirty, but we teach them to bath and be clean; they are
selfish, but we teach them about the joy of giving, if they hear adults say
"kids are cruel" they think it's ok to behave that way. If I *ever* hear
my kids say something cruel, I jump right in there and tell them why it is
*always* wrong to speak and act with cruelty. Adults who pass off this
behavior are contributing just as if they were doing it themselves.
Mirhanda
--
Decapitate my addy to email me
I know who you are!! You are the character who occasionally appears in the
comic strip "Sylvia", as "The Woman Who Does Everything More Beautifully
Than You Do".
Les, speaking of me, in alt.fan.cecil-adams
Doug Yanega
<njm...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> > > > All I know is, if I were being picked on, I'd stand in my tormentor's
> > > face,
> > > > shape my fingers like a gun, point at his head and say, "You're
> getting
> > > the
> > > > first one."
> > > >
> > >
> > > And here that would end with you in the pokey, hopefully talking to a
> > > therapist before you went back to school. If they would take you back.
> If
> > > you weren't charged.
> > >
> > > nj"no joke"m
> >
> > Where's here again?
> >
>
> Sorry. Ontario. The above has happened.
It's also happened here in SoCal three times just since the shooting (!) -
all leading to arrests for either kids or guardians (since it inevitably
has turned out that the kids making these "jokes" are carrying wepaons or
have access to them at home). One of the gun-toting youngsters is 8 years
old. At the moment, everyone is so jumpy that all the kids who have been
making cracks about shooting or blowing things up are finding themselves
getting strip-searched, incarcerated, and having their homes searched.
This is not an issue about "family values", it's about easy access to
lethal weapons.
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology
Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California
Riverside, CA 92521 909-787-4315 (opinions are mine, not UCR's)
http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Scott Wilson
Amy Gleason <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote:
>On Tue, 6 Mar 2001 GO-SPAM-YO-...@bigfoot.com wrote:
>
>> There's kind of a cycle at work in such cases. I mean, do these kids become
>> nasty because they're disliked and snubbed by their peers, or are they
>disliked
>> and snubbed because they're nasty?
>
>Through a significant portion of my education, especially from 4th - 9th
>grade, and again my senior year of high school, I was snubbed and disliked
>by my peers. A lot of it had to do with the fact that my parents couldn't
>afford Guess jeans, the other part had to do with the fact that I was a
>bright student. Despite the snubbing, I never became nasty. I was never
>nasty to begin with. Kids are cruel. It's how they learn boundaries.
I think there are few rules that define who gets picked on. It seems like
there are various sure ways picked on in school... but I had the market
cornered on these, and still never got picked on.
(Particulars are for high school)
-I was practically the shortest guy in my class. (I'd say I was, but the
class was like 500 kids so someone must have been shorter.)
-I dressed funny. (alot of camouflage pants)
-I went from buzz cut my freshman year, and then let it grow out. My
sophmore year it was a basic headbanger mullet. My junior year I started
wearing a pony tail... which at the time, was really rare in the midwest.
(I was definitely the first guy at my highschool anyway, although I wasn't
the only guy for long.)
-I was in damn near every geeky club at some point. (4 yrs. Math team, 4
yrs Drama, 2 yrs Speech team, 1 yr Law club, 4 yrs. Band, 2 yrs Choir...)
-Didn't know alot of the kids from gradeschool/junior high as I went to a
Catholic grade school.
-In all honors classes
-Damn near every teacher/administrator knew who I was. Man... when you're
in highschool, it sucks to have the principal randomly talk to you when
walking through the hallways...
Yet in my 4 years of high school, I was never really picked on. The
closest thing to being "picked on" is occasionally people would yell "Hey
GI Joe" in my general direction... usually from over 100ft away...
I still don't know how I pulled it off. At the time, it didn't seem
remarkable, but it does seem odd now. My only guess is that I radiated so
much "slack" that it confused people who thought I was a geek.
Just one data point to mess with the general theories...
--
Scott Wilson "As long as there is, you know, sex and drugs,
swi...@uchicago.edu I can do without the rock 'n' roll." Mick Shrimpton
ra...@westnet.poe.com
> Falcon writes:
>>And at some point even bullies will tumble to the idea that you may be
>>a threat and beat the living hell out of you and leave you in a bloody
>>heap with a severely broken trigger finger. Then his parents can sue
>>your parents for threat of a school incident and win.
Actually, bullies and jocks et al are pretty damn thick. After Columbine,
the threats to the weird kids-in-black increased rather than decreased.
> Not that you could support the latter nonsense with a citation or anything, of
> course.
Come now, Bob, you're a lawyer, you should know that you can sue anyone
for anything, and sometimes you'll win evened the damndest suits.
John
--
Remove the dead poet to e-mail, tho CC'd posts are unwelcome.
Ask me about joining the NRA.
Amy Gleason
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> > Something deeper than teasing is going on with these kids. There is
> no
> > easy answer.
> After a couple years of this, I had reached a breaking point. At 14, I
> cleaned out my room, gave away my meager personal effects, and planned
> how I would kill myself. Someone talked me out of it. Several months
I am so sorry for what you suffered. I, too, have been suicidal, and I
know the pain and desperation that one feels when death seems like the
only way to make it stop.
> later, I had a literal breakdown after another physical bullying attempt
> and completely lost it. I remember becoming completely detached from my
> body as I watched myself, on autopilot, hit the chief instigator in the
> mouth so hard his braces came through his lower lip.
There is a serious difference of scale between what you did (which may
very well have been the only way to make it stop) and what the
school-shooters are doing. You chose to lash out at the person who was
tormenting you, man to man. While I don't condone this, I see the logic
and the fairness of it. The kid who bullied you got what was coming to
him... But he is still breathing.
To take a gun into a school and to randomly shoot at children (even if one
is a child) is totally different. These kids are saying something more
than "STOP TEASING ME". They're showing a serious lack of regard for
human life, they're showing serious contempt for "the system", they're
using deadly force to make it stop.
Sure, sometimes deadly force is necessary. If someone were threatening
me or my family with death or serious harm, and I had a gun (which I
don't), I would probably be able to kill that person. I would probably be
justified in killing that person. But there is a difference between being
threatened with serious physical harm or death and being teased.
It's like these kids have a splinter in their fingers, and they're cutting
off their whole arm to get rid of it. Sure, a splinter can hurt like
hell. It can even become infected. But the response is out of
proportion. If the whole arm was infected, then cutting off the arm might
be appropriate... Does this terrible analogy make sense?
> Kids that go postal aren't the disease. They're a symptom of a much
> larger syndrome - a syndrome where "different", "odd", and "scary" kids
> are allowed to be abused by their peers. The supposedly adult
> authorities aren't taking steps to keep the predators at bay. In
> essence, we're shooting the fox for having the temerity to nip back at
> the pack of hounds who've cornered it.
Well, I think it is dangerous to label these kids "victim" and say, "It's
ok to do this, we understand that you've been teased and your feelings
were hurt, etc." I do think that adults need to take more responsibility
for protecting the teased kids (especially the adults in the schools).
Like I said, though, I think there's more going on than just being
socially outcast. I think there's a deep psychological thing going on,
both with school shooting kids and with workplace shooting adults. Both
are becoming more common. It irritates the hell out of me when the media
finds an "answer" (teasing, violent television, violent videogames,
trenchcoats, etc.) and pretends that the "answer" tells the whole story.
It's as if the talking heads are saying, "If we could just get kids to
stop teasing each other, no one else would do this..." Which can't
possibly be true. Kids have been teasing each other since the discovery
of the wheel, but only recently have they turned to deadly violence to
stop others from teasing them. Teasing may be part of it, but it is just
the tip of the iceberg. Something else is going on. Something pervasive
and scary and dangerous.
Unfortunately, I can't put my finger on what it is.
L & k,
Amy
Amy Gleason
> YES!!! If I hear one more person pass off this predatory behavior by
> flippantly saying "kids are cruel" I'll scream! Kids are a lot of
> things...they are dirty, but we teach them to bath and be clean; they are
> selfish, but we teach them about the joy of giving, if they hear adults say
> "kids are cruel" they think it's ok to behave that way. If I *ever* hear
> my kids say something cruel, I jump right in there and tell them why it is
> *always* wrong to speak and act with cruelty. Adults who pass off this
> behavior are contributing just as if they were doing it themselves.
Recognizing the fact that kids are cruel doesn't mean that I think it is
ok. Sure, the teasers are wrong. Very wrong. Mean. Even bad people...
But do they deserve to die for it?
L & k,
Amy
N Jill Marsh
>It irritates the hell out of me when the media
> finds an "answer" (teasing, violent television, violent videogames,
> trenchcoats, etc.) and pretends that the "answer" tells the whole story.
TEEN INK BLOT GOES ON RAMPAGE ACROSS U.S.
--Eyewitnesses Attempt to Describe it to Authorities--
"I had the best view of it! It was a crazed teen whose mind was warped by
video games, movies and music that glorify death and violence."
"No, No! I got a good look at it -- it was a depressed youth driven mad by
its sterile suburban environment abd its dysfunctional and neglectful
parents."
"No way! I saw a young, gun-crazed thug whose easy access to military-style
firearms sadly allowed it to act on its insane fantasies."
"What? You're nuts! It was a computer-addled geek gone crazy from the
alienating and hate-mongering internet."
"Weren't you even looking? It was a kid pushed to the edge by a cruel and
violent hierarchical social structure and a school system that implicitly
condones it."
If you see this suspect, do not attempt to apprehend it! Instead, project
your fears, biases and immutable personal belief systems onto it and quickly
call a radio talk show host or write and Op-Ed column for your local
newspaper.
nj"it was Ruben Bolling"m
Helge Moulding
> Recognizing the fact that kids are cruel doesn't mean that I
> think it is ok. Sure, the teasers are wrong. Very wrong.
> Mean. Even bad people... But do they deserve to die for it?
I don't think anyone is suggesting that bullies and other types
of problem children should expect to be shot and not complain
when it happens, no more than you're suggesting that cruelty
from children should be expected and therefore tolerated.
It's not an easy problem, as far as I can tell. My oldest liked
the rep he got for standing up to bullies. My wife told me with
some pride about a time when she had to break up a fight where
our oldest was taking large chunks out of a much larger boy who
had apparently had the poor judgement of calling him a name.
Mind, we did discipline our kid: name calling is no reason for
assault and battery, even if the victim outweighs you by half.
The point is, when he was much younger he got beat up, but
refused to tell us who was doing it because that would ruin his
rep. At least that's what he told us. He was unhappy enough
when we took him to the principal's office to talk about what
was going on.
Which leads me to another point. Salt Lake City Schools have a
zero tolerance policy for that sort of thing. All participants
in a fight can expect to be disciplined. Name calling and other
kinds of teasing is not permitted. But the kids don't always
seek the help of teachers or parents, and they apparently
manage to keep that sort of thing hidden enough that teachers
and parents don't usually have the opportunity to interfere.
All of this amounts to a complex social climate that the kids
learn from the moment they walk into kindergarten. (This holds
true if you're talking public or private school.) There are
some teachers that are trying to break the cycle, but they are
quite rare. That sort of work has to start in kindergarten,
and it has to be applied consistently into the secondary grades;
otherwise it often won't make an impression.
--
Helge Moulding
mailto:hmou...@excite.com Just another guy
http://hmoulding.cjb.net/ with a weird name
Mirhanda Sarko
I honestly can say I'm undecided. They ruin lives. That's as bad as
taking lives, so maybe so. What I'm sick of is adults who *know* these
behaviors are going on and laugh it off with "kids are cruel". That is
sending the wrong message. When a kid is doing that, that kid needs to be
PUNISHED. Suspend them from school. Do NOT allow these creeps free run
and a pat on the back.
Mirhanda Sarko
>
>To take a gun into a school and to randomly shoot at children (even if one
>is a child) is totally different. These kids are saying something more
>than "STOP TEASING ME".
To call what these kids are going through "teasing" is trivializing the
pain and brutality they are experiencing at the hands of these monsters.
Big Iron5
>>>And at some point even bullies will tumble to the idea that you may be
>>>a threat and beat the living hell out of you and leave you in a bloody
>>>heap with a severely broken trigger finger. Then his parents can sue
>>>your parents for threat of a school incident and win.
<snip>
>> Not that you could support the latter nonsense with a citation or anything,
>of
>> course.
>
>Come now, Bob, you're a lawyer, you should know that you can sue anyone
>for anything, and sometimes you'll win evened the damndest suits.
