Thursday, October 31, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Anti-bullying suicides
atimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-school-bullying-videos-20131028,0,150664.story
This post has been updated, as indicated below.
1:20 PM PDT, October 28, 2013
SPARKS, Nev. -- Two students from separate schools committed suicide within days of each other this month -- which is National Bullying Prevention Month -- and both boys apparently had been bullied. Now, parents are asking questions not just about bullying but also about anti-bullying videos, which both schools aired shortly before the incidents.
Brad Lewis' son Jordan, 15, a sophomore at Carterville High School in Illinois, killed himself Oct. 17 by shooting himself in the chest.
Jordan left behind an affectionate, apologetic note that, according to Lewis, concluded with the line, “Bullying has caused me to do this. Those of you know who you are.”
Lewis criticized investigators for not pursuing the bullies more aggressively, but also turned some of his questions toward his son's school, which showed an anti-bullying video to students the day before Jordan killed himself.
"All I know is they were discussing the bullying, and showing kids bullying, and at the end of the show they showed pictures of kids that took their lives," Lewis said. "When a child or a person is at the end of their rope, and they don’t think there’s anywhere to go, and they don’t think anyone's doing anything about it, and they see something on video, and they relate."
Lewis added, "You’re dealing with kids. Kids don’t look at the long-term situation -- they look at the short term, they look at the pain they feel now, how can they end that pain.”
[Updated, Oct. 28, 12:34 p.m.: Carterville Unified School District Supt. Bob Prusator told the Los Angeles Times he didn’t know exactly which program had been shown, but added that it was apparently one shown at many schools across the U.S. He said the schools’ ant-ibullying efforts would continue to be evaluated.
“It’s part of the ongoing challenges of public school systems,” Prusator said. “I think every school district in America would agree, the issue of how we keep kids safe in all aspects ... there’s a lot of different levels. We feel a lot of pressure to keep our kids safe, and so we’re always evaluating things, but we also need feedback from people.... Particularly on social media stuff, we just don’t know what kids are experiencing.”
Prusator said school officials had never received reports of Jordan being bullied at school, and added that the incident was still under investigation by local law enforcement.]
Then last week in Sparks, Nev., 12-year-old Jose Reyes brought a gun to school, shot two classmates and killed a teacher before killing himself.
Those who knew Jose said sometimes he would cry and say people were calling him names. One witness to the shootings recalled Jose saying, "You guys ruined my life, so I'm going to ruin yours."
On Oct. 11, the documentary "Bully" reportedly had been shown to all Sparks Middle School students during their sixth-period class. The film, according to students, depicted two stories in which bullying drove one student to commit suicide by hanging and another to bring a gun on a school bus.
Some students and parents say the parallels are disturbing.
“I don’t understand why that would be shown in the schools,” said Veronica Rudd, whose daughters are in seventh and eighth grade at Sparks Middle School.
“They are trying to be very proactive [about bullying], but I don’t know if it’s coming across to the kids that way,” Rudd said. ”Because at this age, children can be influenced by many things.”
Washoe County School District officials did not respond to requests for comment about the video. Lt. Erick Thomas of the Sparks Police Department said the film is part of the investigation into the Oct. 21 shootings.
"Detectives are reviewing the video to see if it has any bearing on the investigation," Thomas said.
Research is mixed on the benefits of in-school bullying-prevention programs.
One 2010 scholarly review of existing research estimated that school prevention programs reduced bullying by more than 20%.
A different study released by University of Texas-Arlington researchers came to the opposite conclusion, noting that their data showed "students attending schools with bullying prevention programs were more likely to have experienced peer victimization, compared to those attending schools without bullying prevention programs."
The Texas-Arlington study cautioned that the programs may not be causing increased bullying and said more research was necessary to draw conclusions.
The issue presents a significant policy problem for educators.
Bullying victims are more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death for teenagers. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control statistics from 2000 to 2010, between 300 and 450 kids ages 12 to 15 killed themselves every year -- about one a day.
