We’ve all seen and read the news story about 15 year old Phoebe Prince, the young Irish immigrant living in South Hadley, Massachusetts who committed suicide when the bullying by six bottom feeders at her school got to be too much. The coup de grace came while she was walking home and a car load of the bullies drove by and threw a can of soda at her hitting her in the head. Hours later, she hanged herself.
Well, now it comes to light that Prince sought help from her school’s administrators only to be met with deaf ears. Two teachers at her school also reported two separate incidences of bullying towards Prince and nothing came of that either. The six bullies involved have finally been taken out of that school, charged with a host of crimes, (two of the boys involved face rape charges) and everyone’s lawyered up. School officials, according to District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel, the fact that school admins knew about it but did nothing was “bothersome but not criminal”. School officials do not face charges in this matter.
There isn’t a parent alive that has not come across a school bully. It’s an oft told story and to date, we can put a man on the moon, we can perform heart surgery on a fetus in utero but we cannot solve the problem of how to get our children to behave. And quite frankly, I’d like to know why.
Back in the day, when schools actually had some disciplinary authority over students, bullies got reported to the principal’s office and were disciplined. Some were thrown out of school, expelled as were. Bullies retaliated by making it “uncool” to tattle and so bullying went on. Then schools were, bit by bit, divested of any real disciplinary measures because parents began wringing their hands over “self esteem and paddling is abuse”. We can’t throw the little bastards out anymore because, for some reason, they have a right to be in school causing trouble. We refuse to allow our teachers to discipline them so now teachers, faced with falling wages and triple classroom sizes have to find creative ways to keep order but not “stifle anyone’s creativity” or “break their spirits” with any kind of hardline discipline.
So, we no longer have public institutions of learning, we have free, glorified daycare. And what’s worse…mom and dad are apparently NOT doing their job at home.
So I would like to hear from teachers and parents alike. Where does a bully come from? What goes on in a home that gives some brat the idea that it is acceptable to go to school and bully anyone else. I’m not talking about Jimmy and Joey fighting on the playground. No…bullying and the lack of action towards it has taken a far more sinister turn. I want to know… would you support statewide anti bullying legislation that required the parent to be punished for their child’s behavior? In other words, your kid gets caught under age drinking, loitering, shoplifting, and bullying other kids just to name a few transgressions. How willing would you be to bend over backwards circumventing this behavior if you, as the parent, were faced with a very stiff financial penalty for each transgression? How likely are you to know where your child is, what your child is doing, how your child behaves and if your child is bullying another student if you are the one who has to pick up trash and dead animals on the roadside all while wearing a bright neon vest emblazoned with the words “I Raised My Child To Be a Bully” or “ I Raised My Child to Drink and Drive”, “I Raised My Child to be a Shoplifter”, “I Raised My Child to Be a Thief”. No mani-pedi appointments to keep, no soccer practice to get to, no…you’re rocking some serious community service hours out on the roadside wearing an embarrassing vest emblazoned with your child’s behavioral crime so that all of your friends, neighbors, work associates, bosses and people you don’t know can see what a lousy parent you are. Seriously, if you had to do the time, how likely is your kid to do the crime? I want to know.
