"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'"There is no excuse, but maybe an explanation.
"There were just some people who were really mean to him and they would push him down and laugh at him," Roberts said Wednesday. "He didn't speak English really well and they would really make fun of him."
"he would only shrug his shoulders or he'd give like two-word responses, and I think it just got to the point where teachers just gave up because they realized he wasn't going to come out of the shell he was in, so they just kind of passed him over for the most part as time went on."
Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide Monday
I am seriously disturbed at the moral breakdown in this country. It is the same lack of humanity that I describe in the post below this one.
The problem is that the definition of "moral" has not been defined in America. For conservatives, moral means not being gay. It means looking like everyone else. It means conformity to out-dated norms. On the left, morals means treating everyone with dignity and respect regardless.
I have an idea. Instead of trying to shove the Bible into the classroom, lets shove ethics and humanities. Lets have bleeding heart liberal teachers explain to students that a Korean kid with a speech problem is someone to be embraced and encouraged to be outgoing, instead of pushing him down and ridiculing.
In all the talk about gun control, or mental health treatment, and so on and so forth, just that one simple thing.. treating people with respect.. will have the biggest impact.
We better do it because there is no shortage of kids who are humiliated on a regular basis and now have perverse roll models in Columbine and Virginia Tech. No amount of security can keep anyone safe when somebody feels hopeless.
4 comments:
Spot on!
Like you said no excuses but we have probably all seen from our own experiences that intensive and constant bullying is destructive and damaging.
In the UK, the papers frequently have stories of kids - sometimes not even teenagers - who have committed suicide because of bullying.
I don't think you should underestimate how it can destroy someone and then create the conditions in their mind for suicide, or revenge.
I think I heard there have been around 20 mass killings in American schools/universities/colleges over the last few decades - I wonder how many of the killers had this kind of experience.
Lord Brown Mouse
I still say that parental guidence has a majority to do with how a person conducts themselves prior to a certain age. Teaching the basics of right from wrong and some humility can go a long way. In grade school we were taught the basics of decent behavior. Do they even still do that? I really don't think so. It's a total shame.
Lynn
But what to do when so many parents are fucking insane in the first place?
There has to be morals training in public schools. I'm not talking about religious stuides. I'm talking about the basics.. respect.. kindness.. dignity.. friendship.. honor.
To me, that's much more important than scoring a scholarship to Harvard.
And one other thing.. Mental illness is a disease. It can be treated but it's an inexact science. Sometimes, regardless what a parent does makes no difference in how a kid turns out. Some people are just wired badly.
I'm wanting to focus on this idea of bullying and common decency... on treating people with humanity.
This guy may have gone on his rampage regardless, but then again, maybe not.
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