One of my favorite columnists in Toronto wrote about the latest kerfluffel in the schools there. It seems that a girl was sexually and emotionally abused by a small gang in her school. Not unexampled...though certainly the events were extreme. However, just to stir the pot, the parents of all these little darlings are grasping at the race straw instead of pointing the finger of blame at their own bad parenting. Hey, its a gang..it just happened to be black, okay! And its a "small G" sort of gang...the kind that forms in every high school in the nation, not really a "gang", but rather a group of kids who all sort of hang together. (thats a gang....duuh). And this led me to wonder about the nature of groups, gangs, and high school clusters in general. Lots of good books on the subject.
The big difficulty with these perps is that they had no idea where to draw the line. I suspect most of them are basically good kids, but they crossed several moral, ethical and legal lines in their behavior. This bahavior went on for what..a year and a half!
Great column...."follow my rules and you won't get expelled". Yup, that about sums it up!
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Blizzard_Christina/2005/11/16/1308676.html
As a boy going to school in the late '70s here in Ontario, I was heavily targeted by bullies. I went through years of soul searching, wondering why the teachers couldn't stop this nonsense. Like most boys, I skinned my knuckles a few times, got into a bit of trouble, got out of it, and eventually graduated. It was a traumatic time. However.........after I was grown up, I looked back on what was a pretty much miserable time, and tried to figure out how I could have done it better. Your contention that even the teachers have an unclear idea of just what behaviour constitutes bullying resonated, and I believe now that my misery was largely self induced. That as a boy of 15, I knew nothing about real abuse, real injury, real death, and reacted to unimportant things as if they were important.
I didn't think so at the time, but I was wrapped in cotton wool, and I had to make my own stressful environment. A very artificial environment. An environment where fighting, drugs, sex, rebellion and angst played a part, and the most important part was our over-reaction to what amounted to mild stimuli....a fight because somebody thought I wore the wrong colour socks for instance. This was pretty low level stress, but the reactions were all there! (reactions? yes, we had suicides, overdoses, pregnancies in our school...these are pretty severe reactions!) Its interesting looking back on it as an adult, and wondering "What was I thinking to fall for THAT!"
Most adults learn to cope with "jackasses" in high school. No point in expelling them all, or you won't have ANY students left! My school expelled the problem students, and their little "lieutenants" just stepped into their shoes! So there WILL be low level violence, (shoving in line, stealing pencils!) In fact, my dear old Ma always said that you didn't go to high school to learn Math, you went there to learn how to deal with the twits of the world! And maybe, just maybe, to learn how NOT be a twit yourself. If this was true though, how come it isn't on the curriculum? Something like "coping with angst 101"? Or, "the motorcycle, the road, the bridge abutment and you?" At least they taught us to drive! So you have to put up with the low level b.s., clamp down hard on the high level b.s. like riding motorcycles down the hallways of the school and gangstas.
I know, radical idea, encouraging the low level "violence" (boys interaction with boys, duuuh!) in order to give them the tools to cope. But NO! They drop the boxing courses. They drop the wrestling courses. They drop the Judo courses. They drop the shop courses (we made a hot rod in MY shops class!) They make zero tolerance policies on pocket knives and name calling. Is this sensible? Its not like this is a new problem here dudes!
Same students left high school where they terrorized the teachers, drove like maniacs, drank like fish, smoked up like Cheech and Chong, bonked like minks, and went into adult life. I went into the military with these guys, and discovered that all the stupid things I thought were important were, well, stupid. Can you imagine if any of them threatened a military instructor with a knife like what happened to a teacher friend of mine in Toronto last May! Oh My Dog! There is a difference though....the military treats people like adults, the school system treats people like high school students. Wrapping them in cotton wool.
(insert hit single "I'm an Adult Now!" here....play to fade...)
5 comments:
In case I haven't mentioned it, you can buy those demotivational posters at thinkgeek.com :D.
