While most of us were having a day on Monday, and many of us were celebrating victory in Vermont, one mother lost her child because he was bullied and taunted for being gay.
Enough of this. We have to put more pressure on school administrators to do a helluva lot more when it comes to school bullying.
The other part – which we don’t talk about often enough – is why homophobia is still allowed to go unchecked amongst the middle school set, and how we might prepare kids who are being gender-baited or gay-baited (whether or not they are queer) to deal with it.
[...] Boyd suggests in her blog today that part of what we need to do is get teachers and principals to do something about this. She is [...]
“Carl, a junior at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield who did not identify as gay, would have turned 12 on April 17″
God. 11 years old?
Yeah, that’s a little young to ask anybody to define their sexuality, much less persecute them for it.
I have some sympathy for schools if they say, look, there’s not much we can do to control youth culture; the harder we try to change it, the more it backfires.
But if there are practical things that can be done, even if they’ll never be full solutions, I want them done.
God. 11 years old.
What did the bullies’ parents instill in their children to bully? Blaming teachers and the school is only half the problem, the other half rests in the home. Those (bullies) kids learned something somewhere that it’s ok to assume without thinking and then act on those assumptions without thinking of the consequences and having remorse when the child reacts.
If anything the school does have the responsibility to ensure all children are safe on school grounds and ensure inappropriate behavior isn’t just stopped but dealt with to teach those kids about acceptance and understanding. There will always be kids prone to being bullies, some personality characteristics can’t be taught out of the child, but they can learn consequences. And their parents can be taken to tasks for their failures.
An 11-year old child doesn’t commit suicide for no reason. Fear is an overwhelming feeling for a child who doesn’t have the capacity to fully understand life. And being afraid to speak up only adds to the fear. My sorrow is for the child who had, and the many who still have, no where to say they’re afraid and find help with their fear.
[...] An eleven year old killed himself because of constant bullying and taunting for being gay. This isn’t an isolated case. Many children kill themselves or are killed by their peers for being queer or being perceived as queer. The schools aren’t dealing with it. [...]