Okay, so most of you by now have seen the 10-minute-long video of 64-year-old Karen Klein being "bullied" (for lack of a better word) by some middle school boys on the school bus. I know that bullying is the hot button issue this year, but I have some strong opinions about that, and in the wake of all of this fuss and bother, I thought I should air them.
First off, this is nothing new. Seeing this video reminds me of the "crazy witch lady" in town... people have always preyed upon the weak and marginalized as a way to reaffirm their place in mainstream society. Yes, these kids are little shits, and yes, as parents and school systems there need to be punishments in place, but stop wailing about it like it's the end of the world - this is nothing new, the only difference is that thanks to the internet and the profoundly stupid act of recording it, we can see it.
Next, put yourself in this scenario. You are a paid childcare provider whose sole job is to make sure kids don't act up on the bus. Kids start acting up on the bus. What do you do? Do you sit there and let them call you a fatass and cry, or do you stand up at the next stop and kick them off the bus? Take their names, report to the school and the parents. Make the kids sit in separate seats. There's also a bus driver, so enlist his/her help if the kids won't move. This can't be the first time this has happened, and there have to be disciplinary structures in place for kids who are acting out. You are the adult, and it is your job to model good behavior and command respect. If you can't do that, you have no place in education of any sort. Kids have called me this and worse, but you can't let it get out of control or you end up with the sort of feeding frenzy that happened here.
Anyone who has worked with children knows a Karen. There are two types - one is the easygoing, laugh-it-off type who lets kids get away with murder by the way they talk to you. They don't demand respect because they are afraid of enforcing rules, and they don't believe that they are able to. Or they don't want to deal with the fallout of having done something that kids don't like. You'll notice in this particular video that the kids have a conversational, mature tone to thier mocking - "Do you have herpes, Karen?" This implies to me that it was not the first time that the conversation between her and these kids got too personal/familiar.
The other type is the huffy-puffy type - they yell and lecture, but take very little action. They overreact to small things done by the weaker kids, but don't stand up to the strong ones. Thier punishments are overblown or not serious enough. They yell a lot to hide the fact that they are actually very ineffective, whether due to laziness or simply not knowing how to handle things. My guess is that Karen tried to discipline the kids before this hideous tirade, and that's what led to the "bullying." I'm sure that they unwittingly hit a nerve when talking about suicide, and that's why she was crying, but if she was at the point where she could no longer effectively discipline these kids, she needed to get help from the bus driver.
Also, these kids need effective discipline dealt out fairly, not the great internet lynch mob sending them hate mail or other kids beating them up. The bus is not a right, so first off they need to be suspended from riding it for the rest of the year. I was talking to Husband about this, and when I was growing up people got kicked off the bus all the time. It's a safety issue, and if kids can't respect the rules then their parents are going to have to figure out how to get them to school. One would hope that the parents of these boys would figure out a way for them to make restitution, and have a long discussion about respect. Also, the phones would be gone - especially for the kid who filmed it.
I am guessing by the less-than-immediate response from the school that this is not the first time that Karen has run up against similar situations. She is either too kindhearted or too unpredictable to be working with children, and the school knows it. My point here is that yes, this is a terrible incident, but it happened not as a result of bullying, but as a result of ineffective discipline by a paid employee. "Giving Karen a vacation" with $500,000 seems a little ridiculous when you think of all of the teachers and bus drivers who control situations so that they don't get to this point every day.
We can talk more about real bullying another day, because I have some opinions about that too.
2 comments:
Ah, and you said I wouldn't like your opinion.
False.
I feel it's valid, and ultimately, I feel it boils down to her just being too tired to discipline, for whatever reason. Yes, she should have enlisted the help of the driver before it even got that far. If she was feeling assaulted, she needed to take action, as this is unacceptable.
There are some people who are not cut out for this type of work, and regardless of her being a bus monitor or volunteer, it's all the same. You either have what it takes, or you don't. That being said, since she likely has had this happen to her before by this crop of jerks (and she obviously didn't handle it the first time very effectively), one would have hoped she'd have either sought help or advise on how to better tackle the situation, or decided to step down from the position. I guess that's just what I'm thinking.
Yes, it's awful that this happened to her, and yeah -- it's a sad video to watch. However, the fact remains that this kind of thing isn't for her, and to award the lack of action on her part with a vacation? That's nonsense to me. I was "bullied" in high school, along with plenty of other kids. I also fight the urge to punch mean people in the face on a near daily basis. Where's my sweet vacay?
Argh.
Or advice*
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