This appalling story has of course created quite a stir because it is about cruelty, which we do not understand, lack of empathy, which we find frightening, and conformity and coercion. But mostly it is about how little we know our kids, the little beasts who live among us and can sleep with a teddy bear by night and IM a 15-year-old colleen to her death by day. Who are these kids?
You will notice that in all the finger-pointing - the kids, the teachers, the administrators - not a digit is aimed at the parents. Their children are accused of hounding a classmate to death and the parents apparently knew nothing. Not only that, they are somehow not expected to know anything. The teachers are supposed to know what's going on. The principal. Maybe even the school nurse. But the parents? No. They're off the hook.
Not as far as I'm concerned. This tendency to blame teachers or administrators for all that happens in the schools is both unfair and unrealistic. Parents, too, are important - most important - yet they, of course, cannot be fired. They have tenure.
Amen to that.
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