Bullying

To start off the week on an incredibly tragic note, a recent article in the New York post told us about a thirteen year old who killed himself after being the victim of horrible bullying.

Click here to read the heartbreaking story.

Horrific bullying happens all the time, and the worst part about this is that schools do not care at all. They turn a blind eye or worse, punish the victim while ignoring the bullies.  Most of us know of situations like this where a kid would be mercilessly teased, he'd fight back, and then he'd get in trouble or it even though he was doing nothing but defending himself.

To me the truly evil people in this story are the administrators and teachers at this school who ignored the situation and made it worse. Yes, they really do have blood on their hands and no, they will not get punished for it in the least. Should they lose their jobs? Yes. Should they do time in jail? Honestly...yes. If they saw the bullying and saw the situation getting worse and still refused to do anything about it or handled it a negligent or grossly incompetent way, shouldn't they have to pay consequences? Perhaps it would be best if they had to look at an 8 x 10 of this child with the note on it saying "You could have done more" for a few years. That'll at least give them a not so subtle reminder that ignoring bullying can have grave consequences for everyone. They are the adults after all, and an innocent child died under "their watch".

Obviously I feel very strongly about this. I know not all teachers are like the ones I am describing and some teachers go the extra ten miles to reach and protect all children. Still though, the fact that we have wonderful teachers out there doesn't exclude the bad ones.

To quote the modern day prophets Megadeth, "The system has failed."