Posted on 04/19/2007 2:41:41 PM PDT by alcenoo
Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was pushed around and laughed at as a schoolboy in suburban Washington because of his shyness and the strange, mumbly way he talked, former classmates say.
Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation.
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.
"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
boo-freekin’-hoo.
My thought too, Like what kid doesn’t at one point or another get picked on or called a name?
One of them, Liviu Librescu, instead became the victim of a mass murderer on Monday.
I taught a high school student that Cho greatly reminds me of. He was reclusive, he was ridiculed, he was a stalker of a couple of girls, he drew violent pictures - the other students and teachers were afraid of him.
He loved computers and I was his computer teacher. He liked to hang around me. I encouraged proper graphics and built his skills. But then he started obsessing with me. He’d sneak into my classroom, crawling on the floor because he thought we wouldn’t see him and then hide under a counter.
I talked to him (I don’t think any other teacher did) and one day he told me that his father beat him. He showed me his scars and a current wound. Finally we had something we could act on. I reported this to the authorities (I was bound by law to do so). The social worker dismissed the case because he said that parental hitting is part of the culture of the student. That was our ONLY chance to get this kid help and it was refused because of the idiot social worker.
The final days of school/graduation, he was really scary - we assigned monitors to watch him. He’s in college now.
My bad. I see there’s yet another one of us redheads on this thread.
Rush was talking about this yesterday. He mentioned that after Columbine every school in the country initiated “anti-bullying” sensitivity training so that no picked-on dork would ever go on a mass murder spree.
Guess that didn’t work.
That said , it is uncanny the similarity of voice between the two.
CC
Seeing this thread reminds me of an email that went out from the PTA President of the elementary school nearest the home of Cho’s family in the same year that he graduated from High School. At the time Fairfax County Public Schools was considering an application for a charter school to help provide services for children with autism. Part of the plan was to co-locate at 4-6 schools within the county in order for these at-risk children to get an opportunity to learn how to integrate in society, an area in life where Cho obviously didn’t succeed. I was in attendance at the informational PTA meeting at this elementary school and was horrified by the hostility that some had towards the idea of having these “dangerous” non-talkative young children in their precious Cub Run school. Here’s the text of the email that this PTA president sent out to ALL the elementary school PTA presidents in the county after this meeting. Frankly if she were to see this she’d probably be horrified by how awful it makes her look now. But she should’ve thought of this before using her position to try to put roadblocks in the way of these at-risk children getting the help they needed. Ignorance is no excuse.
On Nov 12, 2003, at 7:51 PM, JCampbellPTA@aol.com wrote:
Dear PTA Presidents:
I am writing to inform you of a current issue before the Fairfax County School Board affecting elementary schools. I have also included middle and high schools in this email since you may know of others who would like to know about this issue.
The program is called the Parents for Autistic Children’s Education (PACE) Charter School. The program seeks to locate autistic children in the area schools in what is referred to as an “overlay” program. We invited PACE representatives to our PTA meeting at Cub Run last night, along with Michael Glascoe, Assistant Superintendent of FCPS, to speak to our membership and answer questions. Aside from our Back to School night, it was by far, our largest PTA meeting, and longest!
I only became aware of the Pace Charter School because Cub Run is tentatively listed as one of the six potential sites for the program, as well as Rolling Valley, Sunrise Valley, Oakview, Oak Hill, & Hayfield elementary schools. A public hearing is scheduled for November 17th. On November 20th, the School Board is supposed to vote on a decision about whether to allow this charter program into Fairfax County Public Schools.
Although these six host schools are tentatively identified, host schools may change depending on any individual school’s enrollment. If one school’s enrollment should increase any space is no longer available, then another school, whose numbers have declined may be identified and become a host school. That school could easily be yours. The PACE representatives hope to scatter the schools geographically around the county to lessen the numerous transportation issues associated with the charter. SO, even if your school isn’t affected today, if this program passes, it could happen at your school tomorrow. My goal in sending this to you is to make sure that you and your membership are informed before it’s too late!
The Cub Run PTA is extremely concerned about this charter school program. There is a public hearing about the PACE Charter School, Nov. 17th 7:30 at Luther Jackson Middle School. To sign up to speak at the public hearing you can contact 703-246-3646 before the end of the business day this coming Friday, November 14th.
FCPS at the county level and Pace members have known about this program since July 2003, when the proposal was initiated. The ultimate decision rests with the School Board whether this charter will be allowed, not allowed, or allowed with conditions. The local schools, PTA’s, and local taxpayers have only found out about this all too recently. Things are moving with PACE too quickly.
The Cub Run PTA feels strongly that the school board needs to slow the decision making down to give the entire school system — teachers, students, and parents, time to give more meaningful input and get their questions answered. The School Board should not allow the PACE charter. If approved on November 20th, the charter program will be implemented in July 2004 and will go by a modified (year round) calendar.
Please share this with your membership. The current charter school proposal can be viewed on the FCPS website: www.FCPS.edu/schlbd/rm11-6-03/paceapplication.pdf. (It is very lengthy -160 pages-so pull it up and scan it before you try to print it) I encourage you to sign up to speak at the public hearing, poll your membership, or if you’re afraid to speak, come support those of us who are, and find out for yourself what is really going on at the county level that will affect our schools. Have your membership contact the school board members about their concerns. To access their emails go to thewww.FCPS.eduWebsite and click under school board information.
Word needs to get out quickly, so please feel free to pass this email out. I have also included middle and high school since you may know of others who would like to know about this issue.
Thanks for reading, and allowing me to keep communications flowing! If you received this in error, please send it to the correct person.
