Well, I seem to have taken a
ridiculously long sabbatical from writing blogs. My apologies if you have been
waiting for one. If you didn’t really care, that’s fine too.
Anyways, today’s topic: things that
you probably didn’t care about. Let me (barely) amuse you by starting off with
a little segment about…flavored medicine.
Flavored Medicine.
Ask your parents about medicine. Go
ahead. What did it taste like? Most likely, their description of the taste
would be along the lines of “It was disgusting” or something like that. Well,
too bad for them, right? They were forced to digest this revolting syrup (cod
liver oil, perhaps).
But, this was a good thing. The
medicine tasted terrible, thus was an incentive to not want to ingest medicine. Nowadays, medicine tastes good. Since this is the case, young
children want to have more of it because they like the artificial flavoring.
Next thing you know, the child is in the medicine cabinet, figuring out how to
remove the “childproof cap” and downing a whole bottle of grape-flavored
Tylenol. Wonderful.
Speaking of children, why not move
onto a more interesting topic; kids fighting in school?
Kids get punished for fighting.
In most public schools nowadays,
teachers and principals are making a move against violence in school. They are
trying to reduce the amount of violence by, in essence, teaching children of
the various ways to be punished for having your fist meet another kid’s face.
Detentions, suspensions; basically isolating the child from the rest of the
school as a punishment. And, should a teacher not be aware of a fight or
conflict, a student who has seen the dispute is to report the incident to the
teacher. Because, as we all know, running to a teacher always makes you the
hero and fixes everything.
Let me create a scenario. Imagine
we have three people in a classic school hallway; a teacher, and two
middle-schoolers. Say one of the middle schoolers is a big, burly, bully-type
of guy who is having a bad day. The other kid is your classic nerd; weak,
helpless, focuses mainly on bringing back good grades to his parents and
staying out of trouble.
Big bully (let’s call him Billy for
good alliteration) is storming down the hall. Nerd kid is busy putting his
belongings in his locker. The teacher walks into her classroom. Billy grabs the
nerd by the shoulders, whirls him around, and shoves him towards the wall,
hard. Nerd kid’s books fly everywhere, and he slumps to the floor opposite his
locker. Billy then walks away.
What should nerd kid do? This has
been happening every day for the past two weeks. Should he go and tell the
teacher, and risk being called out by his peers as a wuss? Or should he keep it
to himself, knowing yet that the same event will happen the next day? Well,
nerd kid doesn’t want to ever risk being called out as a wuss. That would be
his end; he would be shunned by his peers. So, he keeps it to himself.
This continues for another week. At
the end of the week, nerd kid can’t take it anymore and slaps Billy in the face
as he approaches on his normal routine. Billy notices a teacher nearby, and
fakes extreme pain to get revenge on nerd kid. The teacher is unaware of Billy
being a bully. The teacher immediately refers nerd kid to the principal, where
he receives an in-school suspension for three days the following week.
I may have not clearly conveyed my
point, but this is the gist of what I am trying to get across: bullies attack
students, students keep quiet for a while, then the student retaliates, but the
student, not the bully, receives punishment. This happens because the student
is initially scared of retaliating, but in the end doesn’t really give a damn.
And, there is a worse ending to this than what was previously described. That
ending can be compared to events such as the Columbine Shootings: kids were
picked on until their fuse finally burned out, then went berserk with weaponry,
seeking revenge, trying to convey “who’s the boss of me now?”
Now, what if we allowed kids to
fight in school? What if we tolerated bullies? I can draw a picture. A bully
would go up to a kid and throw him down, but then that kid might get back up
and throw a punch, then some of each side’s friends would come to aid, and
within a couple hours, peace would be restored, truces created, and everyone
could go back to their normal habits. Summary? Don’t have teacher intervention.
Let things play out the way they are supposed to be. Then, from strife, peace
will arise. Because in the end, having more violence leads to less violence…
…does that even make sense?
(My apologies if I don’t make any
sense. Carry on.)
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