School District Proud of Anti-Bullying Program that Didn't Work

Have you heard about Austin Moore, the 13 year old boy in Deland Middle School in Florida who planned to commit a Columbine-type shooting, with the help of a couple of friends who were also being bullied? You can read about it here: Teen: Bullying Led To School Murder Plot

The article states, "The Volusia County School District said it prided itself on its anti-bullying program, but Moore said talking to school officials as dictated by the program failed."

The Florida State legislature is currently in the final stages of passing an anti-bullying law requiring schools to protect kids from bullying. While everyone seems to support anti-bullying laws (they only disagree on the details), they don't realize that these laws cannot make bullying disappear because anti-bullying programs generally don't work or make the problem worse. All these laws do is give ammunition to parents to sue their schools for failing to protect their children from bullying, a process that will bankrupt schools if enough parents take advantage of them.

As the article tells us, Austin Moore did what anti-bullying policies tell kids to do: to tell school authorities that they are being bullied. Unfortunately, as almost any kid can tell you, telling doesn't work. It just makes the kids angry at you for telling on them, so then they really want to beat you up. And when the school tells you repeatedly how terrible bullies are, that they are the moral equivalents of murderers, and that you must tell the school on bullies, what do you do when the school fails to live up to its end of the bargain and the kids keep on picking on you? You may very well decide, as Austin Moore and friends did, that you have no choice but to take justice into your own hands and shoot up the school.

Why is the Volusia County School District so proud of it's anti-bullying program?

Middle-aged Director of Anti-Bullying Charity Born Yesterday

Middle-aged people were usually born several decades ago, but it is possible to be born middle-aged yesterday. As you can see from the following news story, 'Apprentice' slammed by anti-bullying charity’, Claude Knight, director of the anti-bullying charity, Kidscape, was born yesterday and, turning on the TV for the first time in his fresh life, watched The Apprentice. To his great horror, he discovered that it showed public humiliation. As newborn director of an anti-bullying organization, he declared that The Apprentice was making it seem like public humiliation is acceptable, and condemned the show for encouraging bullying. It’s a good thing that he hadn’t tuned in to American Idol, or his young brain may have suffered a stroke.

The article didn’t mention the fact that Mr. Knight was born yesterday, but the astute reader can readily deduce this. Had he not been born yesterday, he would have seen the public humiliation that Eliot Spitzer was put through a couple of weeks ago, to everyone’s glee. If it is okay for adults to enjoy former Governor Spitzer’s humiliation, kids will certainly get the message that it’s okay to publicly humiliate kids for their faults and weaknesses.

And Mr. Knight may have noticed the public humiliation that our former President Clinton experienced for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. And let’s not forget what was done to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

And with all the humiliation that gets dished out on a daily basis to President Bush, Britney Spears, and the endless series of people who adorn our newspapers, tabloids and TV screens, kids will certainly think it’s okay to humiliate the ordinary kids they see every day.

And Mr. Knight certainly would have come across the most egregious show of all, America’s Funniest Home Videos, in which members of a live audience laugh their heads off while watching people falling off roofs, getting hit by baseball bats, kicked in the balls, and being victims of all sorts of humiliation and violence. Imagine, a “family” show implying that it’s okay to laugh at human misery!

In fact, had Mr. Knight, who is so sensitive to aggression and humiliation on TV, been born decades ago, he would certainly have noticed by now that there is hardly a show on TV that doesn’t feature aggression and humiliation. With so few shows portraying people always being nice to each other, he would have concluded that the entire media is promoting bullying. Lets hope that Mr. Knight continues on his noble crusade and gets all our beloved entertainment pulled off the air.

And when he gets done with TV, let’s hope he’ll tackle movies, radio, newspapers, magazines and literature. And the Bible. Bullying must be stopped at all costs!