Teenage suicide rates rise every year, even though research suggests bullying decreases as students get older.
Brad Lewis said parents from around the country contacted him after his son's suicide. They were concerned not just about bullying, he said, but also about bullying videos.
Lewis wondered if parents should be notified before schools show such videos -- or even if parents should see the films first. "Sometimes it might be graphic," he said, "but it can affect people, especially kids that are in a dark place."
Mason reported from Sparks, Nev.; Pearce from Los Angeles.
latimes.com
Anti-bullying videos questioned after two students' suicides
By Matt Pearce and Melanie MasonThis post has been updated, as indicated below.
1:20 PM PDT, October 28, 2013
| advertisement |
SPARKS, Nev. -- Two students from separate schools committed suicide within days of each other this month -- which is National Bullying Prevention Month -- and both boys apparently had been bullied. Now, parents are asking questions not just about bullying but also about anti-bullying videos, which both schools aired shortly before the incidents.
Brad Lewis' son Jordan, 15, a sophomore at Carterville High School in Illinois, killed himself Oct. 17 by shooting himself in the chest.
Jordan left behind an affectionate, apologetic note that, according to Lewis, concluded with the line, “Bullying has caused me to do this. Those of you know who you are.”
Lewis criticized investigators for not pursuing the bullies more aggressively, but also turned some of his questions toward his son's school, which showed an anti-bullying video to students the day before Jordan killed himself.
"All I know is they were discussing the bullying, and showing kids bullying, and at the end of the show they showed pictures of kids that took their lives," Lewis said. "When a child or a person is at the end of their rope, and they don’t think there’s anywhere to go, and they don’t think anyone's doing anything about it, and they see something on video, and they relate."
Lewis added, "You’re dealing with kids. Kids don’t look at the long-term situation -- they look at the short term, they look at the pain they feel now, how can they end that pain.”
[Updated, Oct. 28, 12:34 p.m.: Carterville Unified School District Supt. Bob Prusator told the Los Angeles Times he didn’t know exactly which program had been shown, but added that it was apparently one shown at many schools across the U.S. He said the schools’ ant-ibullying efforts would continue to be evaluated.
“It’s part of the ongoing challenges of public school systems,” Prusator said. “I think every school district in America would agree, the issue of how we keep kids safe in all aspects ... there’s a lot of different levels. We feel a lot of pressure to keep our kids safe, and so we’re always evaluating things, but we also need feedback from people.... Particularly on social media stuff, we just don’t know what kids are experiencing.”
Prusator said school officials had never received reports of Jordan being bullied at school, and added that the incident was still under investigation by local law enforcement.]
Then last week in Sparks, Nev., 12-year-old Jose Reyes brought a gun to school, shot two classmates and killed a teacher before killing himself.
Those who knew Jose said sometimes he would cry and say people were calling him names. One witness to the shootings recalled Jose saying, "You guys ruined my life, so I'm going to ruin yours."
On Oct. 11, the documentary "Bully" reportedly had been shown to all Sparks Middle School students during their sixth-period class. The film, according to students, depicted two stories in which bullying drove one student to commit suicide by hanging and another to bring a gun on a school bus.
Some students and parents say the parallels are disturbing.
“I don’t understand why that would be shown in the schools,” said Veronica Rudd, whose daughters are in seventh and eighth grade at Sparks Middle School.
“They are trying to be very proactive [about bullying], but I don’t know if it’s coming across to the kids that way,” Rudd said. ”Because at this age, children can be influenced by many things.”
Washoe County School District officials did not respond to requests for comment about the video. Lt. Erick Thomas of the Sparks Police Department said the film is part of the investigation into the Oct. 21 shootings.
"Detectives are reviewing the video to see if it has any bearing on the investigation," Thomas said.
Research is mixed on the benefits of in-school bullying-prevention programs.
