Bully Sets Girl's Hair on Fire in School
 

This is battery, at the least, and attempted murder, at most. This is what comes from not holding people responsible for their actions. This boy should have been arrested. Yet apparantly nothing was done. Wonder what he's going to eventually end up in jail for? Not only was he carrying a concealed weapon, and threatening her with it, but he set her fucking hair on fire....If I were his mother, I'd send him to jail myself. After I let his father beat his ass.

Sidhe

Bully

C'mon - its a harmless prank.
















:D

Yeah....somebody oughta set his butt on fire. :p

Well, those of us in Colorado (all what? two of us?) also read the Rocky Mountain News which is slightly less sensationalist. Yes the incident did happen, but the knife in question was plastic, not real. School officials are red-faced, admitting the incident was deplorable and the boy who did this HAS been disciplined. The acting principle of the school will probably end up being disciplined as well, for his mishandling of the incident.

Here's what the Rocky Mountain said on its Op-Ed page: "Children can be cruel, of course, but they can also be held to standards, if not of empathy, then decency. But they also need adults around them who live by those standards and who expect them to do the same."

...Long Silence...

Colorado is a state where the disabled are expected to live on $140.00 a month plus $140.00 in food stamps until they are approved for Federal Aid. That's it. Period. End of the discussion. There is NO medical help. With the recent HUD cuts, there is NO help with housing. The waiting period to get on SSI/SSDI in Colorado averages two years or more. Waits of 3, 4, and 5 years are common. I spoke with the local Democratic representative for my area who serves in the Colorado State Legislature about the largely Republican legislature's attitude to the disabled. This man said, and I quote, "The Republican majority in the Colorado legislature don't care about the disabled. The instructions come out from party leaders and they vote the straight party line. They believe that the disabled of Colorado deserve what they get." End Quote.

OK. "minen kinden," here's a little exercise in logic for you. Take a group of people who have become disabled for non-work related reasons. These people are already too ill or too injured to work anymore. Put them out on the streets with $140 a month food stamps and $140 cash a month. Don't help them with the prescriptions they almost certainly need. Don't give them any but the most minimalist medical care. For God's sake, don't give them shelter, or if you must, make sure its in an environment where they are likely to be victimized by crimes such as knifings, rapes, and muggings. Tell these disabled folks to go play nicely out there until the Federal Government calls them to come in and eat a few left over scraps from the dinner table two or three years later.

How many places should you set at the table when that bell finally rings? Hint: All essays returned using the phrase "arbeit macht frie" will be given an automatic "A+".

That kid in Denver was doing to that disabled little girl exactly what the adult world in the state of Colorado had modeled for him. He just hasn't picked up on how to be less blatant about it yet (Yes, I'm back on my soap box. But I LIVED this reality and until it stops being the reality for the disabled in much of this country, I'm not shutting up.).

If you want to bitch about the disability/welfare systems in Colorado, start a thread to bitch about it.

Oh wait, you did.

None of that information is relevant to the issue here ... and that is, real knife or no, the bully caused physical injury to the girl and is not being criminally charged.

Toy knives and guns are as restricted by most schools as the real thing. Matches and lighters are also usually banned from school settings, although perhaps not as often as Midol.

Regardless of whether the knife was real or plastic, it doesn't matter. He still set her hair on fire, and it still could have had tragic consequences. Excusing his behavior because the knife wasn't "real," or rather, implying that the fact that it was plastic is a mitigating factor, is an example of why kids who show violent tendencies end up being adults who follow through on violent tendencies. They aren't made to take responsibility for their actions, so they learn that they can get away with it. Then they get more and more bold and more and more violent, and eventually they end up killing someone because no one ever stopped them before it became lethal. THEN their lawyer says, "but it's not his fault....it's the school's/parent's fault for not stopping him earlier, so...."


I'd've made him wish he'd never seen that girl if he'd been my son. He'd have made a public apology to her, and he wouldn't have seen daylight for months.

There is absolutely NO excuse for his actions. None. Nip the behavior in the bud before it gets a chance to get out of hand, I say. Hell, those "zero-tolerance" schools out there have EXPELLED kids for bringing plastic knives to school.