Wow, this sorta makes me a spammer doesn't it? hehe :D
High school is a socializing institution. This is something we've been talking about in my Language and CUlture class this semester. THe prof is from a different country (her family is from India but she grew up in Africa). She says she had a lot of problems with understanding American (and, I imagine that I might be able to include Canada in this) culture until she understood about our high schools.
I think my greatest gift from my mother (even greater than life!) was her continually telling me that high school was not that big a deal. WHile I waas in high school. Even though I really had no perspective on the world (and no teenager really does), I think I had a slightly better perspective than most of the people around me.
On the other hand, I was very upset when I left high school (in this case to join the Army) and I realized that the world is just one giant high school.
Personally, I think all high schoolers should be put in a state of stasis until... maybe 25 years old, because that is when the brain finally finishes developing.
I have dealt with the issue of “bullying” with my 11-yr-old daughter, who is developmentally delayed. I have always thought that girl bullies are worse than boy bullies, because boys will just knock you out and that’s that. Girls carry on for days or weeks with very subtle psychological games that hurt much worse than getting punched. I really believe girls are hard-wired to be bitches. Maybe that’s why I’ve always gotten along better with males. Anyway, I have learned from experience that school administrators do not have the time, the skills, nor the inclination to intervene in these cases. It is up to the parents to teach their kids how to protect themselves. It’s bad enough when it happens to the average kid, but to stand by and let a slow child be picked on just infuriates me. So I have had to confront several parents about this, and as soon as I meet the mothers it is immediately apparent where they get it from. Your mama’s a smart lady. I fully believe she is right. My daughter has no problem with academics. And I could theoretically pull her out of the public arena and put her in a “special” school but I would be doing her a great disservice. She has to learn how to function in society, how to hold her own in the world. And the other kids need to learn how to respect people with disabilities.
I shall endeavor to give credit where credit is due then. Those posters are sick!
Love your comment about stasis until 25. And I always felt that when a girl talked to me, there was always a sting in it for me. (paranoid? well, is it still paranoia if they really ARE out to get you?) Of course, not to be outdone, my friend Joyce always said..."All men are dogs." My reply of course was...well, yes, but thats because girls LIKE dogs...grin! ba dum dum!
I remember when Dr. Laura was asked "Why did you do a book called "101 things girls do to mess up their lives", are there not a hundred ways boys mess up their lives too?" Dr. Laura replied that in her years of practice, she had never met with the parents of a "Boy" who put his studies on hold to try to build a relationship with a girl who didn't care. Or a boy that said "well, our relationship will stay together if "we" only had a baby!" Or a boy who developed an eating disorder because his mates thought he looked fat in those jeans.
Guys have their own problems....the urge to show off becomes irresistably stronger when there are girls present. I lost 6% of my classmates to vehicle mis-use between the ages of 16 and 18. six percent. thats one per home room! In two years.
But,that's another rant entirely. You are right Jen, people will have to learn to deal with people with disabilities. That is part of the whole series...they will have to learn to deal with people who do not have disabilites as well, with people who are Native American, African American, covered in acne, in wheel chairs, with horns on their heads (like Zlanth) or of different sexes, religions and sexual orientation.
So, we are all agreed with Ovonia Red who says High School is a socializing institution. Should we not be demanding MORE socialization, MORE understanding of what motivates us? More cultural sensitivity? Instead, we see teachers "working to rule" by refusing to to extra curricular activities.
I feel another rant coming on, so I think I shall just go for a cold shower, and a nice soak in my hot tub. That usually helps....
My word verification says it all.....btpryw!
I saw one of my favorite authors on PBS the other night, Kurt Vonnegutt, he was saying the suburbanites need to form gangs or we become extinct.
When in high school I was a jock, hood, prep and nerd all rolled up in one. Never gang brother though. Don't like conforming to someone else's rules regardless of their social standard.
Post a Comment