It's one thing to be bullied by your peers, but a teacher?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Julio Artuz, 15. Victim of teacher bullying.

No one believed 15-year-old Julio Artuz when he said he was being bullied by a teacher at school, not even his parents. So the special needs student sought proof, by filming an encounter with said teacher at Bankbridge Regional School in New Jersey, NBC10 reports "Don't call me special," Artuz told the teacher. "What? Oh my god, f-ing. What does the sign on the front of the school say? Special education," the teacher yelled back. Artuz defended himself by saying that when he got out of the school, the teacher couldn't call him special anymore. In response, the teacher made a threat. "...I will kick your a-- from here to kingdom-come until I'm 80 years old." In a statement to NBC10, the school district said officials take allegations of harassment seriously and are carrying out an investigation. "The actions depicted on the video do not reflect the mission or culture of our school," according to the statement. The teacher is on paid leave until the investigation concludes and would not respond to the station's request for comments.

All it takes is one bad apple to ruin the bunch, most teachers are professionals and know they're guardians of our future by education and encouraging the best in our children. Then you see this clip, along with the Penn State scandal last week, you wonder why isn't the system working to get these jerks caught earlier. While of course technology is making it easier for claims of brutality by either police, or teachers versus what had been the case years ago (essentially a "he said, she said" and we will tend to believe the person in authority which raises an interesting discussion it of itself), the allegations are typically not treated seriously until there is some really hard proof. There are other reports of teachers bullying their students, and those stories have gained some airtime recently as well. The teacher in the video needs help though and should be removed immediately and never allowed to be in a classroom, in my opinion. The video is behind the cut, be warned, it's not easy to watch.

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I know it's wrong, but If that lad had been my son I would have taken the teacher outside and horsewhipped him.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

And personally, I really hate it when folk's behaviour makes me lose my sense of right and wrong to the extent that I'm prepared to do time for beating some bullying wanker like that.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

I'm having some seriously ass-kicking fantasies.

What’s going on with women these days?  Sarah Palin (http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/Sarah-Palin-on-Jerry-Sandusky-Hang-him-from-th?urn=ncaaf-wp10021), Michelle Bachmann (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/13/michele-bachmann-jerry-sandusky-penn-state_n_1091094.html) and now you?

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

It is disheartening to watch and very unfortunate that such people are allowed to continue to practice one of the most responsible jobs in society. I understand why a he-said-she-said kind of allegations would seldom work because there are all sorts of ways to abuse people's trust for smearing a professional whenever you as a student are not doing well in school, or for some other reason. But on the other hand these situations should be taken very seriously by school authorities. They could destroy the integrity and credibility of the whole teacher body, because of one or a few rotten apples.

Being a freshly promoted deputy principal at one of the suburban elementary schools in Cape Town, I'm aware that teacher bodies are like a closed society in many ways - everyone there knows what the rest of their colleagues are like, what flaws of character they have, what things they could or could not do. And there are some things they know for sure about their colleague's behaviour, either through feedback or personal observsation. It may sound too idealistic from me but I would expect that teacher bodies would first try to solve these matters between themselves, involving the kids and also their parents if possible. At least that's what I and my colleagues are trying to do.

It's a very tricky surface to tread on, relations between school authorities and schoolkids. You need a great deal of tact for that. Regardless of what some people might think, it's not a job anyone can do. This treacher is probably emotionally unqualified for the job, or is having some personal problems affecting their behavior, but this should be no excuse whatsoever.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

found it very interesting that the teacher blamed fighting with his wife for his actions

Yep, she should start videoing his butt too! I am betting he's very abusive at home.

Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

This is what happens when we believe that we can re-engineer human beings by force. "All it takes is one bad apple"? Balderdash. The system selects for perverse results.

...we will tend to believe the person in authority which raises an interesting discussion it of itself...

Some of us, probably most of us will, if Stanley Milgram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_Experiment) is to be believed, at any rate. Nevertheless, we will keep investing our social capital into a system that relies upon the coercive power of authority and expecting to get different results, and that discussion about the legitimacy of coercive authority will get put off for yet another day so that we can talk about how the system would be perfect and could work if we could just get rid of those few "bad apples." It is a delusion.

