Canada and UK and Australia have exactly the same mental health challenges and violent video game culture. These things seldom happen here.

The issue is guns. Only the police and military should have guns except for hunters who should be forced to sign their guns out of government arsenals for hunting and then back in. Now guns should be allowed in homes.

Last night on the Boston 11:00 evening news, a report of a boy with asperger’s syndrome, refusing to go to school. The parents insisting that the school district pay for the private school for two reasons, the public school was ineffective in preventing the bullying of the boy, and the school was not providing the education services needed for the boy to progress.

The response from the district board? The typical one, the district can’t afford it. Second reason morphed in how much special education is costing the district. A Boston news site -  http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/01/23/i-team-standoff-leaves-weymouth-students-education-in-the-balance/

In the comment section of Jay’s post - ” Back to the topic of bullying: I just want to give one example of how the topic of bullying was handled at my son’s NYS high school after he came home one day and exclaimed, “Mom, today in core support, we learned how not to get bullied!” [Core support = small group social/pragmatic lesson time] I swallowed hard, “Oookaaaay.” I let this remark just stew for awhile but inquired with my son later on re the specifics. He described in detail how his autism could irk other students into bullying him. I kid you not. I delved deeper.”

I can really relate, because I did some stewing when my child came home, indicating that she was the one that had to change, to avoid being tease.

So, I can really relate to the underlying frustration, anger and the mini brewing storm tempests being played out by victims and bullies. More so, when the whole public education system are geared to the adults, and yes even the bully policies to adult-like thinking being imposed upon the children. The school culture can become a toxic brew, where victims learn to become good little victims to survived. Sooner or later,well into the future the dam will burst. If choice is present,  parents are empowered to prevent the dam from bursting.

In the first comment, its all about the training of educators. So true, when it comes to the education and training of students who have special needs to the garden variety needs in reading, writing and numeracy difficulties. To the kids who are born with the funny ears, to the gifted children. What was skirted but never stated, in either Jay’s article or the Boston article, is the very fact that the education policies and practices of schools, and not necessarily public education systems are geared to catered to the needs of the employees. Inevitably, the policies and practices treats the students as little adults, having adult needs and behaviour similarly to adults.

Bradley in Jay’s story, the employees rallied around the boy. “Since this was a Christian school, the teachers felt they had a special responsibility to “go the extra mile” with social outcasts like Bradley.  Even if this was, at times, difficult.” In public schools, it doesn’t happen as often as it should. In fact, public schools are more willing to give up, lower their expectations of children that are difficult but as well as for the children who have the difficulties in learning. It leads to the excuses of it costs too much, to cherry picking data streams to writing off students because they just don’t fit in with the needs of the employees.

In light of all this, if public schools are unwilling to change their focus, upgrading the training of educators, and are intent to have school operations delivering education services that caters to the employees of the education system, children having difficulties in one school environment, should have the options to select another school environment or education alternative that will cater to the student, and their needs.

Another comment at the end - directing us to the Voices of the Dropout Nation. At the end, “William Mattox, offering a reminder about why expanding school choice is so important — especially to those children who need to escape from school cultures of academic and social neglect.”
http://dropoutnation.net/2013/01/23/voices-of-the-dropout-nation-in-quotes-the-dishonesty-of-high-school-graduation-rates/

Joe,

You go too far.  Gun owners in Canada must go through training before being given an FAC.  Many of my relatives and friends are hunters - they keep trigger locks on their guns and their guns are kept in gun safes.  You admitted that Canada does not have the same problem as the US - so why the over-the-top, ludicrous rhetoric?

What is more concerning is Ms. Dare’s initial overly simplified postulation.  If the cause of these horrible acts is something as obvious as bullying, then the most bullied students in the school ought to be the most common perpetrators of these acts.  If you think that students with disabilities are the most common targets of bullies,you would be wrong.  A simple barometer of this is language - words like ‘retard’ are gone from the teenage dictionary.  Decades of integrating special needs students in the classroom have lead to this kind of tolerance.

Who are the most common targets of bullies?  Ever heard the word ‘gay’ or ‘fag’ come out of a teenager’s mouth?  - It is almost every second word.  Students who are gay (as reported every year by studies of high school students in Ontario), find school to be the most fearful place in their lives.  Interesting that this group is not among mass killers.  In fact, they are most commonly the victims of violence.  Since it represents nothing more than the desperate attempts of the NRA to avert blame from the true cause, Ms. Dare’s analysis of the situation does nothing to advance the debate in question and is certainly beneath her.

”  A simple barometer of this is language - words like ‘retard’ are gone from the teenage dictionary.  Decades of integrating special needs students in the classroom have lead to this kind of tolerance.”

Well Wayne, I don’t know what kind of world you are living in, but it is not my world nor a great deal of people as well as organizations who would tell you retard has not left the schools, nor the rest of society.

As I have stated before, how many different adjectives to described and make fun of people with lower and perceived ability? Too many to list, into the thousands.

I am glad Wayne you brought up the gays. So are you telling me that children with lower abilities, the difficult children, the hard-to-teach children, the children who are the odd shapes and not the round peg shapes are not a common target for bullying? Not at high risked? Or the children with differing faith values?  Just the gays eh? Relying on surveys of reported bullying by students, is a mixed bag. Are they reliable? But I can tell you one thing, I have a kid that is unlikely to report bullying of any kind, because she might be dragged into the office to explain why she feels she is being bullying. When it is the SPED (another descriptive to mock students as being dumb) student, the hell that these students go through to report bullying, The process is so onerous, and at the end the school won’t do anything about it.

That said, Jay points on another reason why choice should be had. Being trapped inside a public school that neglects the academic and social culture of schools, is reason enough.  But as Malkin points out, why do the shooters go to schools? A complex question that entails the culture and operations of the school, and the adults that work within the schools and within the education system. Lots of policies of the social justice kind, that does more harm masking in good intentions. One place to start is the inclusive classroom. Let us all pretend we are all the same. The enemy is being different, than all hell breaks loose because someone is inserting their individual rights in the collective inclusive classroom.

Time to look in the mirror Wayne, and tried to see beyond the surface of the mirror. A tip - LD kids and others with the invisible disabilities, usually know when the adults and their peers are being insincere. What they don’t know and don’t do very well are their reactions to the insincerity. They need to be taught, just like the school that Bradley attended described in Jay’s article. They taught the students well, and Bradley had a very good day. It is a rarity in today’s public schools. Students who are being bullied fall into the shame cycle as described by another group of the top researchers at the Children of the Code web site.

And some times they’re in the Garden too!
http://www.gardensubscriptions.com/

(sorry couldn’t resist—-saw this at the check-out in Hilton Head veerrrry upscale grocery store ))