Schoolyard Antics

This is old news, but I wanted the event to reach some kind of conclusion before I wrote about it.  The standard disclaimer applies.

Here's the story direct from the cat box liners:

Homestead Mother Pressing Charges After Third Grade Daughter Beaten On School Bus

The [now viral - MJ] video shows a group of children onboard a school bus arguing one minute – the next minute, a student is seen punching the young girl repeatedly.

A second student then jumps in and pummels the girl, as well. Both students appear to be boys.

The mother of the victim said she has spoken to administration about bullying since it’s affected her two eldest children, but she says the principal, assistant principal and even a counselor have done nothing about it, with the principal telling her they are overwhelmed and advising her to withdraw her children from the school.

So in Florida, in a public school, the best the school authorities can do is suggest the victims attend a different school.  Oh yeah, that's real good.

Teen Who Savagely Beat 9-Year-Old Girl on Florida School Bus is Charged With Battery

The sickening, widely shared video shows the much larger teen and another boy mercilessly pummeling the third-grader, a student at Coconut Palm K-9 Academy in Homestead, last Wednesday as she helplessly tries to fend them off on a crowded bus.

Nobody intervenes during the almost 30 seconds of the attack that was recorded by a classmate, video shows.

The school’s police officer investigated the incident and decided to issue the 15-year-old boy a civil citation, which Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said was not enough after further review.

The bottom line from the victim's mother?

“I’m very upset and disappointed in the response that children now take matters into their own hands with violence, [emphasis mine - MJ]” another mother told Local 10 News outside the school Thursday morning. “This violence has got to stop. It’s starting from somewhere. Parents need to do more and pay more attention to their children that’s causing these violent acts.”

Stop is right.  What the media doesn't dare say is that the 15 year old male doing the beating is black, and the 9 year old victim is white.  Another factor is the difference in size and strength - that ape is twice her size.  We also have experience - this is a bully who loves to dish it out.  He's likely been in more one-sided fights this month than he can count without taking off his shoes.  The girl hasn't been in any.  Finally, I'd like to point out that the bully does it because it's fun for him.  He enjoys it.  Think about that one for a minute.

'See you after school' has been happening for years, literally.  It happens, and it's much more frequent than school officials or parents would like us to believe.  Most of us grow out of it, and others don't.  Those that don't eventually end up in the sneezer, or in some cases, the big house.  I'll let you guess where this 15 year old porch monkey is going to end up.

As for the mother - where the hell is the Old Man in all this?  Mom knew the kids were being bullied and failed to do anything constructive about it.  I suppose the argument could be made that the bully would have beaten someone the same way eventually, and his parents should be held responsible, but the new reality prevents anything like that.

And now I'll digress a moment.

When I was about six years old we had a bully in our neighborhood.  The short of it was that he bullied me for some months, then he made a mistake.  I was holding a stick, maybe three feet long, two inch diameter, and my back was turned to Mister Bully.  For no particularly good reason he rushed me and tackled me, his favorite tactic being to tackle and pin me to the ground by sitting on me.  By accident I rolled out of his tackle and cracked him a good one across the face with my stick.  And that, as they say, was that.  He started bawling and was too hurt to fight anymore.  I felt bad about it, as I really didn't mean to hit him, and he wasn't really a bad sort - outside of being a bully.

The result was that I never had trouble with him bullying me again.  Ever.  The other result was that I didn't realize what had actually happened - beat that bully once, and your problem stops.

The kids should attend a different school, and should get some serious self-defense training from someone who knows how to teach, and who will teach some of life's philosophy as well.

The 15 year old is headed for juvenile jail, which will not bother him in the slightest.  The other attacker is being carefully ignored.  Well, what do you expect?