There are weirdo cares from time to time, but he asserted it as if there was a
reasonable possibility and my challenge stands for him to find some cases, or
even a reasonably cogent legal theory, to support his ludicrous claim that in
the above scenario "his parents can sue your parents for threat of a school
incident *and win*." I just get sick of know-nothings like Falcon here making
bullshit claims like that in their ignorant attempts to suggest that the legal
system is craaaazy and out of control.
Rob Novak
> Recognizing the fact that kids are cruel doesn't mean that I think it
is
> ok. Sure, the teasers are wrong. Very wrong. Mean. Even bad
people...
> But do they deserve to die for it?
Yes, but many parent's use "kids are cruel" as an excuse to avoid
teaching their children alternatives to cruelty. You're right - it is a
complex issue. Neither the bullies or their target are innocent when
the target starts shooting. However, if more attention were paid to the
bullying behavior (which, let's face it, isn't dramatic and doesn't get
ratings) rather than the explosive aftermath, the problem would be
closer to a solution.
I can say with a fair amount of authority that decent, quiet kids just
don't wake up one morning and gun down their classmates. There's a
pattern of behavior and circumstances that starts developing months or
years before. It's just that parents, teachers, and other "authorities"
don't want to be bothered with paying attention until the Computer Nerd
clubs the ringleader of his tormentors with a cafeteria chair, or Junior
shows up in metal shop with Daddy's Glock. Then suddenly the kid's a
"troubled youth".
Aren't the agressors just as "disturbed" or "troubled" for believing
that they can mentally, verbally, and physically abuse another without
guilt or consequence? Unfortunately, the media presentation of the
issue makes martyrs out of the individuals that turned the "troubled
teen's" life into a nightmare.
As for the "I got picked on and never killed anybody" line of thinking,
it ignores the fact that not everyone has the same emotional skills,
mental state, or self-confidence. These factors even vary greatly from
time to time in the same individual. Someone saying "Dude, you're a
freak" to me now would engender nothing more than a glaring eyeball and
perhaps an equally smart-assed remark. When I was in my early teens, it
would have hurt more than a punch in the gut.
rob...@bestweb.net
The "Vulcan nerve pinch" isn't that, it's an actual jiu-jitsu move -- a
carotid artery pinch.
Jean Shepherd said the way to avoid trouble is to look like the kind of
person that gives OTHER people trouble. Maybe that's good only among adults
on the subway or street, not kids in school.
Robert
Dave Wilton
<hmou...@excite.com> wrote:
>All of this amounts to a complex social climate that the kids
>learn from the moment they walk into kindergarten. (This holds
>true if you're talking public or private school.) There are
>some teachers that are trying to break the cycle, but they are
>quite rare. That sort of work has to start in kindergarten,
>and it has to be applied consistently into the secondary grades;
>otherwise it often won't make an impression.
I think its much deeper than this. It's not just kids who are cruel;
people are cruel. We have an instinctual distrust of anyone who is
different. If you're not a member of the tribe or clan you should be
viewed with distrust. Prejudice (whether its racial, religious or
against "geeky kids") is not learned behavior, non-discrimination is.
A good example is the other thread about the guy from Kuwait who
posted his credit card number on Amazon. Either this is a case of a
bunch of afca'ers making fun of a guy who doesn't read English well
enough to realize he was posting to an open forum or someone created a
hoax based on the idea of a stupid foreigner. There is not much
difference between certain members of this group taking delight in
taunting this guy and bullies taunting the "weird" kid in school.
Children and teenagers are more vulnerable and the behavior is more
obvious because the victims are less likely to have developed the
coping skills to accept the derogation without lashing back and the
bullies are less likely to have learned where the limits of acceptable
behavior are.
--Dave Wilton
da...@wilton.net
http://www.wilton.net
Rob Novak
> Well, I think it is dangerous to label these kids "victim" and say,
"It's
> ok to do this, we understand that you've been teased and your feelings
> were hurt, etc." I do think that adults need to take more
responsibility
> for protecting the teased kids (especially the adults in the schools).
You misunderstand, or I have not made my position clear. I believe both
parties are victims. The aggressors are the victims of the prey's
inability to cope with the situation and lashing out violently. The
prey's a victim of the agressor's inability to treat them with normal
human dignity, just because they're "different". They're both victims
of a system that would much rather sweep the entire situation under the
rug, deflect the blame to guns and video games, and put its fingers in
its ears, close its eyes and yell "LALALALALALALALALALALA" until the
shots ring out.
I do not, however, espouse a victim-centric view. These kids as a whole
are victims of a broken system. However, that does not justify either
of their actions. I merely state that I can understand what would drive
a child to such levels of violence. I don't condone it or feel that it
is jusitifiable.
> stop others from teasing them. Teasing may be part of it, but it is
just
> the tip of the iceberg. Something else is going on. Something
pervasive
> and scary and dangerous.
Yup, but it's not entirely the shooters. I wish I could explain it all
as well, but my gut feeling is that the kids with guns aren't
symptomatic of a new problem. It's the same problem - kids are cruel to
those they perceive as "odd". For whatever reason, the system seems
less inclined to lend a hand to the "odd man out" than to stigmatize
him/her and lock them away.
Society as a whole isn't shocked by a fistfight anymore. We've
effectively tuned out the day-to-day struggles and only take notice when
something BIG happens. As I stated in another follow-up post, these
kids aren't just waking up one morning, eating their Cinnamon Life, and
deciding over orange juice to committ mass murder. Warning signs are
evident long before D-Day. It's when parents and teachers let the
depression, lack of academic performance, anti-social behavior, and
other symptoms go unnoticed for months that things reach a breaking
point. Unfortunately, because of this spate of horrible incidences,
these folks are now less likely to try to find the root of the problem
and more likely to label the kid "unclean", ostracize them, and have
them hauled off.
Rob Novak
> You misunderstand, or I have not made my position clear. I believe
both
> parties are victims. The aggressors are the victims of the prey's
Oops, I meant to write "I believe both parties are victims, and both
parties are culpable."
D.F. Manno
(JRDelirio) Diaz" <jrdeli...@worldnet.removetorepyatt.com> wrote:
> Odd, though, I've never heard
> of a ZT policy applied against common bullies.
Of course not. That's because teachers and staff use bullies to keep the kids
who don't fit in in line.
Schools aren't about imparting knowledge to children; they're about enforcing
conformity and making kids toe the line so they become good little consumers and
later compliant worker drones in this society. Schools need bullies to enforce
the social norms.
--
D.F. Manno
domm...@netscape.net
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
-- "Free Will," Rush
Jeff Lanam
<njm...@bigfoot.com.TOENAILS> wrote:
>
>TEEN INK BLOT GOES ON RAMPAGE ACROSS U.S.
>
>--Eyewitnesses Attempt to Describe it to Authorities--
>
You left out
"It was a deluded product of the teaching of evolution acting
out the Darwinian survival of the fittest."
"It was a product of our failure to post the Ten Commandments
in every classroom."
(There was a girl in Pennsylvania today that shot a
classmate at an Catholic school.)
JmG
>>Not everyone handles the abuse well. <
>
>That's rot. I was "the fat kid" throughout my whole school life, and
>a considerable time after. Add to that an obnoxious mouth and a
>bad attitude, and you have a recipe for abuse.
So you're saying that everyone *does* handle abuse well or that you managed to
handle it?
J
JmG
>Of course not. That's because teachers and staff use bullies to keep the kids
>who don't fit in in line.
That's often truer than you think.
>Schools aren't about imparting knowledge to children; they're about enforcing
>conformity and making kids toe the line so they become good little consumers and
>later compliant worker drones in this society. Schools need bullies to enforce
>the social norms.
Shhhh. Don't let the secret out. We've almost got them convinced that we're
actually teaching them something.
J
JmG
<excellent post snipped>
>Kids that go postal aren't the disease. They're a symptom of a much
>larger syndrome - a syndrome where "different", "odd", and "scary" kids
>are allowed to be abused by their peers. The supposedly adult
>authorities aren't taking steps to keep the predators at bay. In
>essence, we're shooting the fox for having the temerity to nip back at
>the pack of hounds who've cornered it.
Bravo!
J
JmG
>To take a gun into a school and to randomly shoot at children (even if one
>is a child) is totally different. These kids are saying something more
Only the tools have changed. Guns are easy to get and they sure do the trick. If
I thought I could punch the bully don't you think I would? Nah, I *do* know I
can shoot his ass back to the vile pit he came from though.
>than "STOP TEASING ME". They're showing a serious lack of regard for
>human life, they're showing serious contempt for "the system", they're
>using deadly force to make it stop.
No, they really are saying "STOP TEASING ME" and I'll bet they've said it once
and I'll bet they've said it a hundred times and I'll bet everyone said "grow
up, boy, it's part of life."
J
JmG
>At the moment, everyone is so jumpy that all the kids who have been
>making cracks about shooting or blowing things up are finding themselves
>getting strip-searched, incarcerated, and having their homes searched.
>This is not an issue about "family values", it's about easy access to
>lethal weapons.
No, it's a bout a breakdown of community.
J
Helge Moulding
> I think its much deeper than this. It's not just kids who are
> cruel; people are cruel.
Cruelty very likely does have atavistic components. But I'd say
that *people* are cruel because, *as kids*, they learned to be
cruel. If we can figure out how to teach kids not to be cruel,
then I think we'll find that people in general will also become
a little less cruel. At the very least, we'll learn to draw that
line a little sooner. From where I'm sitting, it can only be an
improvement.
Helge Moulding
> Recall those "My kid can beat up your honor student" bumper stickers?
> Plenty of parents are just as moronic as their kids.
You know, I don't. I think I've seen them for sale, but I've never
seen one of those bumper stickers on an actual car. Not to say that
parents can't be moronic, of course. Just mentioning that it seems
those particular bumper stickers cross the line for most people.
Amy Gleason
> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>
> >On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Mirhanda Sarko wrote:
> >
> >> YES!!! If I hear one more person pass off this predatory behavior by
> >> flippantly saying "kids are cruel" I'll scream! Kids are a lot of
> >> things...they are dirty, but we teach them to bath and be clean; they
> >> are selfish, but we teach them about the joy of giving, if they hear
> >> adults say "kids are cruel" they think it's ok to behave that way. If
> >> I *ever* hear my kids say something cruel, I jump right in there and
> >> tell them why it is *always* wrong to speak and act with cruelty.
> >> Adults who pass off this behavior are contributing just as if they
> >> were doing it themselves.
> >
> >Recognizing the fact that kids are cruel doesn't mean that I think it is
> >ok. Sure, the teasers are wrong. Very wrong. Mean. Even bad
> >people... But do they deserve to die for it?
>
> I honestly can say I'm undecided. They ruin lives. That's as bad as
> taking lives, so maybe so.
Is it REALLY as bad as taking lives? Really? I mean, the Bible clearly
says "Thou shalt not kill", but I don't remember reading "Thou shalt not
tease." There's the whole "Do unto others..." bit, but I don't you can
stretch it to specifics.
If a humorist in a newspaper, say Dave Barry, makes fun of a public
figure, should a court be able to sentence Dave to death? What if it
ruins the public figure's life, by way of ruining his career?
> What I'm sick of is adults who *know* these
> behaviors are going on and laugh it off with "kids are cruel".
As someone who plans to teach high school, believe me, I am not laughing.
But kids ARE cruel, and surviving that cruelty (on both sides of it)
teaches them a lot about life. People aren't always nice. Things don't
always go your way. There will be people who don't like you. Etc.
> That is
> sending the wrong message. When a kid is doing that, that kid needs to be
> PUNISHED. Suspend them from school. Do NOT allow these creeps free run
> and a pat on the back.
If you trip in the cafeteria and spill your tray of mystery meat all over
yourself, and I laugh, should I be suspended? What if I laugh, but you're
the only one who hears me? Should the administration be able to suspend
me on your word (because I'll deny it, of course)? Where do you draw the
lines? And how are you going to EDUCATE the kids who are suspended all
the time? After all, the schools exist to teach people reading, writing,
math, etc., not to teach them to be nice people.
Parents are responsible for teaching kids to be nice people. Overall in
this country, they're failing miserably. So the responsibility is falling
to the teachers. Meanwhile, everyone's bitching because standardized
test scores are down. So, what do you want? Do we spend our time
teaching kids to be nice (at the expense of academics) or do we spend our
time teaching kids academics (and leave the responsibility of character
education to the parents)? There really isn't enough time in the day to
teach academics as it is. Schools all over the country are cutting
specials (music, art, etc.).
Teachers are not parents, ministers/priests, cops, or babysitters.
Teachers can not do their job unless parents start doing theirs.
L & k,
Amy
Amy Gleason
> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>
> >
> >To take a gun into a school and to randomly shoot at children (even if one
> >is a child) is totally different. These kids are saying something more
> >than "STOP TEASING ME".