You can still poke out an eye, you know...;)


Sidhe

Christ, you're getting as bad as TW.:(

Huh? If you're referring to me, I have no idea what you mean by that. My opinions on violence haven't changed since I got here....:confused:

I agree with you 100% that this kid's actions were in excusable. I just wish the sensationalist media would get its facts straight. Its like crying "wolf" (sorry, Wolf, not you, of course), when something awful happens people tend not to believe it because everything has always been blown out of proportion in the past. And hell, you can poke out an eye with a pencil, too. What do the pro-gun people say? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." I think this slogan is a cop out, but it does make some sense. Sure, we don't want kids bringing weapons to algebra class. Who needs another Columbine? But we need to resolve their motive for WANTING to bring guns to algebra class, as well. We should work on both these things.

And NOW to call Wolf: Wolf, I don't recall starting any thread specifically on the help given by the government to the disabled. Other people have started threads that were close to that and I remember starting that thread which asked a very general question about what is the correct response of a concerned person to percieved wrongs. Did I actually start a thread specifically about the disabled in the first post????? I don't remember it if I did. I guess I'm going to have to back and search through all my threads that I started now to see what I said. And what about Midol, anyhow? If you want to hijack the thread, I'd rather talk about sudafed, personally.

guns don't kill people, I kill people.

Eh, I think I'll go kill myself. I'm going to shut up about the whole disability thing - for a minute or two, anyhow. I'm getting as bad as Radar (shudders at the thought)!;)

Actually, even though he underfunded it like crazy, the "No Child Left Behind Act" probably insures that if the school admits it cannot effectively teach this girl, especially through no fault of hers, then they are going to have to send her, and pay for, someplace that can.

Automatically giving her an 'A' and promoting her won't cut it. Any 5 dollar lawyer can win this one.

Marichiko, you are sooo right on with your post. Where do we think children get their attitudes from, anyway? Sadly, I have too often seen school administrators take the side of the bully--I think they sometimes view it as the path of least resistance. Of course, it would be nice if schools didn't have to deal with this crap in the first place.

http://nervous.typepad.com

No, not you.:blush: A couple of posts slipped in there.

Well, that leaves either me or Wolf. Probably me. I know I've been doing a lot or ranting lately (sigh). I just get so upset, but bitching about it is not going to win people over to my side. Sorry. (slinks off).

That doesnt really sound like a punishment. Not to me anyway.


If my parents would have doled out that type of punishment when I was growing up, I would have set someone's home on fire to get it.

I think marichiko raises an excellent point. Where do children look to for their socialisation? Society...If society undervalues the disabled then it stands to reason some children will infer from that that disabled people are not worth the same degree of respect as their ablebodied peers.

I dont think you are whining marichiko I think you are drawing on your own personal experience to add weight to your arguments which are political in nature. We all draw on our own experience you draw on the battles you have fought as wolf draws on her Psychiatric experiences

It should be a shitload easier for state schools everywhere to kick little shits like this kid out.

And then jaguar? Let them stay outside in the streets the whole day? When I was a little kid, I made a lot of bad things and the only thing which helped was when my parents explained me what I did wrong and then punished me (in a way or an other). But we already have a discussion about that.
I think the boy didn't get the best education he should have been given. Maybe you should send his parents to jail too!

I don't know about the US but I know back in australia there were some schools designed for these kids, I do know in normal state schools they could and did severely interrupt the progress of entire classes, greatest good, greatest number. One little maladjusted fuckup should not be able given the opportunity to slow the learning of classes of students and make teachers already difficult jobs harder. In my experiece half the time the parents were equally large liabilities and already well aquainted with the prison system.

We do put all of our maladjusted fuckups in one basket.

They are called "Alternative Schools".

It's usually the step before juvenile detention and/or boot camp.

Think of Lord of the Flies, and then set it in a school building.

Least it lets everyone else get on with learning.

My kid goes to an alternative school (many students just returned from the NCACS conference at The Farm, in Tennessee), I haven't noticed any tribal war paint or pig heads on sticks or anything...

A few of the kids who are graduating this year;
Dillon C is going to Simon's Rock in Great Barrington MA, to start college in what would be his junior year of high school. He received grants and a large merit based scholarship to the school, which is affiliated with Baird.
Rebekah B was accepted at Bryn Mawr as a sophmore.
Hope T was accepted at Stanford, Brown, Williams, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, and Scripps Colleges. Smith offered her a Stride fellowship where she will become a faculty research fellow begining in her freshman year. Hope will receive a scholarship as well as a stipend.
etc.

Somehow I don't think thats the alt school wolf met. That is however, incredibly impressive.

