Well, Ms. Schumacher, if you haven’t seen bullying at the boy’s school, it occurs to me that you haven’t been looking very hard. It is not a widespread custom for 11-year-old kids to take their parents’ car and drive 200 miles because they’re so upset about bullying.
Perhaps if you “don’t want a student to ever feel pushed into a corner or want to just take off,” you might figure out what made one of your students feel the need to do it. And that includes the idea that not everything that goes on at a school gets reported up through channels.
It’s your job to know. It’s not his to rat out fellow students – that’s against the obnoxious-but-widespread Kid Code of Conduct. And I doubt that what led to this was a single episode – kids are resilient, as a rule, and will deal with what they have to deal with. When somebody feels pushed this far, there’s something endemic enough and widespread enough that you should have known about it.
Go down to your neighborhood Wal-Mart, find the toys area, find the board games rack there, and look for the one with Professor Plum and Miss Scarlett on the cover. In other words, get a clue!!
I have to wonder if the kid had said something and like Principals in my time was told some variant of the bullshit line: “Ignore them and they’ll leave you alone.”
Wouldn’t the proper thing to do be to wait and see how valid the kid’s excuse is before we rake the school system over the coals. Is this seriously the first story you guys have heard of a kid taking off with a car. Sheesh.
How timely!
My daughter was just suspended from school for not fighting back and getting her butt kicked. In Jr. High.
She and a friend had a falling out that over the past few weeks had become very verbal.
All four parents suggested she take it to her counsilor and maybe they could get some time to both go in and talk it out.
She was told to avoid said friend and not make an issue out of it.
Friday it erupted physically.
The friend was egging my daughter on in front of a crowd. Another child from behind my daughter pushed her and it was on.
My daughter tried to walk away, but got hurt.
Both girls got suspended. Daughter for 3 days for not ignoring and friend for seven for assulting.
Both fathers are high upset.
We have a meeting with the school on Monday before they will allow her back in, and we are going to address a number of things.
What happened to the child the pushed my daughter and essentially initiated the physical part.
What kind of crap advice are these counsilors handing out? Why weren’t parents notified that there was an issue?
Why was my daughter suspended? All witnesses state she was trying to get away, and the evidence is she is missing a chunk of hair from the back of her head.
Wait, she was suspended for not notifying someone that there was an issue!
Big bullshit.
That is some serious bullshit Kricket. Schools these days have ZERO tolerance. And somehow, this bleeds off into anyone involved with any of it. Even if you witnessed the fight they’ll suspend you! Well they would if they could. I don’t know where schools get the right to do this.
I used to get in big trouble all the time because I did fight back. Skinny, wear glasses, I guess that “said” I was a safe target. I’m no bad ass, but it’s amazing how often the bullies find another target when you bash them in the face a few times. Still, I was always the one who got “caught”. So now, if you fight you get in trouble, if you don’t, you get in trouble. There is bullying at every school. I’m with you. Fucking bullshit.
My mother is a counselor in a middle school. She says, often times, they ARE. The snottiest, most bullying little brats are often also the most popular with the teachers, 'cause they know how to turn on the charm when it’s called for. They’re master manipulators of people, and they know what they can get away with and what they can’t in front of authority figures. Bullying isn’t just punching someone in the face. It’s usually way more subtle than that.
(Note, mom doesn’t* call* them snotty little brats. But that’s what they are.)
See though Jenaroph, at least your mother sees it. I can understand when some slip through.
But when a child tells you that something is going on and they are simply told to ignore it and it will go away, then I call bullshit.
Especially with children getting bolder in todays world.
I did forget to mention “staying away” has been made harder at my daughters school since it is under major construction and is only half the size it normally is and the friend was told by a teacher to stop and that is when she pulled my daughter back into the fight by her hair.
Not to be a dick, but how many 11-year-olds have you heard of who spontaneously go on road trips by themselves? (Yes, I saw the rest of your post. This is more meant for those folks who don’t think there is a strong connection between bullying and wanting that bad to be away from it. I get email updates often enough about kids choosing another way away from things that this is a rather sore spot for me.)
That the school says they had they had seen no indication of bullying seems more like CYA to me; if they can claim they had no knowledge, they have a better case if they get taken to court, though this is not nearly as strong a defense as it used to be. I can recall (not specific cases, but if folks want I’ll try to dig up one or two) cases where school officials said - testified, if memory serves, though my recollection here is a bit fuzzy - that they had no indication there was any bullying, and the judgment was for the victim. Not nearly enough of those cases, IMO, ended well financially for the defendant, or overall; most of all, because money doesn’t buy happiness - but also because in more than a few cases it’s the parents suing after the child has committed suicide because of the bullying.
A friend of mine was so fed up of the bullying that was going on that he got on a train to London and then spent the night in a carpark, before going to his Gran’s house. Not so extreme but still…
And rightfully so. If the child is being aggressive merely for attention, then ignoring it can be a useful (if often slow) tactic. However, if the child is doing it for another reason, ignoring it is ineffective at best and dangerous more often.
I “volunteer” (required for a class) at a place with kids who will do stuff because they feel like it - not because they are looking for attention but because they are seeing what they can get away with. Several of the other “volunteers” will try to talk to the kids about stopping, and of course talking to them is only useful if they stay the hell put and listen and care. If they don’t, it’s wasted breath. The trick is to assert one’s self enough that the kids will listen to you and, rather than fearing you and just hiding what they do, actually obey (and respect, ideally). That’s difficult enough with the ratio of “volunteer” to child being roughly 1:1 or even higher (on my side), but when it’s 1:5 (or significantly higher, in a public school setting) sometimes the best phrase for it is organized chaos, an environment that seems to me entirely inappropriate in terms of learning anything but how to take a hit well in a fight.
I got no problems with people being concerned about school bullying, this just seems like a weak justification for a righteous foaming of the mouth. We have no idea what kind of bullying was going on, when or what situation. For all we know he’s molested and he just used bullying to protect his parents (no way do I think that). I’m not sure who here is qualified to “know something more is going on”.
Great, asshole! Just accept that it happened and that the administrators are not only telling the truth but have no need to know if bullying is happening, so long as it’s out of their sight.
I did not claim anything but that driving 200 miles to escape was out of the ordinary for an 11-year-old boy to do, that his allegation of bullying was something not unheard of, and that it was the “'taint my fault” administrator’s job to know that such shit is happening, if it is. Perhaps you’d have preferred the kid to take the alternate way out of an untenable situation that iampunha mentioned?