>
> To call what these kids are going through "teasing" is trivializing the
> pain and brutality they are experiencing at the hands of these monsters.
And to KILL the monsters that do it, whether they are monsters or just
regular kids, isn't trivializing anything, huh?
L & k,
Amy
Rick Howard
Ixion wrote
> I doubt this highly. A fruity goth boy with a crazy look in his eye can
freak
> out even the most obtuse mullet-sporting redneck. I've seen it happen.
Though
> in bars, mostly.
In my freshman dorm in college there was one slightly built
guy with constantly ruffled hair, funky clothes and this weird
cast to his eyes. Three cretins took to harassing the poor
guy and gave him the nickname "The Warlock". One day
"Warlock" lost his temper and pointed his finger at the three
and said "Yeah, have your fun now, because none of you
is going to be here next semester." Time passed. One
of the abusive boys was flunking out and quit. Another
had a bad drug experience and left. The third had a
family emergency and went home. After those three were
gone, exactly as Warlock had predicted, no one called
the poor guy "The Warlock" again. True story.
--
But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me,
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.
Amy Gleason
> In article <hQrp6.8196$Ey1.4...@bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>, "Jose
> (JRDelirio) Diaz" <jrdeli...@worldnet.removetorepyatt.com> wrote:
>
> > Odd, though, I've never heard
> > of a ZT policy applied against common bullies.
>
> Of course not. That's because teachers and staff use bullies to keep the kids
> who don't fit in in line.
>
> Schools aren't about imparting knowledge to children; they're about enforcing
> conformity and making kids toe the line so they become good little consumers and
> later compliant worker drones in this society. Schools need bullies to enforce
> the social norms.
That's bullshit.
It didn't fly when Marx said it, either. See also "resistance theory".
L & k,
Amy
(See, Marx said basically what D.F. said, and some other philosopher came
along and said that kids, being natural pains in the ass, would resist any
attempt to make them conform (rock and roll, tattoos, piercings, punk
rock, dancing, drugs, smoking, alcohol, sex, etc. are all good examples of
how kids resist conformity), so Marx's theory was bunk.)
Mirhanda Sarko
>Is it REALLY as bad as taking lives? Really? I mean, the Bible clearly
>says "Thou shalt not kill", but I don't remember reading "Thou shalt not
>tease." There's the whole "Do unto others..." bit, but I don't you can
>stretch it to specifics.
Yep, if you destroy someone's life, you may as well kill them. And by
calling it "teasing" you're contributing to the harm. It's *not* a mild
harmless thing that is happening to these children. It is *evil* and you
see what happens when they reach the breaking point. The torture and
torment that these children are put through is enough to make almost anyone
break.
>
>
>As someone who plans to teach high school, believe me, I am not
>laughing. But kids ARE cruel, and surviving that cruelty (on both sides
>of it) teaches them a lot about life. People aren't always nice.
>Things don't always go your way. There will be people who don't like
>you. Etc.
You teach them *not* to be cruel. You teach them that cruelty is
absolutely *UNACCEPTABLE* behavior. If they keep it up, you kick them out
of school. Makes as much sense as suspending them for pointing a chicken
finger and saying "pow".
You can not like someone and not destroy their life. You can not like
someone and not beat them up every day. You can not like someone and not
try to destroy their self-esteem. There are people on this group that I
don't like, but I don't try to beat them up or verbally or mentally abuse
them. I ignore them.
>
>If you trip in the cafeteria and spill your tray of mystery meat all
>over yourself, and I laugh, should I be suspended? What if I laugh, but
>you're the only one who hears me? Should the administration be able to
>suspend me on your word (because I'll deny it, of course)? Where do you
>draw the lines? And how are you going to EDUCATE the kids who are
>suspended all the time? After all, the schools exist to teach people
>reading, writing, math, etc., not to teach them to be nice people.
Wouldn't it be better if you checked to see that I didn't break my leg?
Wouldn't it be better if, instead of laughing, you came over and helped me
pick it up? And I'm sick to death of teachers who have these kids in their
care for most of the day saying "it's not my concern if they are social
monsters". It's *EVERYONE'S* problem if these brats are abusing other
children. And if you sit on your ass and allow it to go on, brushing it
aside with "kids are cruel" and that abused, tormented child snaps and
comes to school and kills you along with the torturers, then you bear some
of the blame. Absolutely.
>
>Teachers are not parents, ministers/priests, cops, or babysitters.
>Teachers can not do their job unless parents start doing theirs.
When the child is in *your* care for eight hours a day, you'd *better* be
able to do something about behavior, or you're not going to be able to
teach anyway.
Doug Yanega
jmgreenATbestweb.net wrote:
There were bullies and delinquents and victims back in the '60s when I was
i school, too - and precious little community spirit - but no one had guns
available to help them act on their urges in such spectacularly bloody
ways. Have you been listening to the news today? Two or three more
shootings, including one by an 8-year-old. I have two nieces and a
sister-in-law who all teach grade school, and I worry about them. They all
live and work in fine communities, but community spirit doesn't mean squat
when some twisted punk carries his dad's 9mm handgun to school. And you
can't blame the community for the legal system that makes teachers afraid
to confront and punish the bullies and troublemakers for fear of being
sued (or, of course, shot), and makes the thugs confident that they can
commit violent crime and not actually *suffer* the consequences. There's a
lot of different things at work here, and the "community breakdown" is not
particularly high on the list unless you're talking about office drones
who crack, and that's not the topic today.
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology
Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California
Riverside, CA 92521 909-787-4315 (opinions are mine, not UCR's)
http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Mirhanda Sarko
Certainly not, killing is definitely *not* trivial. It's just a shame that
school personnel sit on their fat asses and don't do a DAMN thing to stop
the behavior that leads to these kids snapping.
Mirhanda
Shawn Wilson
"Doug Yanega" <dya...@pop.ucr.edu> wrote in message
news:dyanega-0703...@entmuseum4.ucr.edu...
> This is not an issue about "family values", it's about easy access to
> lethal weapons.
Problem is, guns are LESS accessible now than they're were in previous
decades.
Amy Gleason
> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>
> >Is it REALLY as bad as taking lives? Really? I mean, the Bible clearly
> >says "Thou shalt not kill", but I don't remember reading "Thou shalt not
> >tease." There's the whole "Do unto others..." bit, but I don't you can
> >stretch it to specifics.
>
> Yep, if you destroy someone's life, you may as well kill them.
Gosh, I was raped 10 years ago (really, I'm not simply illustrating a
point). Rape is something that many people would agree has the potential
to ruin a life... But I'm pretty glad that the guy didn't kill me, too.
I mean, I've got a lot going on now. I've moved beyond it.
Death is awfully permanent. And, as far as we can tell, there isn't a lot
of room for growth...
> And by
> calling it "teasing" you're contributing to the harm.
Would it make you feel better if I called it "harassment"?
I mean, I was sexually harassed around this time last year, too. And
while it was unpleasant, and I wouldn't choose to go through it again, it
certainly didn't ruin my life.
> It's *not* a mild
> harmless thing that is happening to these children.
I agree. I think it sucks. When I see my kids doing this type of thing
to each other (my kids at work, not my own kids, I have no kids of my own)
I *always* step in.
> It is *evil*
That's a pretty strong word... Mean, rotten, cruel, bad, immoral, etc.
But evil?
> and you
> see what happens when they reach the breaking point. The torture and
> torment that these children are put through is enough to make almost anyone
> break.
Do you have any actual documentation of the kind of teasing that the two
Columbine (for example) kids went through? I never heard anything
specific, just that they weren't in the in-crowd... I never heard of any
harassment that was outside of what most of us went through when we were
kids.
> >As someone who plans to teach high school, believe me, I am not
> >laughing. But kids ARE cruel, and surviving that cruelty (on both sides
> >of it) teaches them a lot about life. People aren't always nice.
> >Things don't always go your way. There will be people who don't like
> >you. Etc.
>
> You teach them *not* to be cruel. You teach them that cruelty is
> absolutely *UNACCEPTABLE* behavior. If they keep it up, you kick them out
> of school. Makes as much sense as suspending them for pointing a chicken
> finger and saying "pow".
Of course you do... But you also have to realize that teachers aren't
omniscient, teachers have about a zillion other things to do in a day,
teachers are human and make mistakes, teachers can't raise children for
parents (we don't have time, for one)...
Blaming the problem on the teachers isn't right.
> You can not like someone and not destroy their life. You can not like
> someone and not beat them up every day. You can not like someone and not
> try to destroy their self-esteem. There are people on this group that I
> don't like, but I don't try to beat them up or verbally or mentally abuse
> them. I ignore them.
Oh, I don't know, I can think of a couple I wouldn't mind
sucker-punching....
> >If you trip in the cafeteria and spill your tray of mystery meat all
> >over yourself, and I laugh, should I be suspended? What if I laugh, but
> >you're the only one who hears me? Should the administration be able to
> >suspend me on your word (because I'll deny it, of course)? Where do you
> >draw the lines? And how are you going to EDUCATE the kids who are
> >suspended all the time? After all, the schools exist to teach people
> >reading, writing, math, etc., not to teach them to be nice people.
>
> Wouldn't it be better if you checked to see that I didn't break my leg?
> Wouldn't it be better if, instead of laughing, you came over and helped me
> pick it up?
Of course it would, and I, personally, would probably do those things.
But is NOT doing those things such an offense that it should be punishable
by suspension?
> And I'm sick to death of teachers who have these kids in their
> care for most of the day saying "it's not my concern if they are social
> monsters".
Sure it's our concern... We have to put up with the little heathens more
than most parents do. But there's really not much we can do about it. No
one has proven that character education does anything. We can't raise
good people if those peoples' parents are determined to raise monsters.
No amount of teaching can fix that.
> It's *EVERYONE'S* problem if these brats are abusing other
> children.
Of course, but is it really everyone's responsibility?
You blame the schools, I blame the parents.
Could it be because you're a parent and I'm a (soon-to-be) teacher?
> And if you sit on your ass and allow it to go on, brushing it
> aside with "kids are cruel" and that abused, tormented child snaps and
> comes to school and kills you along with the torturers, then you bear some
> of the blame. Absolutely.
I don't think so, but you're entitled to your opinion.
> >Teachers are not parents, ministers/priests, cops, or babysitters.
> >Teachers can not do their job unless parents start doing theirs.
>
> When the child is in *your* care for eight hours a day, you'd *better* be
> able to do something about behavior, or you're not going to be able to
> teach anyway.
Yeah, see, people say that, and then they jump all over us for posting the
ten commandments, teaching evolution, etc. etc. etc. Parents WANT us to
raise their kids for them, but when we try, the few parents who choose to
raise their own kids object...
If I had wanted to raise them, I would've given birth to them. I want to
teach them. YOU take them home at 3:00 and raise them. That is not in my
job description.
L & k,
Amy
Amy Gleason
> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>
> >On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Mirhanda Sarko wrote:
> >> To call what these kids are going through "teasing" is trivializing
> >> the pain and brutality they are experiencing at the hands of these
> >> monsters.
> >
> >And to KILL the monsters that do it, whether they are monsters or just
> >regular kids, isn't trivializing anything, huh?
>
> Certainly not, killing is definitely *not* trivial. It's just a shame that
> school personnel sit on their fat asses and don't do a DAMN thing to stop
> the behavior that leads to these kids snapping.
I work with educators every day. Not a single one of them is sitting on
their fat ass. The very real possibility that this could happen at OUR
school is enough of a motivation to try to fix it, believe me. No one
wants to make $25,000 a year and risk her life. It just ain't worth it.
No amount of teaching, behavior management, counseling, etc. on my part is
going to make up for crappy parents. If the blame for things like this
lies anywhere but on the shoulders of the person holding the gun, it lies
on the shoulders of the shooter's parents.
L & k,
Amy
Jerry Bauer
Amy Gleason <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote:
<<< snipped >>>
>(See, Marx said basically what D.F. said, and some other philosopher came
>along and said that kids, being natural pains in the ass, would resist any
>attempt to make them conform (rock and roll, tattoos, piercings, punk
>rock, dancing, drugs, smoking, alcohol, sex, etc. are all good examples of
>how kids resist conformity), so Marx's theory was bunk.)
>
It is externally-imposed conformity they'll resist. I have talked
with my 14yo son about schools that require uniforms (his doesn't) and
his reaction is all like yuk!
Yet, if you were to look at a group of boys in my son's class, you'd
see them dressed almost identically. Uniformly, as it were.
Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?
Jerry Randal Bauer
Dana Carpender
You're suggesting you would have learned reading and math all on your
own?
--
Dana W. Carpender
Author, How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet -- And Lost Forty Pounds!
http://www.holdthetoast.com
Check out our FREE Low Carb Ezine!