:eek: Don't you usually become a research fellow after you finish your postgrad phd, which kind of implies finishing your undergrad studies. I assume this is some kind of school for the exceptionally gifted.

No, it's an alternative community school. The place that I remember them sending the fuck ups from our local public school. There are a lot of fuck ups there, but they don't seem to be bothering anyone.

That is an entirely different kind of alternative school that jinx is talking about. Might be more properly referred to as a magnet or charter school?

The only post high-school institutions of learning most alternative school kids attend are ones with the words "correctional facility" in their names.


Of course, Elverson is culturally very different from Norristown.

Actually, bullets traveling at a high rate of speed kill people....;)

Sidhe

Well that couldn't be more true. They bus kids in from Philadelphia though... (and Coatesville :eek: )

Maybe if there was a "zero-tolerance" for bullying, it would stop. Start kicking the little heathens out of school, and I'll bet THAT would give the parents a kick in the ass to take their kids to the woodshed and teach them some manners....

I remember when I was in eighth grade...I went to a really rough school, though I didn't really realize it at the time. These kids would stand right up and sass teachers. As you can imagine, the teachers were pretty hard-ass. They'd throw something at a kid at the first sign of aggression. And the girls...they had mouths that would make a sailor blush crimson and run for the soap. These kids all needed to be in reformatories or something. I look back and am just amazed.

I remember once, our math teacher, Mr. Lovely, a BIIIG dude, told one boy who thought he was a bad-ass to go to the principal's office. The kid refused, so Mr. Lovely proceeded to put him in his place in front of all the friends this kid was trying to impress. The little "badass" ended up bawling like a baby, demanding to go to the principal's office, but Mr. Lovely blocked the door and told him to sit his ass back down. The kid never caused another problem again, and was always respectful to Mr. Lovely after that.

Sometimes that's all it takes. These kids seem to forget that no matter how badass you are, there's always someone who's MORE badass.


Sidhe.

Oh, I dunno....no friends, no phone, no computer...nothing but your four walls? That would have driven me batshit.

Parenting 101
 

Lemme just get this straight... you say "You will act civilized and have manners or I will take you outside and beat the shit out of you!!" and then the kid behaves? What happens when the kid gets bigger than you? They get to teach you some manners?

That's his point.

One man's hell is another's heaven.

Some people don't think to put themselves in the shoes of others. Think of the humiliation and pain he caused this girl...when we speak of corporal punishment here, I think it's more along the lines of humiliation than infliction of pain (at least that's what I'M referring to). Pain is nothing, really...it passes. But humiliation is something different. Teenagers hate to be embarrassed, and a paddling, whether someone sees it or not, is embarrassing. It teaches a person how it feels to be on the receiving end, which is what this kid needs to learn.

Hell, my grandparents, my mom, my older relatives, got taken to the woodshed when they needed it. Among other things, it taught them respect for authority and rules.

There isn't anything wrong with corporal punishment. I'm not advocating abuse. I'm advocating teaching them how it feels in order to give them a little respect for how the person on the receiving end of THEIR behavior feels.


Sidhe

Public School Administrators are in a tough spot here. We live in a lawsuit happy society in which kids are guaranteed a free appropriate public education. If they have to send the kid to another setting, they have to pay a premium to get them placed. When they choose to do that, they can end up in litigation.

I think the core of the problem is the compulsory nature of public education and possibly the lack of choice. I don't buy the view that public education is there to keep kids off the street where they could get in trouble. Those kids are making schools dangerous for the other kids who are forced to be there and as an outcome ruining educational opportunity. Many parents want better discipline, maybe we should let them choose it. Parents need to be able to buy into a schools system to make it work. Whether it's International Baccalaureate, Catholic Schools, Waldorf Schools, or another alternative parents need to believe in the system or it will not work.

Teaching Interrupted

Re: Parenting 101
 

Ideally, you should teach kids by example, and this goes back on the parents. If the kids haven't been taught to be civilized by time they reach Jr. High, really about all you can do is call rank on them to preserve order in the classroom. When I was a librarian at Fort Lewis College, the football coach got the bright idea that the guys on the football team be required to spend one night a week at the library studying to keep their grades up. I guess brilliant thinking like that was what prevented him from ever becoming a regular faculty member. The football team would come in together as a group, pass around a bottle of Jim Beam among themselves and generally be as disruptive as possible, distracting the other kids who really were there to get some studying done. It was my ill luck to be librarian in charge on Thursday nights - the nights the team came in to "study." I gave them two warnings and then I called up the coach and let him have it. He came over to the library, pulled the team members aside in a seperate room and let THEM have it, up one side and down the other; telling them he didn't care if he had to scrub every single one of them from the team and play third string for the rest of the year. After that, all I had to do was say the magic word "coach," and butter wouldn't melt in those boys' mouths for the rest of the night.

