Friday, April 20, 2007

Bullies attend private school too

It surprised me that this incident happened at a private school.



Highland family angry over son's schoolyard attack


The boy, who is half-black, was playing with friends during a physical activity period at St. Adelaide School when one student is suspected of grabbing a jump rope, wrapping it around the teen's neck "and commenced to drag him around the play area," Curtis said.

Other youngsters threw basketballs at him and used racially insensitive comments, the attorney said.


When the incident occurred the school did not immediate action. Two weeks later, only after the parents complained, were the attackers suspended for up to 5 days.

Although the teen's parents filed a police report and put their son in another school, he still is receiving threats of retaliation from the boys via the Internet and through mutual acquaintances, Curtis said.



Very sad. I did some research on this school. It is very small, with less than 250 students in K-8th grade. There are only about thirty-four 7th graders at the school. On paper, it looks like a good school.

Another news article reported that another racially motivated attack occurred at the school last year in the 6th grade involving another victim. Since last years attack was in 6th grade and this year attack involved a 7th grader, I would guess that that same group of boys were responsible for both incidents.

The school response to this problem: classroom sessions were being planned to discuss with students the "use of certain words." Forcusing only on the words seems to be a bit trivial. It is allowing a group of students to assault another student and harrass the victim that I have a problem with.


I found this comment on the newspaper article.

This article does not mention that the victim was seen playing and laughing with the accused immediately after this incident happened and throughout his stay. Many students, faculty, and parents witnessed the aftermath.

An important fact is that the victim’s sister is happily still attending the school and is involved in extra curricular activities.

My prayers go out to the victim, his parents and those of the accused!!
charles powell | 04.20.07 - 2:42 pm | #


And so the plot thickens. Was the boy covering up his embarrassment or did the parents blow the incident out of proportion? Does the commentor really know what happened? We will probably never know.

The big question is, "What have these young men learned about the world from this incident?"


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4 comments:

Unknown said...

I went to a private school... it doesn't suprise me.... I vowed to never send my kids to the Christian school I attended.

al fin said...

If teachers and administrators never learned discipline, they cannot teach it to their students--private school or public school.

Schools tend to let children "raise" themselves, which is a prescription for disaster. Forgive me if you have covered this material, but have you seen the recent book by Robert Epstein, "The Case Against Adolescence?" It was covered by Instapundit and the Glenn and Helen podcast show.

The book tracks along the topic of "psychological neoteny" that my blog has been covering for some time.

Homeschooling is good for many reasons, but especially for preventing the age-segregation and group delinquification [sic] of schools.

Alastriona, The Cats and Dogs said...

Boy can I identify with Kaber. I attended a Christian private school K-6th grade. In 4th grade my teacher verbally abused me and encouraged my classmates to bully me. The torture went on until the 4th grade teacher refused to let me attend my music theory class and my music theory teacher (who came to find out why I wasn't sent to class) heard her screaming at me. The teacher wasn't fired as it was already well into the second semester.

I spent the rest of the year being schooled in the assistant pastors office with my best friend.

Janine Cate said...

I'm sad to here that so many people have bad experience in religous schools.

I agree that schools and parents "tend to let children raise themselves."

I call it "adolescence extend to obsurdity."