Mirhanda Sarko
>On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Mirhanda Sarko wrote:
>
>> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>>
>> >Is it REALLY as bad as taking lives? Really? I mean, the Bible
>> >clearly says "Thou shalt not kill", but I don't remember reading
>> >"Thou shalt not tease." There's the whole "Do unto others..." bit,
>> >but I don't you can stretch it to specifics.
>>
>> Yep, if you destroy someone's life, you may as well kill them.
>
>Gosh, I was raped 10 years ago (really, I'm not simply illustrating a
>point). Rape is something that many people would agree has the
>potential to ruin a life... But I'm pretty glad that the guy didn't
>kill me, too. I mean, I've got a lot going on now. I've moved beyond
>it.
So you keep telling us. I'm assuming you weren't raped day after day,
every day, for 12 years? It's a whole different ball game, and I'd say a
hell of a lot worse.
>
>Death is awfully permanent. And, as far as we can tell, there isn't a
>lot of room for growth...
>
>> And by
>> calling it "teasing" you're contributing to the harm.
>
>Would it make you feel better if I called it "harassment"?
This sort of thing goes beyond harrassment too.
>
>I mean, I was sexually harassed around this time last year, too. And
>while it was unpleasant, and I wouldn't choose to go through it again,
>it certainly didn't ruin my life.
And you had the option of changing jobs or sending BJ in to chew the guy
out too. Kids don't have the option of changing schools very easily. When
my sister was going through this systematic torture, my mom tried
*everything* to get her into another school.
>
>> It's *not* a mild
>> harmless thing that is happening to these children.
>
>I agree. I think it sucks. When I see my kids doing this type of thing
>to each other (my kids at work, not my own kids, I have no kids of my
>own) I *always* step in.
>
>> It is *evil*
>
>That's a pretty strong word... Mean, rotten, cruel, bad, immoral, etc.
>But evil?
Yep, evil.
>> You teach them *not* to be cruel. You teach them that cruelty is
>> absolutely *UNACCEPTABLE* behavior. If they keep it up, you kick them
>> out of school. Makes as much sense as suspending them for pointing a
>> chicken finger and saying "pow".
>
>Of course you do... But you also have to realize that teachers aren't
>omniscient, teachers have about a zillion other things to do in a day,
>teachers are human and make mistakes, teachers can't raise children for
>parents (we don't have time, for one)...
They see this going on and turn their heads, they sit on their fat asses
doing *nothing* to stop it.
>
>Blaming the problem on the teachers isn't right.
>
>> You can not like someone and not destroy their life. You can not like
>> someone and not beat them up every day. You can not like someone and
>> not try to destroy their self-esteem. There are people on this group
>> that I don't like, but I don't try to beat them up or verbally or
>> mentally abuse them. I ignore them.
>
>Oh, I don't know, I can think of a couple I wouldn't mind
>sucker-punching....
Then you've got a lot of growing up to do.
>
>> >If you trip in the cafeteria and spill your tray of mystery meat all
>> >over yourself, and I laugh, should I be suspended? What if I laugh,
>> >but you're the only one who hears me? Should the administration be
>> >able to suspend me on your word (because I'll deny it, of course)?
>> >Where do you draw the lines? And how are you going to EDUCATE the
>> >kids who are suspended all the time? After all, the schools exist to
>> >teach people reading, writing, math, etc., not to teach them to be
>> >nice people.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be better if you checked to see that I didn't break my
>> leg? Wouldn't it be better if, instead of laughing, you came over and
>> helped me pick it up?
>
>Of course it would, and I, personally, would probably do those things.
>But is NOT doing those things such an offense that it should be
>punishable by suspension?
Especially if you go over and kick them when they are down, or push their
face into the food.
>
>> And I'm sick to death of teachers who have these kids in their
>> care for most of the day saying "it's not my concern if they are
>> social monsters".
>
>Sure it's our concern... We have to put up with the little heathens
>more than most parents do. But there's really not much we can do about
>it. No one has proven that character education does anything. We can't
>raise good people if those peoples' parents are determined to raise
>monsters. No amount of teaching can fix that.
>
>> It's *EVERYONE'S* problem if these brats are abusing other
>> children.
>
>Of course, but is it really everyone's responsibility?
Everyone who has a significant impact on those kids lives. And I think if
a teacher *doesn't* have a significant impact, they aren't doing their job.
>
>You blame the schools, I blame the parents.
>
>Could it be because you're a parent and I'm a (soon-to-be) teacher?
>
>> And if you sit on your ass and allow it to go on, brushing it
>> aside with "kids are cruel" and that abused, tormented child snaps and
>> comes to school and kills you along with the torturers, then you bear
>> some of the blame. Absolutely.
>
>I don't think so, but you're entitled to your opinion.
If you sit around and allow the class to torture and torment one child and
do nothing, then you are responsible.
>
>> >Teachers are not parents, ministers/priests, cops, or babysitters.
>> >Teachers can not do their job unless parents start doing theirs.
>>
>> When the child is in *your* care for eight hours a day, you'd *better*
>> be able to do something about behavior, or you're not going to be able
>> to teach anyway.
>
>Yeah, see, people say that, and then they jump all over us for posting
>the ten commandments, teaching evolution, etc. etc. etc. Parents WANT
>us to raise their kids for them, but when we try, the few parents who
>choose to raise their own kids object...
It's not "raising" them, it's excercising ordinary care for a child that is
basically in your custody for eight hours a day.
>
>If I had wanted to raise them, I would've given birth to them. I want
>to teach them. YOU take them home at 3:00 and raise them. That is not
>in my job description.
I'm sorry, but if you can't control behavior, you're not going to be able
to teach, you may as well change majors now. You're class is going to be
filled with constant disruptions. In sixth grade history, we had a teacher
who couldn't control behavior, and we learned nothing the entire year.
There was no teaching going on, just a room full of kids talking to each
other, throwing airplanes, spitballs, whathaveyou. If you can't take
charge of their behavior, you aren't going to be teaching anything.
Mirhanda Sarko
As a parent, I can't do anything to stop the abusive behaviors that
teachers allow *other people's kids* to get away with in their classrooms.
I'm *NOT THERE*. The teacher is. My kids *KNOW* that abusive behavior is
not allowed. If a teacher allows other kids to behave that way, she's not
a good teacher and may as well be abusing those kids herself.
Amy Gleason
Mirhanda, I sense by your tone that you're angry with me. I'm not
arguing with you. I think that what the bullies are doing sucks. It
happened to me, and I hated every minute of it. BUT it is no excuse for
the tormented to take guns and kill the people who are doing the
teasing/harassing/whatever. Nor does the fact that these kids were
teased/harassed/whatever COMPLETELY explain why these kids are killing
their classmates. Yes, it is a part of it. Yes, it is one piece of the
puzzle, but it is my opinion that the puzzle has about 100 more pieces
that you aren't considering. Enforcing niceness in schools will NOT solve
the problem. Something else is going on. My original post on the subject
was along the lines of asking "what else is going on?".
However, now you're insulting me, and my ability to do my job as a
teacher. I suspect that you have personal experience with being
teased/harassed, and that your personal experience is coming through and
you are seeing me as one of the teasers/harassers. I'm not one of them.
I'm top-posting and not addressing the specific things you said on
purpose. We're getting nowhere. We're both being defensive. You see me
as someone as bad as the teasers/harassers. I'm not. I'm just trying to
explain that there's more to it than teasing/harassing. I'm trying to
explain that a lot of the parents in this country are doing a crappy job
of raising their kids, overall, and are expecting the teachers to pick up
their slack (when teachers aren't even able to do what they're PAID to do
as it is). I'm trying to explain that a one-answer solution isn't enough
to explain or solve the problem of school violence. That's all.
There's a difference between classroom management and raising a child. I
can be a great classroom manager, and a terrible parent. I could be a
terrible classroom manager, and a great parent. They're two EXTREMELY
different things. My belief is that these kids (the ones committing these
acts of extreme violence) need PARENTS, and that no amount of teaching is
going to help them, regardless of the ability of the teacher.
I work in a residential facility for kids with emotional and behavioral
disorders and mental retardation. These kids are seriously in need of
help. They have proven that they are too violent to be in public schools.
We have them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it still takes us 18 - 24
months (or more, that's just the average stay) to help them. Even after
we've helped them with their problems, they'll probably never be able to
be mainstreamed again. The best they can help for is some kind of
independent living group home situation.
If we can't do it completely in 18 - 24 months of intensive therapeutic
care (including social workers, shrinks, medical care, occupational
therapists, play therapists, physical therapists, etc. etc.) 24 hours a
day, how is one classroom teacher supposed to help a kid in 8 hours 5 days
a week for the 9 months (180 days) he's in her class? Especially when you
consider that there are 29 other students, and that all of them have to be
taught reading, math, writing, spelling, science, social studies, art,
history, music, PE, etc.? Plus you have to have lunch and recess. There
just isn't time to parent every kid who comes through. We do our best, we
catch the ones we can, but you can't hold the teachers responsible for
this kind of violence. It's not fair. It's not right. The
responsibility lies with the parents. Why does that bother you?
In high school, I spent 50 minutes a day with 7 - 8 different teachers.
Each of those teachers had an agenda that they had to get through, in
order to truly be doing their job. How could they possibly have gotten to
know me on a deep enough, personal enough level to know that I was
suicidal? If I didn't choose to tell them, they'd never know. Most of
these shootings are happening in high schools. These teachers that you
blame see these kids for 50 minutes or so for 180 days. Is 9000 minutes,
divided among 30 kids, enough time to recognize pathology? Maybe if
you're a trained psychiatrist, but most teachers are not. How can you
blame us, really? I don't understand.
L & k,
Amy
rob...@bestweb.net
>A good example is the other thread about the guy from Kuwait who
>posted his credit card number on Amazon. Either this is a case of a
>bunch of afca'ers making fun of a guy who doesn't read English well
>enough to realize he was posting to an open forum or someone
>created a hoax based on the idea of a stupid foreigner. There is
>not much difference between certain members of this group taking
>delight in taunting this guy and bullies taunting the "weird" kid
>in school.
We're not taunting him! What are the odds he reads AFCA?
No, we're laughing at someone else's misfortune, the basis of all humor.
Amy Gleason
I'm beginning to see what's going on. You've got kids, and the idea that
you're sending them into a dangerous situation every day scares the piss
out of you (and rightfully so!) so you're looking to the adults to protect
them. The fact that I, as a teacher, won't accept responsibility for
school violence scares you, because if the adults won't accept
responsibility, then there's no one there to protect your kids.
{{{{{{{{{Mirhanda}}}}}}}}}
I would never allow a child to tease/harass/torment another child in my
presence. I would stop it as quickly as humanly possible, and I would
give the teaser/harasser/tormenter a detention, make him clean
blackboards, etc. But what's that really going to do? It's going to make
the bully aware that I'm watching, so he's going to make sure he
teases/harasses/torments where I can't see him. Teachers can't watch
everything that goes on in schools. Most of the teasing that I endured in
school happened between classes and at lunch, before and after school,
etc. when there wasn't a teacher around.
All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to teach
them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to be
a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray, because
we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
L & k,
Amy
squeacky
--
Shelli
http://www.geocities.com/kstrucking/canyou.html
http://www.geocities.com/fight_4_family_rights/index.html
"Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
<snip>
> If we can't do it completely in 18 - 24 months of intensive therapeutic
> care (including social workers, shrinks, medical care, occupational
> therapists, play therapists, physical therapists, etc. etc.) 24 hours a
> day, how is one classroom teacher supposed to help a kid in 8 hours 5 days
> a week for the 9 months (180 days) he's in her class? Especially when you
> consider that there are 29 other students, and that all of them have to be
> taught reading, math, writing, spelling, science, social studies, art,
> history, music, PE, etc.? Plus you have to have lunch and recess. There
> just isn't time to parent every kid who comes through. We do our best, we
> catch the ones we can, but you can't hold the teachers responsible for
> this kind of violence. It's not fair. It's not right. The
> responsibility lies with the parents. Why does that bother you?
>
Why is everything always the parents fault? And if that is the case does
that mean that a child who is taken at birth or less then a year and kept in
state run homes , that the state is at fault? or is it still the parents
fault because of their genitics?
> In high school, I spent 50 minutes a day with 7 - 8 different teachers.
> Each of those teachers had an agenda that they had to get through, in
> order to truly be doing their job. How could they possibly have gotten to
> know me on a deep enough, personal enough level to know that I was
> suicidal?
In all the training that professionals are given , are that not given the
warning signs?
DO that not get any training in suicidal warnings?
