Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray

[groovedaddy]

The girl’s parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J.

Punish him, insisted the parents.

“I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”

Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.

Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/style/28bully.html?th&emc=th

[msongs]

1. too awkward for the parents to call the police? so they dump it on the school? nt

[groovedaddy]

2. imho They should have called the kids parents, uncomfortable or not. n.t

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. No shit. Make the OTHER kid's parents uncomfortable. That might

get results.

[FedUpWithIt All]

4. Too awkward? As if the boy being punished at school would not have gotten around to..

the boy's parents?
I suppose that would have felt a lot more comfortable to discuss over at the kid's sporting events. :eyes: Too awkward to have to defend their daughter. U.n.r.e.a.l.

Both kids would benefit from parents who would step up.

[earthside]

5. Wow.

So much in that article.

I get concerned about parents who think that the schools are supposed to be the rules enforcer of every other kids bad behavior ... no matter where it happens. And, I get concerned about school administrators who think they have the power to correct and punish every ill that their students commit, no matter where it occurs.

Once off the school grounds, unless it is an activity directly related to the school, it truly isn't any of the school's business what kids do or do not do.

It is therefore sad to see parents who are so weak or intimidated that they cannot speak-up for themselves or their own children and want the school to do it for them. Are we really becoming a nation of sheeple who want 'authority' to solve all of our problems and difficulties?

It is depressing that kids are losing social skills, like face-to-face interaction because they can hide behind the mask of texting or messaging on Facebook. I predict that we will regret this period when kids became isolated in a world of digital communication, devoid of nuance and direct humanity.

[tinymontgomery]

6. I have a good relation

with a few parents and kids. If I hear of something not right about the school or kids even teachers (like myself) I bring it up in a tactful manner that I see and know what is being posted (even though I can't see anything). I also tell them people send me screen shots (many of them don't know what they are). I use it as a teaching moment about loyalty, support for fellow students and there can be penalties down the road if an employer reads them. These are high school kids.


on edit: this seems to work because the offending info disappears fast. I went on myspace one time (before facebook) and one of my students had written that blank (me) was a real jackass. I let it be known that I can use facebook and I found some interesting comments. Post was gone that day and nothing publicly posted again.

[LWolf]

7. We had something like this happen this year.

A girl broke up with her boyfriend, started "going out with" his friend, and trashing him hideously on her myspace page.

No threats, just severe harassment and humiliation. We're a small community school. The girl started dividing students in a "your my friend or his, but not both" attack.

The myspace stuff happened because we shut her down at school. Since we were already dealing with it, we notified both sets of parents, and the parents of some of the followers; we couldn't do anything about students' myspace pages. We suspended her for several days, and her parents brought her in to conference with the principal and the counselor before she could come back.

The boy got intensive support from counselors and teachers, and classmates who were not part of the ring of bullying. It worked. She cleaned up her act, his friends returned, and she was civil to him for the rest of the year. Of course, she had her parents viewing her myspace page on a regular basis.

It's not "too awkward" to contact parents when they need to know what's going on with their kids.