The story out of South Boston about a young student who fought off a bully’s school bus attack by kicking him in the groin and is now being investigated by the school for sexual harassment (inappropriate touching, don’t you know!) made me think of many things.
It made me think of the Chinese proverb that “When the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And its longer version, which adds “especially if you are a school administrator….”. And the even longer version, which concludes with “who has the IQ of a gerbil and the judgment of Lindsay Lohan”.
It made me think about how the education profession might end the long reign of journalism as the Ethics Alarms “Most Unethical Profession” winner this year. That would be remarkable, since journalists have been especially vigorous in disgracing themselves in 2011, but education is certainly making a spirited year-end rally.
Mostly, however, it made me think of Butch Cassidy.
In one of the many memorable sequences in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, Butch is challenged for the leadership of his famous “Hole in the Wall Gang” by Harvey Logan, a huge and menacing thug played by the late Ted Cassidy, best known for portraying the Frankensteinian “Lurch” on the original TV version of “The Addams Family.” Harvey towers over Butch (played by the modestly proportioned Paul Newman, as I’m sure you know), who knows he could never win a fair fight with such a goon. They decide on a knife fight, and the wily Butch asks Harvey what the rules of the fight should be. “Rules?” mocks Harvey. “In a knife fight? No rules! ” Whereupon, having received an informed and free waiver of all fair play and decorum, Butch kicks Harvey right in the nuts, effectively ending the fight before it starts.
According to the geniuses who run Tynan Elementary, Butch Cassidy’s life-preserving kick made him guilty of sexual harassment.
Accused harasser Mark Curran, age 7, said that a bully was threatening and menacing him on the school bus ride home from school last week.
“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him,” his mother told the press. “He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles.’”
Good for Mark. To paraphrase Harvey, there are no rules when you are being attacked by a bully. This isn’t Olympic boxing. My father, who was regularly a target of school bullies as a kid, told me long ago that if I ever felt in peril by an unprovoked attack by a larger adversary, “stop him any way you can. A knee to the groin always works, in my experience.” Fortunately, I never had to perform a Harvey. Mark wasn’t so lucky. Neither was the bully.
Did I already say “Good for Mark”?
The school’s decision to treat this incident as a sexual harassment matter with the bully being treated as the victim is so obviously inexcusable and mind-boggling that it is not worth explaining what is wrong with it, except to note these points:
- A school staff capable of making such a bone-headed call can not be trusted to do anything—decide on a curriculum, handle student discipline, brush their own teeth, go to the bathroom unescorted. They should be removed, and their photos hung on every tree, with the legend, “Incompetent Educator. If you see this person in the vicinity of a school, call this number…”
- The lessons a child learns from educator malpractice like this are extremely damaging. He learns that adults are arbitrary and foolish. He learns that authority figures abuse power. He learns that the wrong are often rewarded and the innocent are often punished. He learns to be cynical and distrustful. He learns to hesitate to protect himself when someone is choking him.
- As I have said many times, most recently here, this is not an aberration or merely fodder for The Daily Show. This kind of irresponsible and brain dead decision-making is a symptom of a larger problem in the culture of education in America, in which teachers and administrators care more about avoiding liability and following badly conceived laws and regulations in mindless lock-step than they do about the welfare and education of their students.
A culture that would accuse Burch Cassidy of sexual harassment is a deeply confused and incompetent culture. The remaining question is which culture is so intellectually and ethically crippled: the Boston school culture, the U.S. educational establishment culture that feeds it, a national culture that tolerates it, or all three.
Frankly, I am afraid of the answer.
Ethics Alarms 
I hope someone advises young Mark to say that his neck, where the bully was touching him, is an erogenous zone. Not tell him what it means, mind you, just advise him to use those words.
The idiot educators’ heads would promptly explode. Problem solved.
–Dwayne
Isn’t this “The Captain Kirk” tactic? He was always making evil robots and computers self-destruct this way. It also works with ideologues of all kinds.
I look for innovative solutions wherever I can. 🙂
–Dwayne
One can never be too cynical or distrustful.
Why do parents bother sending their children to school anyway, given this kind of shit?
It is certainly one of the reasons we stopped.
With the availability of the Internet, I am surprised public schools are even still around. With learning literally at the fingertips, what do public schools provide anyway?
“The lessons a child learns from educator malpractice like this are extremely damaging. He learns that adults are arbitrary and foolish. He learns that authority figures abuse power. He learns that the wrong are often rewarded and the innocent are often punished. He learns to be cynical and distrustful. He learns to hesitate to protect himself when someone is choking him.”
Might I be so bold as to dispute your assessment. With the exception of the final lesson, learning to hesitate when defending one’s self, all the preceding lessons will prove most useful as the young man ages. Even if he is himself an “adult” the waring about their potential for arbitrary and foolish behavior holds. If only one is to be taken to heart, I have to agree that one cannot be too cynical; this will open the door for the rest.
.
I think, I’d almost say that I KNOW, that cynicism is toxic to relationships, ethics, institutions and life. Betrayal are too common, and trust is too often betrayed. Nonetheless, a child who is raised to believe that authority figures are fools and knaves is well on his way to being a knave himself. There is plenty of time for a child to learn to be wary, and to have the perspective not to allow the knowledge of incompetence in teh world to make him or her bitter and hostile.
The thing is; even if the punch was unwarranted, what the kid did was nothing close to sexual harassment to begin with. God, what happened to proportionality?
“He learns that adults are arbitrary and foolish.” Yep. But the Boston case is not cause for nostalgia. That kind of thing – teachers disillusioning students with blatantly unethical conduct – was already going on in the public schools in the 1960s. I know because I was there.
I was in the 7th grade. I won’t say which state. I brought a box of candy to school to give to a girl. She didn’t want it, but her rejection was not the big deal to me. The big deal started when a bunch of other students surrounded me, moments after I had approached, and then walked away from, the girl. One or two reached for the box to peel the top off. Several others thrusted grabby fingers into the open box and started literally looting the candy as I held the box. I was fortunate to be bigger than any of them. So I managed to wrench the box away and put the top on again, with a few choice and threatening words, and they backed off, having looted only several pieces. Then a teacher intervened and demanded the box. I handed it over with relief and gratitude, with no guilt, no inkling at that moment that I had done anything wrong. I obeyed, trusting that the teacher was on MY side. Wrong! The teacher, without saying a word, took the box away and never returned it. Never explained why she never returned it.
Later that day, another student with credibility told me of seeing several teachers eating from the box. Silly me! I figured I would get some stern admonition from one teacher or another against bringing disturbance-causing stuff to school like boxes of candy; then, a teacher would return the box to me with the remaining candy to take home. Instead, the faculty helped itself to consume all the candy. I did not consent to that. I will go to my grave knowing I was robbed – not by some girl, not so much by a couple of rude and opportunistic classmates, but by several of my TEACHERS, no less! I seethed for about a week. But, I learned. I did just fine in my subsequent school years, and did fine with teachers and classmates. With girls too. The theft was a lesson about being wary – “sadder and wiser.” It took the shootings of RFK and Kent State, plus Watergate, to make me cynical. Ford’s pardon of Nixon just made me nauseous.
From the article: “A Boston Public Schools spokesperson said officials are investigating, but won’t comment further, since it’s a private matter.”
“Private matter” – is that (1) just more sick humor, (2) more irony, or (3) as I tend to believe it is, an assertion that makes me want to get in the face of the Supt. of Schools and scream, “PRIVATE MATTER, YOUR AND EVERY PUBLIC EMPLOYEE’S A$$!!”