Shelli
Rob Novak
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> wants to make $25,000 a year and risk her life. It just ain't worth
it.
Tell that to a rookie cop. It's a good thing that those going into law
enforcement don't share that sentiment.
--
Electronic Music
http://ugotawanit.homepage.com
Amy Gleason
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> > school is enough of a motivation to try to fix it, believe me. No one
> > wants to make $25,000 a year and risk her life. It just ain't worth
> it.
>
> Tell that to a rookie cop. It's a good thing that those going into law
> enforcement don't share that sentiment.
We've discussed this before, I'm sure of it. People who go into law
enforcement do it for the intangible benefits that have nothing to do with
salary. People who go into teaching are largely the same way.
Still, when we sign on to be teachers, we don't consider the fact that we
may be shot to be an "acceptable risk" of the job. We want the problem to
be solved, but we recognize (generally) that it isn't a simple one-step
solution.
L & k,
Amy
squeacky
--
Shelli
http://www.geocities.com/kstrucking/canyou.html
http://www.geocities.com/fight_4_family_rights/index.html
"Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> I would never allow a child to tease/harass/torment another child in my
> presence. I would stop it as quickly as humanly possible, and I would
> give the teaser/harasser/tormenter a detention, make him clean
> blackboards, etc. But what's that really going to do? It's going to make
> the bully aware that I'm watching, so he's going to make sure he
> teases/harasses/torments where I can't see him. Teachers can't watch
> everything that goes on in schools.
SO how are parents expected to do what you as a trained professional can not
do?
WHat happened to teachers renforcing what parents teach at home, what
happened to teachers and parents working together? I know personally of a
group of parents going to our local school and complaining about threats
being made to children on the bus, st the bus stop, and at school waiting to
get on or off the bus, we had the childs name that was making the threats
what threats were made a list of injuries caused to other children by this
child yet to this day that child is still in school, and riding the bus so
then whos fault is it ? Is the school not resposible for our children once
they get on the bus, and get to school?
Most of the teasing that I endured in
> school happened between classes and at lunch, before and after school,
> etc. when there wasn't a teacher around.
>
> All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to teach
> them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to be
> a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray, because
> we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
>
But how do we make the schools do their jobs? PROTECT OUR CHILDREN?
> L & k,
> Amy
>
Amy Gleason
See, people, this is what happens when we crosspost...
On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, squeacky wrote:
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> <snip>
>
> > If we can't do it completely in 18 - 24 months of intensive therapeutic
> > care (including social workers, shrinks, medical care, occupational
> > therapists, play therapists, physical therapists, etc. etc.) 24 hours a
> > day, how is one classroom teacher supposed to help a kid in 8 hours 5 days
> > a week for the 9 months (180 days) he's in her class? Especially when you
> > consider that there are 29 other students, and that all of them have to be
> > taught reading, math, writing, spelling, science, social studies, art,
> > history, music, PE, etc.? Plus you have to have lunch and recess. There
> > just isn't time to parent every kid who comes through. We do our best, we
> > catch the ones we can, but you can't hold the teachers responsible for
> > this kind of violence. It's not fair. It's not right. The
> > responsibility lies with the parents. Why does that bother you?
> Why is everything always the parents fault?
Because they chose to give birth, for starters, and with that comes a
responsibility for caring for and raising the child in an appropriate way.
> And if that is the case does
> that mean that a child who is taken at birth or less then a year and kept in
> state run homes , that the state is at fault? or is it still the parents
> fault because of their genitics?
You seem to have gotten the wrong thread... The one you're looking for is
over there -->
But just for kicks, a child who is raised by the state, who turns out
screwed up, is the responsibility of the people who raised him, whether
they're foster parents, an orphanage, a group home, etc. Genetics can
explain part of what happens with development, but not all of it.
Environment is a much larger part of it all.
How many of the perpetrators of school shootings have been current or
former wards of the state?
> > In high school, I spent 50 minutes a day with 7 - 8 different teachers.
> > Each of those teachers had an agenda that they had to get through, in
> > order to truly be doing their job. How could they possibly have gotten to
> > know me on a deep enough, personal enough level to know that I was
> > suicidal?
>
> In all the training that professionals are given , are that not given the
> warning signs?
Of school violence? I don't know. I'm in a teacher education program,
and so far I haven't been taught anything about school violence. We've
talked about it in a couple of my classes, but it has been mostly,
"Christ, this is scary!" "Yeah, I'm going to teach elementary school!"
"Damn straight, this crap doesn't happen too often in 1st grade, and if it
does, at least you're bigger than the kid and can wrestle the gun away..."
> DO that not get any training in suicidal warnings?
Maybe as an in-service or something, but I'm going to be a senior next
year, and I haven't been taught any of that in school. I've learned it
elsewhere (psych classes I've taken that weren't required, training for
the Suicide Prevention Hotline in Indianapolis, etc.), but it is not part
of the teacher education program I'm in.
L & k,
Amy
Rob Novak
> All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to
teach
> them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to
be
> a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray,
because
> we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
Exactly. The fault lies not 100% with the bullies. The fault lies not
100% with the teachers. The fault lies not 100% with the parents. It's
a vast case of contributory negligence. The problem is illustrated
perfectly with you and Mirhanda as examples. The parents want to blame
the teachers because they don't believe it's all their problem. The
teachers want to blame the parents because they don't feel they should
be responsible. When all is said and done, nothing gets accomplished
this way and the problem spirals. In the end, the kid who's had his
head smacked into his locker door twice a day, been humiliated to the
point of tears at least twice a week, and has had his lunch spit or
expectorated in for the past two months finally snaps. Then everyone's
happy because both the parents and the teachers can blame "the weird
kid" and remove the eyeball of scrutiny from themselves.
What's telling is that in these cases, the students realize that the
child was having problems, that he was bullied or abused. The parents
and teachers always seem to be in a different reality - "He was always a
nice, quiet kid." I have yet to hear the students' and
parents'/teachers' stories jive. Never have I heard from the
interviewed parents or teachers, "Yes, we knew he was having problems
and were trying to help." To me, this demonstrates a lack of due
attention on both parts, as either could have intervened. I guess as
long as you're being a "nice, quiet kid" and not bothering anyone,
everything's cool. As I said earlier, the violence is ramping up
because only the most extreme actions get the authorities to pay any
attention.
Amy - when will you realize that not every child is you? Not every
child can shake off abuse. A child with a shaky self-image can easily
be pushed to the breaking point. What you have endured in the past is
tragic, but you had the will and and confidence to beat it, painful as
the experience may have been. Some kids don't develop those skills
until later in life, and a few never do. Your personal courage allowed
you to get through tough times that would have ruined others. You
deserve to feel good about that, as it shows inner strength. However -
don't belittle the suffering of those that, through no fault of their
own, don't have your fortitude. Everyone has a different threshhold for
pain, be it mental or physical. When predatory youths constantly push
that envelope, something's got to give. When parents and teachers don't
want to assume the responsibility, the situation is that much worse.
Do you not realize that papers have been written on peer abuse in
schoolchildren that parallels, with frightening similarity, bullying
behavior and predation with techniques used to torture prisoners of war?
I will see if I can find a cite. I'm sure you will find it interesting.
Dana Carpender
Amy has a point here, Mirhanda. I was a very unpopular child, and much
of the worst tormenting happened off school property.
Case in point: my first year of Brownies (2nd grade), my troop filled
peat pots with potting mix, and planted marigold seeds. We took care of
them for a few weeks, until we had little pots of seedlings, just in
time to take them home to our mothers for Mother's Day. We wrapped the
pots in pretty blue foil, and took them home.
Well, I was walking home from Brownies -- would have been at least a
half-a-mile from school, and at least an hour and a half after school
let out. A couple of kids who didn't like me -- I still remember their
names, Nancy Lewis and Keith Cronyn -- jumped me, and knocked my peat
pot to the ground. I managed to pick it up and put the little seedlings
back in it, so they grabbed it away from me, and ripped up my marigolds.
Hurt like hell. Still makes me mad when I think about it, and it's been
something like 35 years. There was *nothing* the school could have
done. Nothing the Brownie leader could have done. Maybe -- but only
maybe -- something the parents could have done, but only if they knew
what their kids were like away from home.
It's a scary world out there for kids. Childhood is terribly overrated.
Indeed, I was out for a walk one day with a second grader called simply
"V" -- her mom was getting a set of nail tips at the salon where I was
doing rubs while I was in massage school, and I didn't have any work
right then. V was telling me about the truly hellish social situation
in her second grade classroom. We were stopped at a corner, and I
looked down at her and said, "Y'know, V, bein' a kid *sucks*. She
stared at me as if I were the only adult who'd ever bothered to tell her
the truth.
I think one thing that might help might be to admit to kids that being a
kid really does suck. Kids are mean a lot of the time, and you don't
get to pick your own social set -- you're stuck with the kids in your
school, the kids in your church, the kids in your neighborhood, the kids
in your troop, the kids at your camp. *But it passes.* I've told some
outcast kids that life really does get better as you get older, and they
seemed to take great comfort from it, despite the fact that it was
fairly distant -- it gave them some perspective. Had one high school
freshman actually ask me if there were any predictable time-table.
(Yes, there is. Most kids get somewhat better about those who are
different from them by the end of high school. By senior year, a lot of
the kids who were "geeks" freshman year are now glamourous
individualists. And after that, you get to choose your social set,
anyway.)
Don't know how, quite, this can be used to help the current dreadful
situation...
Amy Gleason
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> > I would never allow a child to tease/harass/torment another child in my
> > presence. I would stop it as quickly as humanly possible, and I would
> > give the teaser/harasser/tormenter a detention, make him clean
> > blackboards, etc. But what's that really going to do? It's going to make
> > the bully aware that I'm watching, so he's going to make sure he
> > teases/harasses/torments where I can't see him. Teachers can't watch
> > everything that goes on in schools.
>
> SO how are parents expected to do what you as a trained professional can not
> do?
Well, for starters, most parents don't have 30 kids. Plus, there are a
million ways that parents can educate themselves, and learn to be better
parents. The hypothetical lack of education on the part of parents
doesn't make the deviance of the kids my fault, now does it?
> WHat happened to teachers renforcing what parents teach at home, what
> happened to teachers and parents working together?
Talk to the parents. Most teachers would love it, but it is like pulling
teeth. And I would have to know what the parents are teaching at home to
reinforce it, and that would be an invasion of their privacy, etc....
> I know personally of a
> group of parents going to our local school and complaining about threats
> being made to children on the bus, st the bus stop, and at school waiting to
> get on or off the bus, we had the childs name that was making the threats
> what threats were made a list of injuries caused to other children by this
> child yet to this day that child is still in school, and riding the bus so
> then whos fault is it ? Is the school not resposible for our children once
> they get on the bus, and get to school?
Perhaps you would have made more progress if you had talked to the kid's
parents. The school is required to provide transportation. The bus
driver is too busy driving to play bus cop. Do you want your taxes raised
so that every bus can have a bus monitor? Why don't all of you concerned
parents take turns riding the bus in with your kids, so that you can
monitor the behavior on the bus and take care of problems as they arise.
I'll bet the administration would be more than willing to allow that. Or
you could drive your kid to school, or buy him a bike, or make him walk.
Or is it just easier to go to the school and say, "This is your problem,
you fix it,"?
> Most of the teasing that I endured in
> > school happened between classes and at lunch, before and after school,
> > etc. when there wasn't a teacher around.
> >
> > All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to teach
> > them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to be
> > a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray, because
> > we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
> >
> But how do we make the schools do their jobs? PROTECT OUR CHILDREN?
The schools are there to TEACH your children. While we're not there to
ENdanger them, we can't be expected to raise them, either.
L & k,
Amy
squeacky
--
Shelli
http://www.geocities.com/kstrucking/canyou.html
http://www.geocities.com/fight_4_family_rights/index.html
"Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
Now who is being sarcastic? Why can children be expected to be resposible
enough to babysit, to drive, to stay home alone, yet if a child does
something wrong it is always that parents fault ? How as parents can we
watch our children 24 hours per day when by law they have to attend school,
are parents suppose to goto school with that child sit in class, goto lunch
as well? When do children become resposible for their own actions? When I
was a teenager and got caught smokeing my mother gave me ass whooping that
hurt, and was grounded for 2 weeks, that didnt stop me from smoking, was
that her fault ? When I choose to skip a class while she was at work was
she suppose to know I was skipping ? Parents as teachers can only do so
much.
>
> > And if that is the case does
> > that mean that a child who is taken at birth or less then a year and
kept in
> > state run homes , that the state is at fault? or is it still the parents
> > fault because of their genitics?