In our high school, all of the coaches were teachers. If you didn't pass their classes, you didn't play. Period.

Of course, our school was unique in that it placed academics OVER sports.


Sidhe

Your school WAS unique. It infuriates me how we worship sports at the cost of learning. While coaches may be on the regular teaching staff in high schools, they generally are not in colleges and universities. The coaching department or sports department is just that and nothing else. Players are coddled thru college just so the school team can win games. At the end of the exercise the kids on the team may or may not end up with a diploma in a field they know nothing about and a bunch of sports related injuries that will haunt them the rest of their lives. I think the system really takes advantage of the athletes it uses.

Update


Unfortunately, they don't say how the kid was disciplined. Inquiring minds want to know. If they're not willing to say what they did, then how do we know they really did ANYTHING?



And yes, I know how the sports thing goes. I've known football players who were barely literate, yet were passed/graduated. Like they're gonna make the majors....riiiiiiight. It's just setting them up for a fall, and what are they going to have to fall back on? Probably, "You want fries with that?"


Sidhe

You got it! Supersize me, please. On this one I am in complete agreement with you, Sid! (will miracles never cease?;) )

Yeah, I felt the same way the first time I agreed with Radar....*grins*

Don't forget College Sports is business, big business. The athletes are employees of that business. Like most businesses, they don't give a shit what happens to ex-employees.:(

Absolutely.

Oh, well, yeah, cept for the part where the "employees" don't get paid. (Yeah, yeah, I know, they receive a college education for their trouble.)

Some do.;)

As an aside, and off the subject for a minute, am I the only one in the world who thinks that professional sports players shouldn't get paid millions for PLAYING a GAME? That just irks me. They PLAY for a living.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I realize that it's something people want, so they pay $30 a ticket to see it, blah, blah, blah, but it doesn't change the irk factor for me.

Personally, I get just as much enjoyment out of seeing kids play as I do seeing professionals play. Baseball's baseball...football's football....doesn't much matter to me who's hitting or kicking the ball.

Must be a dick thing.....


(now back to our regularly scheduled thread)

Oh yeah? Ever hear of athletic scholarships? These often cover room and board with something left over as well. Sounds like pay to me.

Welcome to the free market. THe interesting thing is that the money is killing competition, the best teams with the most money poach all the best players for millions thus retaining their positions. There was a study done on the permier league in Europe showing how the teams positions are getting sticker and sticker, all very interesting if you ask me.

I'n no big sports fan and most of the sports I play involve weaponary (target shooting, archery) but I can understand the appeal of watching the worlds best soccer players, it really can be very impressive.

That's a figure of speech, most of the pros work very, very hard. :) But yeah, many are overpaid.

Dear lord. That poor girl. I wanted to hear the report on the site, but I got an error. Just seeing the girl's crying face is enough.

"I just wanted to go to a school that doesn't make fun of me. I wanted to be treated with respect," Glowczewski said, crying.

Jesus effing Christ already, when does shit like this stop? :mad: :mad2: :angry: :rar: :flipbird:

What I find strange is this:

If you're constantly truant, they expell you, but if you're a bully, they don't. Kinda like, "well, if you won't go to school, then by golly, we won't LET you, but if you want to make other people miserable, then step right up."

Yeah, I know and the idiot school "acting administration" didn't even see fit to discipline this kid until the media shamed the school district as a whole into doing something. And these are the sort of people who teach in our schools? Christ! Couldn't agree with you more, Ladysycamore! (HEY! that rhymes - sort of)

Worked for me. I was probably the last kid to get a house key (age 13), have a phone and TV in my room (age 18), and computer...what computer? LOL.

Thank goodness for books and that I was an avid reader.

Re: Parenting 101
 

Nope, that's the beauty of the parent putting the fear of God in the kid. I knew plenty of kids who grew bigger than their parents, but wouldn't DARE talk back or misbehave in school, in public, etc....why? Because the parent was still the parent! Especially the mothers. There were plenty of times I'd hear a mom say, "You may be bigger than me, but I'm STILL you MOTHER!" (this was mostly a mom/son thing).