Posted on 10/08/2010 10:39:56 AM PDT by Kimberly GG
"MENTOR, Ohio – Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.
The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.".....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Amen! I just posted the exact same sentiment.
Jealousy, perhaps?
Sounds like it.
We all conform to certain (minimal) conventions of normality in society, in order to get along and be accepted. But our betters have encouraged a generation to believe that it is society's obligation to accept no boundaries in individual behavior.
I'm not suggesting this kid was exhibiting behavior of such extremity that he deserved his fate. Not at all. But it's pretty likely he is of those raised to believe that societal norms (major or minor) did not apply him. Pretty much a whole generation has be taught that.
This doesn't teach children how to deal with things in life that don't work they way they'd like. How does one teach a person coping skills in life when they believe that nothing they do should be considered inappropriate?
A little common sense. Everyone picks their nose and scratches their butt at some time. But most of us know how others would react if we stood on our chair and did it in front of everyone.
Fortunately, not all schools are like that. It would be so nice if we could lay all the blame on the schools but as other posters have already pointed out, some of the blame goes to the poor parenting these kids received.
Happy to say my son survived thrived in school and graduated 3rd in his class and is now in the Honors College at Michigan State University where he's on the Dean's List with a 4.0. He did so well in high school that he started college with 35 credits.
There are three things that make it work. The school, the parents and the child. They need to work together and they need to put forth some effort.
We did, and it was worth it. And she has thanked us many times over the years for it.
And as regards bullying, we should make it clear that a school system that punishes (often severely) those that defend themselves against bullies is as responsible as those committing the harassment.
Last year when my son was in 7th grade the school had a “Celebrate Diversity” wall display where they showed photos of people from all walks of life who shared only the fact that they were neither white nor Asian. Fidel Castro and Malcolm X were among the people the school suggested that the students “celebrate”.
My son was disturbed by that display and told me about it. I didn’t believe him; I had to go see it for myself before
I believed what he said.
That was during inauguration week, and my son was really having a rough time, especially with all the overtly political talk associated with the “diversity” and “multicultural” stuff.
So we had a talk. I pointed out to him that diversity is all the ways we are different, and I showed him Scripture where it talks about there being different parts of the body and they all have their place; and the places where it talks about honoring the weaker parts; and where it talks about the pot not being able to say to the Potter, “Why did you make me like this?”
The point was that we are created differently, and that the Creator has a reason for making us as we are so we can be glad for the purposes He has in giving some of us a certain strength and others a different strength. It was actually a great discussion and he totally “got it”.
A couple days later, in language (?) class the teacher was talking about “diversity” and my son piped in that valuing diversity is really about valuing every human being because every human being is unique. The teacher cut him off tersely and said that no, diversity is about race, and she didn’t have time to discuss it.
He told me that and I just wanted to weep. They don’t get it. They use the buzzwords but they really don’t get it. It’s not about respecting all human life. It’s about milking this hyphenated group or this special interest group for all the political power they can give you. Sad. Incredibly sad.
Well put!
This is just one more reason to feel disgust with the liberal union-run educational system in the country.
Me neither!
I agree. The problem though is that as soon as you label it 'Christian', they'll have none of it. You need to outsmart them and get them to teach the Christian values as values for any civilized society. Leave the word Christian out, so they can't complain about pushing religion onto anyone. So what if those values just happen to coincide with Judeo/Christian values.
Its key to just get those values back into the schools. jmo
I don’t think that nay of these bullying incidents sound any different than incidents that I remember from high school or from my kids’ school days. What I think is different is the cheapness of life and lack of hope.
Some of the incidents actually sound like the parents’ fault. Who would let their son go to school with a stuffed animal strapped to his arm and think that it was a joke? We had a kid who went around school acting like a car, making noises and stopping at the drinking fountain for a fill up. We thought that was a joke, a weird one, but still a joke. A few months later he was committed to the state hospital for the rest of his high school days.
The special ed girl, is a sad case, but actually very typical. Special ed is a stigma.
The Croatian immigrants are often very different. I’m not going to say how, but they are often different in ways that are not pleasant to be around, much like some of the Russian immigrants. This may not have been the case, with this family, and it certainly isn’t an excuse. It’s just hard to control.
I would also point out that when I was in school, the teacher would have taken the stuffed toy away. Toys were not allowed in the class room and would have been called a distraction.
The only thing that handles a bully is someone bigger, stronger and scarier coming back at them.
I was a runt the first couple of years in high school. One day I helped one of the big football players when his car would not start. When we jumped his car from mine the end of the jumper cables looked like tweezers in his hand. The guy was huge. Eventually he went on to play pro football.
No long after this encounter I made the mistake of supposedly sitting in the wrong space in the boys locker room. One of the senior football players was a crazy bully. He was constantly harrassing the younger kids. Slapping them around and whatnot. When I sat in “his spot” in the locker room he picked me up and was about to toss me across the locker room when he screamed. I looked up and saw one very large hand I recognized. It was about to rip his hair out and another big hand was around his neck. The bully let me go and shortly after that was on the ground in a heap. My protector looked down at the bully, pointed to me and said “this is his spot!”. Then he looked around at all the other big guys standing around and said “ya’ll got that?”. They all nodded that they did. Except for the bully who was still on the ground with a size 16 cleated shoe on his neck. He was not about to move.
That bully gleered and sneered at me every time I saw him after that but he never touched me me again.
****Public schools are run with the same philosophy as penitentiaries****
‘Fraid not - the discipline thingee is missing.
My experience decades ago - 10 year-old son was being harrassed by the class bully and I had no idea, until the teacher called me in for a conference. Seems like my young’un had finally had enough and as he punched the kid in the mouth yelled “I’ve had enough of your sh$t”.
Yup - the teacher called me in to register a complaint about his potty mouth!!!!!!!
You stop bullies by doing what Ralphie did to Scut Farkus in "A Christmas Story."
Sorry to hear that.
But if it were indeed a matter of life and death for the kid, why didn’t he just stop acting that way rather than kill himself?
I would NEVER want to be a child nowadays...NEVER.
Prayers for Jana.
Schools can't address the root of the problem, which lies outside the school grounds.
You should talk to a school counselor sometime about what sorts of shit-holes some of these kids come from -- their parents can be unbelievably awful. Somebody above used the word "feral" to describe those kids, and it's accurate. The only behavior they've ever learned, is bad behavior.
You take a group of kids like that, and put them among other kids, and it's like a spreading toxin. Bad kids can often have an unwholesome attractiveness about them. The school can't teach them morals, it can only crack down on what they do, and in so doing they have to crack down on everybody -- or the ones who can, leave, which only concentrates the problem.
Should of asked when 'gay' became a race? lol
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