>
> You seem to have gotten the wrong thread... The one you're looking for is
> over there -->
>
> But just for kicks, a child who is raised by the state, who turns out
> screwed up, is the responsibility of the people who raised him, whether
> they're foster parents, an orphanage, a group home, etc. Genetics can
> explain part of what happens with development, but not all of it.
> Environment is a much larger part of it all.
>
> How many of the perpetrators of school shootings have been current or
> former wards of the state?
If I recall from news reports the boy in LA had been in trouble his parents
had ask for help from CP$, the police as well as others, the boys in CO had
been in trouble with the law before as well , as far as knowing for sure if
they had been in state run care or not at one point or another your guess
is as good as mine. But I know for sure that some of the mass murders, and
rapist had been in state run care that is a well know fact .
>
> > > In high school, I spent 50 minutes a day with 7 - 8 different
teachers.
> > > Each of those teachers had an agenda that they had to get through, in
> > > order to truly be doing their job. How could they possibly have
gotten to
> > > know me on a deep enough, personal enough level to know that I was
> > > suicidal?
> >
> > In all the training that professionals are given , are that not given
the
> > warning signs?
>
> Of school violence? I don't know. I'm in a teacher education program,
> and so far I haven't been taught anything about school violence. We've
> talked about it in a couple of my classes, but it has been mostly,
> "Christ, this is scary!" "Yeah, I'm going to teach elementary school!"
> "Damn straight, this crap doesn't happen too often in 1st grade, and if it
> does, at least you're bigger than the kid and can wrestle the gun away..."
>
> > DO that not get any training in suicidal warnings?
>
> Maybe as an in-service or something, but I'm going to be a senior next
> year, and I haven't been taught any of that in school. I've learned it
> elsewhere (psych classes I've taken that weren't required, training for
> the Suicide Prevention Hotline in Indianapolis, etc.), but it is not part
> of the teacher education program I'm in.
>
IMHO with all the violance that every person is exposed to daily, in
newspapers, on t.v. , just to name a few anyone who is going to be dealing
with children, should have some kind of training, things are not as they
were when we were growing up, parents had rights, most communites watched
after children helped eachother out, but today that very rarely happens.
Most are more concerned about themselves or their family (notice I said
most) they are in a hurry and most dont slow down.
Shelli
> L & k,
> Amy
>
Rob Novak
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> > calling it "teasing" you're contributing to the harm.
>
> Would it make you feel better if I called it "harassment"?
No. It's another weasel word applied ineffectively. Why not call it
what it is - abuse?
Let's take a hypothetical here:
I've got a son. He's 12. Every day, when I first see him, I smack him
on the back of the head with a hardcover text book and say "How ya
doin', faggot?" If he gets angry, I shove him to the floor and yell
"what are you going to do about it, you little shit?" While he's trying
to eat dinner, I spit in his meal. Or, I pull his chair out from
underneath him while he's sitting down and he falls to the floor,
covered in food. I laugh. While he's doing his homework, I flick him
painfully in the ear every couple of minutes. If he complains to my
wife, I get a couple other fathers and beat him up while she's not
looking. I tell all his peers that he's a fag, a freak, a loser, and a
geek. I put pins and tacks in his lunch.
What would you say about me as a parent? I bet you'd have CPS on my ass
faster than flies on shit.
Now, instead of his father, I'm his 13-year-old classmate. Why is it no
longer abuse and merely "teasing"? Why is such behavior reprehensible
for one circumstance, but not the other. The effect on the abused is
the same.
You've got a lot to learn.
Al Yellon
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to teach
> them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to be
> a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray, because
> we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
This is the key here, isn't it? That teaching has to go on in the home.
But the thing I can't figure out is this. Teasing and bullying has gone on
in American schools for decades.
Why NOW do some kids feel the only way to solve these problems is with a
gun?
--
**********************************
AY - Charter Member, DBFC
http://www.dbfc.org
**********************************
Rob Novak
Unfortunately, I cannot locate online the journal article I read a few
years ago re: torture techniques and bullying. The following, however,
provide some interesting reading material on the subject.
Insights into bullying for parents and educators:
http://www.successunlimited.co.uk/child.htm
1997 Conference on Values in Higher Education - "Institutional Civility:
When Manners are Morals"
http://web.utk.edu/~unistudy/values/proc1997/ddw.htm
Not authoritative, but a scholarly approach:
http://members.home.net/erozycki/SchoolViolence.html
Klaus Klimer, founder of Swedish treatment center for harassed workers:
"In Britain you call it bullying, in Sweden we call it mobbing but it
doesn’t really matter what you call it, the effects are the same. The
word should really be replaced with psychological terrorism."
Amy Gleason
> Now who is being sarcastic? Why can children be expected to be resposible
> enough to babysit, to drive, to stay home alone, yet if a child does
> something wrong it is always that parents fault ? How as parents can we
> watch our children 24 hours per day when by law they have to attend school,
> are parents suppose to goto school with that child sit in class, goto lunch
> as well? When do children become resposible for their own actions? When I
> was a teenager and got caught smokeing my mother gave me ass whooping that
> hurt, and was grounded for 2 weeks, that didnt stop me from smoking, was
> that her fault ? When I choose to skip a class while she was at work was
> she suppose to know I was skipping ? Parents as teachers can only do so
> much.
Shelli, if you had read the whole thread, you would know that I said, "If
the responsiblity for these shootings lies with anyone OTHER THAN THE
PERSON HOLDING THE GUN, it is with the parents of the person holding the
gun." Those weren't the exact words, but it is close enough for
government work.
> If I recall from news reports the boy in LA had been in trouble his parents
> had ask for help from CP$, the police as well as others, the boys in CO had
> been in trouble with the law before as well , as far as knowing for sure if
> they had been in state run care or not at one point or another your guess
> is as good as mine. But I know for sure that some of the mass murders, and
> rapist had been in state run care that is a well know fact .
"Kid, you are in this police station in a lot of hot water because you did
X. We've run some tests, and we've realized that you fit the profile of a
school shooter, so we're going to hold you until you're 18 just in case.
How's that sound?"
You can't prosecute anyone, child or adult, for a crime that they haven't
committed yet. From your website, I would think that you'd know that
better than anyone.
And the fact is that there IS no profile. The next kid to do this could
be anywhere, and there is no reliable way of identifying him.
> IMHO with all the violance that every person is exposed to daily, in
> newspapers, on t.v. , just to name a few anyone who is going to be dealing
> with children, should have some kind of training, things are not as they
> were when we were growing up, parents had rights, most communites watched
> after children helped eachother out, but today that very rarely happens.
> Most are more concerned about themselves or their family (notice I said
> most) they are in a hurry and most dont slow down.
Well, that's a nice idea. I'll be sure to recommend it next time the
School of Education calls me and asks me what classes I want them to
offer.
As with parents, it is teachers' responsibility to educate themselves
about such things. Unfortunately, you're right. Most people are more
worried about themselves, doing their job, raising their own kids, etc. to
be bothered with it. Especially because human beings have an amazing
capacity for believing "it won't happen to me," even when the evidence
says otherwise.
L & k,
Amy
Rob Novak
news:tadr72g...@corp.supernews.com...
> Why NOW do some kids feel the only way to solve these problems is with
a
> gun?
Because that's the only thing that anyone will pay attention to.
Suicide threats are passe', bruises and an intense fear of going to
school are so 1999, and social withdrawal is what every kid does, right?
When the reaction of those that the child goes to for help is "Buck up,
kid. Don't be such a whiner," what option are we giving? If you're
5'2" and a buck-twenty soaking wet, you think the world is out to get
you, and the supposed authorities ignore you, a gun is a great
equalizer.
Amy Gleason
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
>
> > > calling it "teasing" you're contributing to the harm.
> >
> > Would it make you feel better if I called it "harassment"?
>
> No. It's another weasel word applied ineffectively. Why not call it
> what it is - abuse?
Ok. I'm not here to talk about semantics. I'm here to figure out what is
going on with these kids. Because the teasing/harassment/abuse/etc. is
necessary but not sufficient. It is part of the answer, but it is not the
whole of the answer.
> Let's take a hypothetical here:
>
> I've got a son. He's 12. Every day, when I first see him, I smack him
> on the back of the head with a hardcover text book and say "How ya
> doin', faggot?" If he gets angry, I shove him to the floor and yell
> "what are you going to do about it, you little shit?" While he's trying
> to eat dinner, I spit in his meal. Or, I pull his chair out from
> underneath him while he's sitting down and he falls to the floor,
> covered in food. I laugh. While he's doing his homework, I flick him
> painfully in the ear every couple of minutes. If he complains to my
> wife, I get a couple other fathers and beat him up while she's not
> looking. I tell all his peers that he's a fag, a freak, a loser, and a
> geek. I put pins and tacks in his lunch.
>
> What would you say about me as a parent? I bet you'd have CPS on my ass
> faster than flies on shit.
Must we go down THAT road again?
> Now, instead of his father, I'm his 13-year-old classmate. Why is it no
> longer abuse and merely "teasing"? Why is such behavior reprehensible
> for one circumstance, but not the other. The effect on the abused is
> the same.
1) A 13 year old classmate has not yet reached the age of majority, and
is not legally responsible for his actions. His PARENTS are.
2) CPS can't take a kid out of a school because he's being picked on.
3) The details of the "teasing/harassment/abuse" that these kids have
reportedly suffered STILL have not been cited here. At this point, any
talk of any abuse these kids have gone through is heresay.
4) I never said that kids treating other kids like crap was ok. I give
my kids time outs for calling each other names. If I were their parent,
I'd wash their mouths out with soap and make them write letters of
apology.
> You've got a lot to learn.
That's why I'm still paying $4000 a year in tuition.
L & k,
Amy
Amy Gleason
> "Amy Gleason" <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
> news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
>
> > All we can do for our kids, when we send them off to school, it to teach
> > them how to solve problems nonviolently, how to endure teasing, how to be
> > a good person in the face of bad people, etc. And then we pray, because
> > we can't make the other parents do the same with their kids.
>
> This is the key here, isn't it? That teaching has to go on in the home.
>
> But the thing I can't figure out is this. Teasing and bullying has gone on
> in American schools for decades.
>
> Why NOW do some kids feel the only way to solve these problems is with a
> gun?
That's what I was asking in the first place, before everyone started
telling me that it is somehow my fault that kids do this because I'm a
teacher, etc.
L & k,
Amy
Amy Gleason
> Exactly. The fault lies not 100% with the bullies. The fault lies not
> 100% with the teachers. The fault lies not 100% with the parents. It's
> a vast case of contributory negligence.
That's about the smartest thing you've said in a week.
> What's telling is that in these cases, the students realize that the
> child was having problems, that he was bullied or abused. The parents
> and teachers always seem to be in a different reality - "He was always a
> nice, quiet kid."
When Michael Moore did TV Nation, they set up a guy in a suburban
neighborhood and he did all kinds of creepy things (stabbing motions in
shadow of drawn curtains, burying 50 gallon drums in the back yard with a
backhoe, painting half of the garage in what looked like blood, etc.).
This went on for a while, maybe a month. They filmed the neighbors
watching and shaking their heads. Then they went around the neighborhood
saying that the plant had been arrested for being a serial killer, and
EVERY LAST ONE of the neighbors said, "He was always a nice, quiet
neighbor."
>I have yet to hear the students' and
> parents'/teachers' stories jive. Never have I heard from the
> interviewed parents or teachers, "Yes, we knew he was having problems
> and were trying to help." To me, this demonstrates a lack of due
> attention on both parts, as either could have intervened. I guess as
Probably.
> long as you're being a "nice, quiet kid" and not bothering anyone,
> everything's cool. As I said earlier, the violence is ramping up
> because only the most extreme actions get the authorities to pay any
> attention.
I don't know if I believe that, either.
> Amy - when will you realize that not every child is you? Not every
> child can shake off abuse.
I don't exactly call several years of counseling and major clinical
depression "shaking it off", but ok. Dana says that's just the carbs
talking, anyway.
> A child with a shaky self-image can easily
> be pushed to the breaking point. What you have endured in the past is
> tragic, but you had the will and and confidence to beat it, painful as
> the experience may have been.
And all the other millions of kids who have been "abused" throughout
history have had it too, and only within the last 10 years or so have kids
decided that they can't take it anymore, and started killing their
peers...
That doesn't scan.
> Some kids don't develop those skills
> until later in life, and a few never do. Your personal courage allowed
> you to get through tough times that would have ruined others. You
> deserve to feel good about that, as it shows inner strength. However -
> don't belittle the suffering of those that, through no fault of their
> own, don't have your fortitude.
Well, I don't think there was anything special or significant about the
way I dealt with it. I do think there is something unique and significant
about the way these school shooters are dealing with it (or failing to
deal with it, I guess) and THAT is what I'm trying to get at...