Jennifer Campbell
Cub Run Elementary PTA President
703-266-1742
One of the parents at Cub Run sent the following message out to the PACE leaders/parents after this PTA meeting. She happened to have done her homework on the issue and understood how important it is to mainstream these at-risk children when they are young. Here’s what she wrote.
Well, I don’t know where to begin. I am just heartsick over the comments I heard tonight. The parents at that school are feeling like they have had no notice of this (and that is true) and that they don’t know that much about what is being proposed (and that is understandable).
But the disturbing things I heard were:
How much time is this going to cost our principal and administrators dealing with this program for special needs in our school?
Is there going to be a cap or quota on the number of kids this program will have at our school?
There is a program for inclusion and autism now, why do you need this program? Why isn’t the current program working?
How much more work is this going to be for our already overworked general education teachers?
Does the classroom teacher have to prepare a separate lesson plan?
How much more can our classrooms stand?
We depend on our principal and staff to run our school successfully, they wear many hats, this would be stretching our leadership thin by wearing another hat and take away from their duties taking care of our children.
A teacher was concerned that if there was a para-educator with the child in the class, is she supposed to plan with that para-educator? This is just more bodies and teachers in the classroom and oh by the way, she doesn’t know anything about ABA so how can she be expected to modify curriculum for this child?
How is this going to affect our children? This is our school and we want to have a voice in whether this program is at our school.
Wow, do you get the general themes? One is certainly, what is going to cost our kids, our principal, our teachers, our resources?
The other I heard loud and clear, we don’t want these kids at our school.
I never heard anyone discuss what they and their children could gain from such a program in their school. Funny, it always seems to be the adults to make such a big issue of disabilities. Kids just seem to accept them, until they grow up to be adults…..
ALSO,
The PTA principal is already signed up to talk and so are others. They are bringing a big car load of people. (there were 60-70 people there tonight… I counted) They say they are going to couch their comments in terms of “concerns” not in opposition. The other PTAs will be doing the same thing I am sure.
If you haven’t signed up to talk….make sure you do so we can have some PACE people sprinkled in among their speakers.
I hate that we are pitted against each other like this….but makes me sick to my stomach is the blatant NIMBY attitude I heard tonight. It wasn’t even thinly veiled.
You all did great up there and my hat is off to you for keeping your cool and remaining gracious.
I am rethinking what I am going to say in light of the comments I heard tonight.
Let me clarify a typo that could be confusing. The PTA president (I said
PTA principal) it going to speak.
I think that the kids who decided to pick on Cho and the teachers and schools who did nothing about it have some blood on their hands. And I sure hope that they fell guilty about it.
Perhaps those kinds of clubs or associations that are for foreign or ethnic students are helpful and I wonder if VT had some sort of Korean club.
On the other hand, there are probably some ethnicities that of course, we’d want a watchful eye on what they do in the United States.
I guess "gun-free zones" don't work either, or the 20,000 gun laws piled on top of it.
In light of the current situation I would notify that college, you never know.
While there are no excuses for Cho you still have to wonder if intervention somewhere in his life may have saved all those other lives.
I think the bullying he received was probably more a symptom of his condition rather than a cause.
When my daughter was in jr. high school she was bullied by a female classmate. I told her to suck it up. “Don’t take any crap from anyone” was my message and instruction. She dealt with her antagonist.
When she was in high school she was bullied by a boy. She did her best to deal with him, but he wasn’t dissuaded. When he ultimately assaulted her I was working in another nearby city. I called the school to find out what was being done about this. Unfortunately (for them) the administrative staff blew me off. I walked off the job and drove home. I stormed into the school and demanded to see the Principal. Again I was given the brush instead of a response. So I gave her five minutes to call the police. She wanted to sweep it under the rug so I called the cops myself and demanded that the boy be arrested for sexual battery (he tried to feel her up). They walked the boy out of the school in handcuffs.
I succeeded in getting the boy arrested and expelled from school (he was able to avoid prosecution - another story), and the Principal and her teacher suspended for failing to supervise and protect.
They despised me for the rest of the time my daughter was enrolled there, but she never had to endure another incident. They were also too scared of me to take it out on her. In that scenario, was I the bully?
There is EXPONENTIALLY more being done about bullying now than at any time in memory. There has NEVER been a time when there weren’t school bully’s (or bully’s in life). So why are there more (and more severe) problems now than ever before?
In my mind there is a failure to use common sense. The feminization of public school systems have substituted policies, regulations, and “zero tolerance” for common sense. Liberals invoke moral relativism instead of moral strength. But the first casualty of liberalism is personal responsibility. The local news just featured another story about the Virginia Tech shooting incident. The theme of this one (like so many others) was “What is it going to take to keep us safe?”.
The answer is beyond liberals’ comprehension. The answer is, Nothing can “keep you safe”. The best that you can hope for is to “keep yourself safe”. When we depend on others for our protection, we choose subjugation. I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be herded like sheep!
I think what you did for your daughter was wonderful. I think a lot of the teachers, being liberal types, show their true colors in these situations.
Heck if it was up to the liberal types, and they’re trying to make it that way, America would disarm and the bullies of the world would get alll the sympathy, until I guess the sympathizers head was cut off, or blown off or...
This guy was a psychopath. The criminal profiler on O’Reilly tonight said that psychopaths develop at the age of 8 - 10 yrs old. The bullying probably didn’t even bother him.
I know two students from Fairfax county who tried to get into Virginia Tech but their SAT scores were not high enough. He had to have relatively good grades and SAT scores. The school might make exceptions to football players since some of them appear really dumb. Maybe it makes also exceptions to nonwhite foreigners and any illegal alien.
My daughter had a Korean girl in her class in grade school who was very shy and would not talk to anyone and wanted to be by herself. She is attending an Ivy league college, apparently doing well.
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