I confess to being an idealist. In my mind, schools should be a haven for children--a place where they are free to learn, not be burdened by what people think about them or might do to them. There should be zero tolerance for negative behavior, including teasing and threats.
In watching media coverage of the shootings, I'm hearing people theorize about its cause. Poor parenting is one theory--"lack of family values" is one phrase I've heard over and over again. Others have blamed the sheriff's department for allegedly ignoring reports that one of the boys had been assembling bombs in his home for sometime. Others have placed all the blame on the boys, accusing them of being racist neo-Nazi's who hated "successful" kids.
The one thought I haven't heard from anyone is that teasing played a big role in this. Yet, my gut instinct tells me that it did. Look at these quotes I pulled from ABC News
"They were just very angry, but they didn't know how to release their anger. They were angry about people not accepting them and no one knowing how smart they were."
"He was going after jocks. He hated them with a passion, because they always made fun of him and they always threatened him. They did it especially his sophomore year, and he just hated them."
"Eric Veik, a friend of the two, says he was shocked they went through with the threats. 'This is not a total racial issue against any social class. It was just against those people they felt were insulting them, harassing them.'"
When is enough "enough"?
It is a fact that children have teased one another from time immemorial. So we adults tend to ignore complaints of name-calling; we might tell our children "That's enough!" when they go on and on teasing another child, but how many of us provide immediate consequences to the very first snotty comment they make? Instead, we tend to let it go on until we've decided they've crossed some vague line of tolerance.
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