> Everyone has a different threshhold for
> pain, be it mental or physical. When predatory youths constantly push
> that envelope, something's got to give. When parents and teachers don't
> want to assume the responsibility, the situation is that much worse.
You're not going to get me to assume responsibility for not noticing that
the silent kid in the back of the class who always got good grades and
seemed just to be shy and have a penchant for wearing black was acutally a
murderer. I'm a teacher, not a psychic.
> Do you not realize that papers have been written on peer abuse in
> schoolchildren that parallels, with frightening similarity, bullying
> behavior and predation with techniques used to torture prisoners of war?
> I will see if I can find a cite. I'm sure you will find it interesting.
Why not. I probably will.
L & k,
Amy
Dana Carpender
Rob Novak wrote:
. Never have I heard from the
> interviewed parents or teachers, "Yes, we knew he was having problems
> and were trying to help."
I have. Kip Kinkle had been in some *serious* therapy.
Asterbark
>Kids have been teasing each other since the discovery
>of the wheel, but only recently have they turned to deadly violence to
>stop others from teasing them.
That's a fallacy.
Teasing may be part of it, but it is just
>the tip of the iceberg. Something else is going on. Something pervasive
>and scary and dangerous.
>
>Unfortunately, I can't put my finger on what it is.
"How many more years do I have to live every day like this? How many more days
like this can I bear?"
>
>L & k,
>Amy
>
Aster
"a loaded goat"
.
Dana Carpender
Uh, for the group, I *never* said that. I think -- from private
discussions -- that Amy is probably carb intolerant. But I never have
said anything about all of her emotional stuff coming from carb
intolerance. That it contributes, no question. The whole thing? No.
Asterbark
>Mirhanda Sarko wrote:
>
>> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
>>
>> >
>> >To take a gun into a school and to randomly shoot at children (even if one
>> >is a child) is totally different. These kids are saying something more
>> >than "STOP TEASING ME".
>>
>> To call what these kids are going through "teasing" is trivializing the
>> pain and brutality they are experiencing at the hands of these monsters.
>
>And to KILL the monsters that do it, whether they are monsters or just
>regular kids, isn't trivializing anything, huh?
For someone who practically invented the word 'relentless,' I'd expect you to
catch on much sooner.
What, you gonna sucker-punch me now?
Asterbark
>You're suggesting you would have learned reading and math all on your
>own?
I did. School was just a place that gave out busy-work, and was just a place to
turn it in when you're done.
Mirhanda Sarko
>
>Mirhanda, I sense by your tone that you're angry with me. I'm not
>arguing with you. I think that what the bullies are doing sucks. It
>happened to me, and I hated every minute of it. BUT it is no excuse for
>the tormented to take guns and kill the people who are doing the
>teasing/harassing/whatever. Nor does the fact that these kids were
>teased/harassed/whatever COMPLETELY explain why these kids are killing
>their classmates. Yes, it is a part of it. Yes, it is one piece of the
>puzzle, but it is my opinion that the puzzle has about 100 more pieces
>that you aren't considering. Enforcing niceness in schools will NOT solve
>the problem. Something else is going on. My original post on the subject
>was along the lines of asking "what else is going on?".
I'm not angry with you. I'm angry at all those teachers who *know* what is
going on and do nothing to help at all. I saw it when I was in high
school, and fortunately, I wasn't one of the outcasts. I didn't join in
when the ridicule started but I saw it. I saw teachers *participating* in
it. It sickens me to this day. The increasingly violent reactions of
these kids is completely understandable, especially when each new incident
brings so much media attention. These kids decide to go out in a blaze of
glory and take their torturers with them.
>
>However, now you're insulting me, and my ability to do my job as a
>teacher. I suspect that you have personal experience with being
>teased/harassed, and that your personal experience is coming through and
>you are seeing me as one of the teasers/harassers. I'm not one of them.
I don't mean to insult *you*, I'm trying to point out that you *have* to be
able to control the behavior of the students in your class if you want to
teach. If your classroom is out of your control, you won't get any
teaching done. I've seen this too (as I related in a previous post about
my sixth grade history class).
>
>I'm top-posting and not addressing the specific things you said on
>purpose. We're getting nowhere. We're both being defensive. You see me
>as someone as bad as the teasers/harassers. I'm not. I'm just trying to
>explain that there's more to it than teasing/harassing. I'm trying to
>explain that a lot of the parents in this country are doing a crappy job
>of raising their kids, overall, and are expecting the teachers to pick up
>their slack (when teachers aren't even able to do what they're PAID to do
>as it is). I'm trying to explain that a one-answer solution isn't enough
>to explain or solve the problem of school violence. That's all.
I think you have too high an opinion of teachers. I hope you don't become
like many of the ones I've seen. A good teacher is worth her weight (or
more) in gold. I've seen to many of the crappy ones to hold too high an
opinion of them as a profession. I have hopes that this is a dying breed,
mainly because of the low pay and the increasing opportunities for women.
Now that women have more choices than teacher, nurse or secretary, I think
that those who *do* choose teaching do it because they love it, and I hope
that will improve things in the schools. However, there are a lot of
dinosaurs out there who became teachers because they couldn't type and
couldn't stand the sight of blood.
>
>There's a difference between classroom management and raising a child. I
>can be a great classroom manager, and a terrible parent. I could be a
>terrible classroom manager, and a great parent. They're two EXTREMELY
>different things. My belief is that these kids (the ones committing these
>acts of extreme violence) need PARENTS, and that no amount of teaching is
>going to help them, regardless of the ability of the teacher.
I don't know. I think these kids, for the most part *did* have caring
parents. I don't think they would be proud that their children did such
things. They probably had no idea of the level of abuse their children
were facing at school every day. Kids sometimes keep these things secret
from their parents out of a sense of duty. They don't want to let their
parents down by being losers. This is sad. The parents may have a sense
that something is wrong, but unless the teachers who see this behavior (and
face it, the teachers see it at school, the parents don't because they are
not *at* school) tell them, how are they to know? The teacher don't let
on, the children don't...how is a parent going to know?
>If we can't do it completely in 18 - 24 months of intensive therapeutic
>care (including social workers, shrinks, medical care, occupational
>therapists, play therapists, physical therapists, etc. etc.) 24 hours a
>day, how is one classroom teacher supposed to help a kid in 8 hours 5 days
>a week for the 9 months (180 days) he's in her class? Especially when you
>consider that there are 29 other students, and that all of them have to be
>taught reading, math, writing, spelling, science, social studies, art,
>history, music, PE, etc.? Plus you have to have lunch and recess. There
>just isn't time to parent every kid who comes through. We do our best, we
>catch the ones we can, but you can't hold the teachers responsible for
>this kind of violence. It's not fair. It's not right. The
>responsibility lies with the parents. Why does that bother you?
Because the parents aren't *at* school. They don't watch it like the
teachers do. You can bet your buns if the school would allow it, I'd be
there every day. But they *don't*. They don't *want* the parents to see
what's going on. No one is asking teachers to parent, just control the
behavior that they see going on. They are sure quick enough to stop two
kids *kissing* in the hallway, why don't they step in when a mob is abusing
one kid???
>
>In high school, I spent 50 minutes a day with 7 - 8 different teachers.
>Each of those teachers had an agenda that they had to get through, in
>order to truly be doing their job. How could they possibly have gotten to
>know me on a deep enough, personal enough level to know that I was
>suicidal? If I didn't choose to tell them, they'd never know. Most of
>these shootings are happening in high schools. These teachers that you
>blame see these kids for 50 minutes or so for 180 days. Is 9000 minutes,
>divided among 30 kids, enough time to recognize pathology? Maybe if
>you're a trained psychiatrist, but most teachers are not. How can you
>blame us, really? I don't understand.
You can certainly see when children are abusing another kid. The entire
school can name the outcasts. There is no reason to allow it to go on.
Mirhanda
--
Decapitate my addy to email me
I know who you are!! You are the character who occasionally appears in the
comic strip "Sylvia", as "The Woman Who Does Everything More Beautifully
Than You Do".
Les, speaking of me, in alt.fan.cecil-adams
Mirhanda Sarko
>
>And the fact is that there IS no profile. The next kid to do this could
>be anywhere, and there is no reliable way of identifying him.
I can tell you one thing with almost 100% certainty. It will be a boy, and
he will have endured years of abuse at the hands of the "popular" crowd.
Big David
> glea...@purdue.edu (Amy Gleason) wrote in alt.fan.cecil-adams:
> >And the fact is that there IS no profile. The next kid to do this could
> >be anywhere, and there is no reliable way of identifying him.
> I can tell you one thing with almost 100% certainty. It will be a boy,
and
> he will have endured years of abuse at the hands of the "popular" crowd.
Roger that. I was, well, different in high school. While semi-popular due
my super-jock status, there was also a rather large clique of the gliteratti
who found me rather distasteful. Unfortunately, they could do little
except talk about me amongst themselves, since I was known to have a bad
temper and extract apologies for slights both real and perceived with actual
or threats of physical violence. They, having no champion my equal, had to
settle for looking down their noses at me. I did receive many a
disapproving harrumphed from preppy girls who had more money than brains and
I didn't get invited to many of their parties, tragedy though that is. I
think they were also pissed because I took all of their AP classes and
didn't take them as seriously as they did. At least I didn't have to suffer
from cruel teasing and taunting, which would have hurt my sensitive
character rather dramatically. Better to be a big mean outcast than a
scrawny weak one.
--
Big David
If you want to send me email, you should be smart enough to figure out how.
"There is no right not to be offended by words, actions, or symbols".
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
Rob Novak
news:3AA6FB9F...@kiva.net...
> I have. Kip Kinkle had been in some *serious* therapy.
I stand corrected.
Rob Novak
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu...
> Ok. I'm not here to talk about semantics. I'm here to figure out
what is
> going on with these kids. Because the teasing/harassment/abuse/etc.
is
> necessary but not sufficient. It is part of the answer, but it is not
the
> whole of the answer.
I agree 100%. If you've read my other postings on this subject, you
would understand that.
> > What would you say about me as a parent? I bet you'd have CPS on my
ass
> > faster than flies on shit.
>
> Must we go down THAT road again?
Not "you" as in "Amy", "you" as in non-specific second person pronoun.
The "universal 'you'" as it were. The statement was not intended as an
attack.
> 1) A 13 year old classmate has not yet reached the age of majority,
and
> is not legally responsible for his actions. His PARENTS are.
But does that make it any more right and does it help the abused in any
way? We're discussing not legalities, Amy, but morality.
> 2) CPS can't take a kid out of a school because he's being picked on.
Agreed. But that's not what was being asked. In the first case, there
was a consequence to my hypothetical behavior. In the second, it's
harmless "teasing" according to many. Why?
> 3) The details of the "teasing/harassment/abuse" that these kids have
> reportedly suffered STILL have not been cited here. At this point,
any
> talk of any abuse these kids have gone through is heresay.
I can say with utmost authority that such abuse is commonplace. I can
also say with authority that in most cases it's passed off as "childish
hijinx". The particulars of any one case are beyond my capabilities,
but I'd almost guarantee that these incidents don't occur just because
Herbie the Misfit Freshman had a bad hair day. Johnnie Chessclub
doesn't wake up on Monday and suddenly decide the whole world must die.
These incidences have underlying causes.
The funny thing about it all is that the abused and the abuser are two
sides of the same coin. Bullies typically have poor self-image and must
prop their own fragile egos by reducing others to a lower state. The
bullied don't fight back because of their own poor valuation of
themselves. The combination of poor self-image, possible clinical
depression, and anger in the abused leads to a feeling of hopelessness.
Taken to an extreme, this can easily follow through to a point where the
individual only perceives two options: kill or be killed (by the
agressor's hand or their own). We're discussing kids that have
basically been driven to a psychotic state where mass murder is a viable
option. I can't begin to fathom a pit that deep, but I have the
experiences of the past that allow me to understand how such a thing
could occur.
> 4) I never said that kids treating other kids like crap was ok. I
give
> my kids time outs for calling each other names. If I were their
parent,
> I'd wash their mouths out with soap and make them write letters of
> apology.
You, however, are not every parent.
The problem here is that the public wants to find an easily identifiable
answer. They don't want to deal with the fact that it's endemic to the
culture. They don't want to admit that as "teachers" in the moral sense
of the word, they've failed. Blaming the shooter is easy. Figuring out
why the potential shooter is on the path they are, taking responsibility
(whether you're a parent, teacher, minister, cop, whatever), and
intervening to make a difference is hard.
Christ, I sound like a bleeding-heart here, but if a child's parent
isn't doing their job, do we simply discard that child as unteachable?
