We lost a generation to the Bullies

We are the greatest country in the world, yet our education system is failing our children more than ever before. Our kids have become a number.

Schools are short-staffed with under-trained, under-educated more importantly underpaid people. Children aren’t being taught anything of value. They simply show up so the schools can collect their daily allowance to keep the funds flowing.

Schools all over the nation have removed any programs that would be vital to a child’s success in life. These days all that matters are state test scores and sports.

Why? Because they bring in money. Worse yet the kids are not being tested to evaluate their own performance, they are being tested to evaluate the teachers and the school’s performance. Year after year they are subjected to hours of a meaningless grueling test.

If you don’t fit the status quo, meaning you aren’t an athlete or you don’t test high enough, you become disposable over the years.

Not only are these kids being put in a pointless routine, told if they don’t meet the highest expectations, they will fail at life but over the years political correctness has tied the schools’ hands-on how they can and will discipline children.

It’s allowed the bullies to be empowered and those being bullied to be punished and a faculty that doesn’t have the resources to manage the madness. School’s don’t even know how to classify bullying anymore; they call it peer conflict.

Laws at a federal level actually give some children a free pass. If they are classified article 504 students, they cannot be held to the same standards as the rest of the children, yet they are intermingled with them. Typically, a 504 student is not a specially a special education student but a student that has been given a medical diagnosis that requires medication, therefore not making them accountable for their actions.

Not only have we created an unmotivated, lazy entitled generation but some of these parents are just as bad, if not worse than the children. They will show up to schools in masses and defend their children claiming there is no way their precious angel could possibly have done what they have been accused of, and often times join their child in mocking and insulting the victim.

Anyone with working eyes and ears is well aware of the escalation of violence in schools, along with teenage suicides, abusive relationships, and inappropriate relationships between students and teachers. School shootings are almost so common they have become a part of daily life. Adolescent children are being admitted to mental hospitals at record numbers. 

Yet lawmakers and school boards can’t give an answer to why. The easiest thing to do is to blame social media and parents. However every day millions of parents get up early every morning and are forced to send their children to schools that their tax dollars pay for, if they don’t the could be fined or arrested.

Every day millions of parents pray their children will make it through the day, or wonder what unthinkable thing will happen. Yet we pay these people and trust them with the welfare of our children.

Our children are exposed to so many things and they are being robbed of their innocence long before their time. Yes, social media plays a part, but the number one reason school officials lay blame there is not because of the constant communication between classmates but the fact that they can no longer hide their lies under a rug.

Things that go on are recorded and shared instantly.

I agree that social media isn’t the healthiest thing for this generation but it’s not something we will stop.  Some parents think they are smart and sneaky and can back door their children’s accounts a feel they are monitoring their online behavior. They feel safe in that thought, they feel comfortable in their power.

However, kids are smart and they are sneaky and when a parent thinks they are in control of the situation, usually they are not. These kids will get phones from their friends and hide them from their parents and create dual accounts.

So, the account the parent see seems fine no cause for alarm, the other account is where they really do what they are doing and hiding it. So, do you really feel like you know your kids?

Bullying.

That is a term that gets thrown around an awful lot. The meaning has begun to get lost. In recent years I have seen where kids provoke someone until they react than call them the bully, however, those roles are reversed.

If you continually poke, pick and aggravate someone until a person snaps you are the bully.

We have a generation of children that has no empathy for their peers. They like to say things like call someone a school shooter, or tell someone they should kill themselves. Not only the students do this but the teachers are equally guilty in engaging in this type of behavior. If the teachers aren’t enough the parents get involved and contribute to the bullying.

In the past few weeks, I have seen an escalation of extreme violence within our community. Different schools, different ages but the same anger and violence.  A school fight in the Santa Fe high school bathroom landed one boy in the hospital when his aggressor continued to beat him despite the fact he was down and out cold, another student had to hit him in the head several times to get him to stop.

Students reported the kid in the hospital was suspended for 3 days and the other student was allowed back at school for testing.  A middle school girl at McAdam’s Junior High was sucker-punched while looking at her phone. She fought back, the fight was stopped, but both girls got suspended because Dickinson ISD rules state that you must walk away even if you are attacked.

When leaving the school, the mother of the aggressor made faces and laughed at the other student with her daughter. In Texas City, as students were walking home a high school girl walked up to another student and began a confrontation. She yelled at the other girl who asked several times for her to leave her alone. Instead, she pushed her into the bushes and stood over her taunting her while she cried. A young man did step in and stop it. However, in all three incidents, videos were made and shared hundreds of times.

We are creating pressure cookers for these children.

We have removed their motivation to achieve, limiting their hopes for the future.

We have toxic environments that don’t end when they leave school, having cell phones means the harassment can continue when you leave. The way these kids are today they don’t know when to stop when it’s no longer funny.

The most dangerous person in the world is someone that has lost all hope.

We need to push for change, not only at a local level but at a state and national level. We have already lost a generation of children, and we are about to lose another one. We need to do more than drug the kids so they don’t have to deal with them.