Nine teens charged in bullying suicide

Logical fallacy of false choice.

 

Must be nice living in your little bubble where you can make sweeping generalizations like that.

You must think everyone in Los Angeles is materialistic. And everyone in San Francisco is gay.

 

If your children watch network TV after 7 pm...I assure you...there is an adult laying something more powerful than a hand on your child.

I don't say this to be some kind ooh ooh bogeyman. I just think people need to look and their children's influences differently. Some ruler hitting a kid's hand isn't nearly as damaging as a whole season of, say, Desperate Housewives or Gossip Girl, both of which are ripe with lies and distortions of reality.

 

We have now entered 1950's SportsJournalists.com.

It may start with a ruler but it has the potential to go much farther than that.

 

Obviously they aren't doing much at home to turn their kid into a respectful human being.

I was bullied a LOT in school (something about being small with bad hair and glasses was not a good combination) and watched a lot of teachers do basically nothing about it. Teachers know what's going on a lot more than most people think, and the fact that they also just sit by and let these things happen is a disgrace.

I'm glad someone is finally being held accountable for this kind of thing.

 

Have the school admin call the police. Have them create a report and charge the kid. When Local Tech, State U or Private U look up the kids records, this will be on there.

Trust me. In this day and age, that is far worse than an ass whooping.

 

Whether it's a sweeping generalization or not, my own experience bore that out, and, well, I don't necessarily adhere to the "benefit of the doubt." The culture in Massachusetts is marked with vulgarity, profanity and occasionally racism. And it doesn't seem to faze many people up there. I'm sure those words are hurtful, but, in my experience, they're fairly earned.

New Englanders could always do something about it.

A thread like this always calls to the mat the same cast of characters: Teachers and administrators. I'm merely considering another actor in the room.

 

I'm not for the ruler. But then I don't have to be for or against it. The ruler isn't coming back.

So when you say "no adult is laying their hand on my child" you might as well use it as a statement of fact, because no adult <i>will</i> lay a hand on your child.

I'm simply saying: Worry about what adults will do. And they do plenty through the boob tube.

 

I tell my kids not to bully, tease or make fun of other kids.

I also tell them if they see someone doing it, even if it's to some "weird" kid, they need to make them stop.

I don't know how successful that encouragement has been.

 

At least you've said something. While it's abominable when a school fails to intercede in some way, the bigger problem is that the parents of the bullies are often a big reason why the bullies are bullies -- because of problems at home, a refusal to see what's going on, or outright encouraging the behavior.

The South Hadley schools have a lot to answer for in turning the other way, but I suspect part of the reason it did so is the realization it would receive zero support from parents. That's not an excuse, but sadly it is the reality.

 

This is 1,000 percent a parenting problem, and laying it on the teachers and administrators is a cop-out. People just want to pretend we haven't learned anything about behavior in the last 30-50 years and that what went on in 1975 should be just fine now. You hear it all the time, "man it isn't like it used to be." Very similar to when someone gets fired for making a racist comment and that person's defenders say "geez, you can't say anything anymore!"

 

The other issue is that most parents of teens are absolutely unaware of what their kids are doing online, and in many cases seem to be proud of their computer illiteracy. Meanwhile, their kids, with no guidance whatsoever, are doing things online that THEY don't know the consequences of, and creating bigger problems than the days when bullying meant getting beat up for your lunch money.

I once saw John Halligan speak (Halligan's son killed himself in 2003, and the father, an IBM exec, discovered after the fact all the cyberbullying going on), and while I'm not sure that cyberbullying causes suicide in otherwise untroubled kids (Alexis Pilkington, the soccer player who killed herself on Long Island, was being treated for mental illness), I would agree with his point that what cyberbullying can do is provide no escape from the behavior. At least with getting beat up, once you got home, you were safe and away. Not so with cyberbullying.