Or do we make the extra effort to help them learn to deal with the harsh
reality of the real world. These episodes might even stem from real
mental illness. However, rare is the sociopath or psychopath that
evidences no "indicator" behavior before erupting into full-scale
psychosis and violent behavior.
I can't sit here with a straight face and say that we should eliminate
bullying. That's impossible. But neither is it excusable. I'm saying
that we should recognize it for what it is, stop putting soft words like
"teasing", "harassment", and the like around it. Call a bully a bully
and an abuser an abuser. We concentrate on the child who erupts into a
flurry of violence and ignore the underlying causes.
To sum up: Children who commit mass murder are most definitely
responsible for their actions. I believe, however, that circumstances
exist in their environment that exacerbate existing problems or
endgender new ones that promote violent backlash. The victims of the
shootings may or may not be innocents. The adults have every right to
be concerned and question the state of our youth, but they should also
look inside themselves for part of the answer, as well.
Doug Yanega
<Pine.SOL.4.31.010307...@herald.cc.purdue.edu>, Amy
Gleason <glea...@purdue.edu> wrote:
> I work in a residential facility for kids with emotional and behavioral
> disorders and mental retardation. These kids are seriously in need of
> help. They have proven that they are too violent to be in public schools.
> We have them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it still takes us 18 - 24
> months (or more, that's just the average stay) to help them. Even after
> we've helped them with their problems, they'll probably never be able to
> be mainstreamed again. The best they can help for is some kind of
> independent living group home situation.
>
> If we can't do it completely in 18 - 24 months of intensive therapeutic
> care (including social workers, shrinks, medical care, occupational
> therapists, play therapists, physical therapists, etc. etc.) 24 hours a
> day, how is one classroom teacher supposed to help a kid in 8 hours 5 days
> a week for the 9 months (180 days) he's in her class? Especially when you
> consider that there are 29 other students, and that all of them have to be
> taught reading, math, writing, spelling, science, social studies, art,
> history, music, PE, etc.? Plus you have to have lunch and recess. There
> just isn't time to parent every kid who comes through. We do our best, we
> catch the ones we can, but you can't hold the teachers responsible for
> this kind of violence. It's not fair. It's not right. The
> responsibility lies with the parents. Why does that bother you?
Maybe I'm missing something here, from the juxtaposition of these
paragraphs: are you saying that we're asking our teachers to deal with
"kids with emotional and behavioral disorders and mental retardation"
along with other students? If these kids are so socially deviant and
disruptive in class, why exactly are we wedging the square pegs into round
holes with the other students instead of identifying them and isolating
them until we're certain they *can* be "mainstreamed"? One of my nieces
told me how she had to spend one whole semester with a 6-year-old who
would stand in a corner for the entire class, screaming at the top of her
lungs, every single day. What? Is the school afraid that if they remove
the kid, the parents will sue?
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology
Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California
Riverside, CA 92521 909-787-4315 (opinions are mine, not UCR's)
http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is
the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick
tooloud10
news:Xns905D8F40E...@167.206.112.134...
> azz...@bellsouthCAPITATE.net (Mirhanda Sarko) wrote:
>
> >I honestly can say I'm undecided. They ruin lives. That's as bad as
> >taking lives, so maybe so. What I'm sick of is adults who *know* these
> >behaviors are going on and laugh it off with "kids are cruel". That is
> >sending the wrong message.
>
> Recall those "My kid can beat up your honor student" bumper stickers?
> Plenty of parents are just as moronic as their kids.
Well, yeah, if you want to ignore the whole part of bragging about your
child's meager accomplishments via the rear end of your automobile being
just as moronic.
> --
> Bob
--
Jake
Remove nothing to reply
Rick Howard
tooloud10 wrote
> Bob Geary wrote
> >
> > Recall those "My kid can beat up your honor student" bumper stickers?
> > Plenty of parents are just as moronic as their kids.
>
> Well, yeah, if you want to ignore the whole part of bragging about your
> child's meager accomplishments via the rear end of your automobile being
> just as moronic.
It's a way to recognize and encourage good behavior.
What's wrong with that?
--
But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me,
The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.
Big Iron5
>>And the fact is that there IS no profile. The next kid to do this could
>>be anywhere, and there is no reliable way of identifying him.
>
>I can tell you one thing with almost 100% certainty. It will be a boy,
Unless maybe the shit comes down on a Monday. <g>
and
>he will have endured years of abuse at the hands of the "popular" crowd.
Make no mistake, I'm largely with you on that -- quite a bit of the BS that
goes on there is so far beyond "teasing" it is ridiculous. It is truly gross
abuse and torment.
Journey into Dutch Courage
Date: 3/7/2001 8:19 PM Eastern Standard Time writes:
>>A good example is the other thread about the guy from Kuwait who
> >posted his credit card number on Amazon. Either this is a case of a
> >bunch of afca'ers making fun of a guy who doesn't read English well
> >enough to realize he was posting to an open forum or someone
> >created a hoax based on the idea of a stupid foreigner. There is
> >not much difference between certain members of this group taking
> >delight in taunting this guy and bullies taunting the "weird" kid
> >in school.
>
>We're not taunting him! What are the odds he reads AFCA?
>
>No, we're laughing at someone else's misfortune, the basis of all humor.
Well, except for puns, riddles. um...
Imperious Rex!
Fred Simons
"Rob Novak" <robat...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:3aa69673$1...@news4.newsfeeds.com...
>
> > You misunderstand, or I have not made my position clear. I believe
> both
> > parties are victims. The aggressors are the victims of the prey's
>
> Oops, I meant to write "I believe both parties are victims, and both
> parties are culpable."
>
> --
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
> little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
> - B. Franklin (Historical Review of PA)
> http://ugotawanit.homepage.com
I have hesitated about wading in on this thread, because it strikes me so
intensely personally. Fortunately, at this point, Rob and Mirhanda have
said a lot that I would have liked to say, and in my opinion, said it a lot
better - Rob Novak especially.
My junior-high years were almost exactly like Rob's, in fact, I was amazed
by the resemblance. I was also small and scrawny, and (apparently) lacking
in social skills. I also had a perfectionist father - the kind who would
punish me for getting a "B+" in a class because I was simply /expected/ to
get an "A", and I was simply /expected/ to do equally well in anything else
I tried. I had been "skipped" in grade school, so I was a grade ahead of
what my chronological age would have put me in - essentially, as a
7th-grader I was intellectually bright; but skinny, undersized, socially
immature...and in *8th* grade.
In addition, my father became disabled, and we became desperately poor. I
have always actually envied kids who grew up in slums and ghettoes, at least
they were not alone. We got to be the token white trash in what was
otherwise a modestly prosperous small-town / rural community. I wasn't able
to be clothed even adequately for Wisconsin's winter climate - "stylish" was
so impossibly remote that I didn't even think about it. I had no spending
money at all - I couldn't have gone to the movies or the DQ or to any social
functions even if I /had/ been invited.
So I got to be an outcast, and Rob has done a pretty eloquent job of
explaining what that was like.
One important thing to realize - I can't emphasize it enough, and other
posters have only addressed it obliquely (well, I think Big Dave referred to
it) - the kids who did these things to me were not the slackers, the
blue-collars, the rednecks, whatever. The kids who pulled this crap were
the *popular* kids - the bankers' kids, the doctors' kids, what passed for
"rich" in our town. The athletes and the star students and class officers.
The kids on the prom court. Kids that the adults in the school and
community openly praised and celebrated and approved of.
Unlike Rob, I never, for some reason, considered suicide. I now recognize
that I did a lot of things that were self-destructive and self-sabotaging,
however.
Like Rob, one day I completely snapped. I got up from my desk in class to
sharpen my pencil, and as I was walking down the aisle one of my star
tormentors tripped me. I fell flat on my face and everybody laughed. When
I regained my feet, I slugged that young man square in the mouth so hard I
broke his jaw, and teeth and blood went flying. He fell down, dazed, and I
proceeded to do my level best to strangle him. He was still alive, but
totally unconscious, when my teacher and the assistant principal succeeded
in prying me away.
Turned out I had friends I didn't know about. The authorities (mainly the
school administration) tried to get me into serious trouble, but teachers
and some of my fellow students stepped forward to testify to the degree I
had been provoked - the school administration decided to let the thing blow
over, and I was finally allowed to return to school, and the juvenile
charges were dropped.
I was still an outcast, but the verbal and physical tormenting just
...STOPPED. I still didn't get invited anywhere, but no one said a nasty
thing to me, and NO ONE LAID A FINGER ON ME, for the rest of the year.
It was Heaven.
The next year, by Mom obtained a scholarship for me to a Catholic boarding
school. Nobody there knew I was supposed to be an outcast. Nobody there
knew how poor I was, how raggedy our house was, or how rusty my parents' car
was. The truly wealthy kids in my new school didn't dress "stylishly" -
they wore old raggedy clothes because that was the ultimate in cool. My
clothes were old and raggedy because that's all I had, but they fit right
in, and I felt no need to enlighten my new classmates as to the reasons for
my wardrobe.
In short, somebody waved a magic wand and I suddenly became just a normal
part of the crowd.
Some observations:
To this day I do not know why I was a such a loathed outcast in 7th through
9th grades. Skinny, bookish, immature, poverty just aren't sufficient to
explain it.
When I went to my new school, I was still skinny, bookish, and immature and
family still poor (although Mom had got a steady job and we weren't as
desperately poor as we had been). But I was perfectly accepted (I was in
the school plays, band, track, cross-country -varsity letters both junior
and senior years - and student government: I was /almost/ my senior-class
president - I won the preliminary, but only by a plurality, I lost the
run-off). Go figure.
The kids who tormented me were the *popular* kids in school. They were
athletes, class officers, the ones elected to prom court, homecoming king,
that sort of thing. The adults in the school and community AGREED with the
kids who considered me a loathsome outcast. They were praised and rewarded,
they never suffered consequences for anything they did to me, and I was
severely punished when I made feeble attempts to retaliate.
Violence works. Keep telling kids of all the non-violent ways to cope with
bullying. BULLSHIT. Violence WORKS. Worked for me. Nothing I did up to
9th grade did anything to alleviate the torment I received. No coping
strategy succeeded in keeping my life at school and elsewhere from being
anything but a living hell.
When it suddenly became apparent that bothering me would at least /possibly/
earn you a busted face, the crap *stopped*. *Instantly* and *totally*.
Violence *worked* when everything else had failed.
A word about guns. When all this was going on, I not only had /access/ to
guns, I had my /own/ guns - rifles and shotgun (in that place and time that
was not considered unusual). I never, ever, remotely even considered
shooting anybody. Let alone shooting up the school. Certainly not because
I was so totally non-violent - see preceding. I certainly had all sorts of
revenge fantasies. But the idea of using my guns to get some kind of
revenge never even remotely entered my mind.
Something kids nowadays, I tell them this and they flat-out don't believe
me. When I went away to school, I took my guns with me. Kept 'em in a
closet with all my other meager personal stuff. The school property
included 140 acres of woods, and sometimes after classes I would fish a few
soda cans out of the trash bin, take my .22 out into the woods, and shred
some tin cans. Nobody cared, and this did not excite or even interested
anybody (except that once or three times the offer of shooting lessons
turned out to be a great ice-breaker for getting to know some girls
better...).
I can't figure out this shoot-up-my-school thing. When I hear of a kid
having been bullied, I know /exactly/ what they've gone through and how they
feel. I've been there. When I was that age, and had that experience - Lord
knows I had the motive, I had opportunity - sheesh, back then, nobody would
have expected it, I could have strolled right into the school with my gun
tucked under my arm - if I'd done it during deer/duck/small-game season
nobody would have paid any attention to me. I had better guns than the
recent school shooters have used - repeating rifle and pump shotgun...
"Access to guns" just doesn't explain it. I had access to guns like the
modern crop of school shooters can only dream of. I was not, and am not, any
paragon of moral virtue. I was, and am, emphatically NOT non-violent.
I'm morally certain I was not the only kid who got bullied in 1969. I'm
morally certain there were other bullying victims who had just as much
"access" to firearms as I did in 1969. I don't recall that 1969 was exactly
a period of any exceptional peace and tranquility in our society, quite the
opposite, in fact. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, nobody shot up a
school in 1969. What's different about today?
Damfino.
Fred Simons
And knowing is half the battle.
>Sure, the teasers are wrong. Very wrong. Mean. Even bad people...
>But do they deserve to die for it?
No, but they deserve to have their braces punched through their lips.
--
"When life hands you a lemon, pull out a gun and start shooting."
"It's all fun and games until somebody gets eaten." - Louis
http://login.internettrash.com/users/lots42/index.html - Mar 6