As to those who propose to lynch or otherwise chastise the "bad apples" I have this to say: good luck finding them all, and good luck finding angels to replace them. Also, your system does far worse damage in the hands of the so-called "good apples" too, but nobody wants to consider that, especially if it is true.

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

So what's your bottom-line argument here? Reversion to a hunter-gatherer societal model sans public education?

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Nope. Government = bad!

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, we know. The dictatorship of the plutocracy will work where the dictatorship of the proletariat did not. Bravo.

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Actually, in the Public School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(UK)) (private school in the rest of the world - the reasons being they were schools open to all who could afford them, rather than the private household of an Aristocrat) system in the UK before the late 80's, which had self regulation, prefects were allowed to cane fellow pupils on next-to-no pretext.

Also, second year boys (13-14 year olds) had to wait on the prefects. This system was known as 'fagging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagging)'.

And as these things had been that way for, in some cases, since 597 AD (foundation of the King's School Canterbury by St Augustine), or more probably since the foundation of Winchester College in 1382 (one of whose mottos is "Aut disce, aut discede, manet sors tertia caedi") it took government intervention to change it.

Governments do not necessarily equal bad.

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

When your analytic framework gives you the same answer EVERY time, you are working with a broken model.

Good luck with that.

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Your ability to imply that every problem is because of government never ceases to amaze me.

Re: Welcome to the wonderful world of unintended consequences

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

What stops the same shit from happening in private education?

Libertarian Under L sez:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I demand citations and context to show that this so-called "bullying" ever actually happened. Without any broader context it's just propaganda smearing the rightfully placed in authority, and we shall not tolerate any such thing in this free society. Freedom, after all, is slavery.

Re: Libertarian Under L sez:

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Don't be stupid.

[lions-wings.livejournal.com]

Did the teacher shift targets, or consistently go after one kid?

People seem to be able to hide it better when there's just one. I don't know of any cases where the other kids told their parents.

(Not saying there aren't any, just of the incidents I know about, the others were silent.)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

My wife was bullied by a teacher in high school and observed other teachers bullying students in other schools before that. None of that was with special needs teachers or students. Teachers aren't any better people than the rest of us.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Bullying occurs in any context because the institutions in question, and their supporters, either implicitly or explicitly support the positions of the bullies. Gays, racial minorities, women and non-Christians get bullied in certain environments precisely because the environment and its inhabitants communicate at least an unspoken (and often an openly stated) prevailing sentiment that the targets of such bullying deserve to be victimized. The people who constitute the "accepted majority" in any given setting won't get bullied, because it's understood that even if you were able to victimize one member of such a group in isolation, the other members of that dominant group would obtain a disproportionate retribution against you.

TL;DR: Every single person in that school and community needs to look themselves in the mirror and accept that it's THEIR fault that this happened. Including the parents, because JESUS CHRIST, you tell your own kid that you don't believe he's being bullied, you've just handed him a perfect justification to say FUCK YOU MOM AND DAD any time you try and assert any sort of moral superiority over him again. The ugly lesson that bullying teaches a victim is that a majority of people in their lives are weak, bad and wrong.

Oh, and just as an aside?

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

If I'd been that kid, I would have walked up to that teacher, after I'd turned over the evidence of my bullying, and told him, "I just pulled off a HIDDEN CAMERA STING OPERATION against you, and I'm still only a HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT. Who's the 'special' one NOW, dumbass?"

I mean, seriously, there are cops in Dick Wolf's Law & Order franchise who couldn't have pulled this shit off as well as this kid did.

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Some demographics may be more likely to be targeted in certain situations, but anyone can be a victim of bullying, even an accepted majority. Dominant groups are usually led by bullies, so good luck getting any justice out of them.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Why is the teacher's face blurred out?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Innocent until proven guilty. Else an American person who thinks a bit like me, upon seeing him, will punch him right on the nose.