One 2010 scholarly review of existing research estimated that school prevention programs reduced bullying by more than 20%.
A different study released by University of Texas-Arlington researchers came to the opposite conclusion, noting that their data showed "students attending schools with bullying prevention programs were more likely to have experienced peer victimization, compared to those attending schools without bullying prevention programs."
The Texas-Arlington study cautioned that the programs may not be causing increased bullying and said more research was necessary to draw conclusions.
The issue presents a significant policy problem for educators.
Bullying victims are more likely to experience suicidal thoughts, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death for teenagers. According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control statistics from 2000 to 2010, between 300 and 450 kids ages 12 to 15 killed themselves every year -- about one a day.
Teenage suicide rates rise every year, even though research suggests bullying decreases as students get older.
Brad Lewis said parents from around the country contacted him after his son's suicide. They were concerned not just about bullying, he said, but also about bullying videos.
Lewis wondered if parents should be notified before schools show such videos -- or even if parents should see the films first. "Sometimes it might be graphic," he said, "but it can affect people, especially kids that are in a dark place."
Mason reported from Sparks, Nev.; Pearce from Los Angeles.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Saturday, October 26, 2013
From NRO, Valerie Jarrett
Obama's Valerie Jarrett: Often Whispered about, But Never Challenged
President Obama’s aides went to extraordinary lengths to uncover the identity of a senior official who was using Twitter to make snarky comments about White House staffers. Suspicion gradually centered on Jofi Joseph, the point man on nuclear nonproliferation at the National Security Council. So at a meeting in which everyone was in on the scam an inaccurate but innocuous news tidbit was revealed. When Joseph used his anonymous Twitter handle #natlsecwonk to broadcast the tidbit he was caught and promptly fired. He was not fired for revealing any secrets, but for making disparaging comments about thin-skinned administration players ranging from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
What apparently intensified the campaign to identify the “snarker” was a comment about Valerie Jarrett, the senior Obama adviser who has her own Secret Service detail and appears to exercise an inordinate amount of power behind the scenes. Joseph tweeted “I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me.”
Jarrett, an old Chicago friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama, appears to exercise such extraordinary influence she is sometimes quietly referred to as “Rasputin” on Capitol Hill, a reference to the mystical monk who held sway over Russia’s Czar Nicholas as he increasingly lost touch with reality during World War I.
Darrell Delamaide, a columnist for Dow Jones’s MarketWatch, says that “what has baffled many observers is how Jarrett, a former cog in the Chicago political machine and a real-estate executive, can exert such influence on policy despite her lack of qualifications in national security, foreign policy, economics, legislation or any of the other myriad specialties the president needs in an adviser.”
Delamaide believes the term “vacuous cipher” that was applied to Jarrett stung so much because it could be used as a metaphor for the administration in general. He writes that what “has remained consistent about the Obama administration is that vacuity — the slow response in a crisis, the hesitant and contradictory communication, a lack of conviction and engagement amid constant political calculation.” The stunning revelation that President Obama wasn’t kept properly apprised of problems with Obamacare’s website is just the latest example of how dysfunctional Obama World can be.
Whether Jarrett’s influence is all too real or exaggerated is unknowable. What is known is the extent to which she has long been a peerless enabler of Barack Obama’s inflated opinion of himself. Consider this quote from New Yorker editor David Remnick’s interview with her for his 2010 book The Bridge.
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Up against a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team — from chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to political guru David Axelrod to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. All are known to have crossed her, and all are gone. As one former Obama aide once told me: “Valerie is ‘She Who Must Not be Challenged.’”
When the revealing histories of the Obama White House are written it will be fascinating to learn just how extensive her role in the key decisions of the Obama years was.
What apparently intensified the campaign to identify the “snarker” was a comment about Valerie Jarrett, the senior Obama adviser who has her own Secret Service detail and appears to exercise an inordinate amount of power behind the scenes. Joseph tweeted “I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me.”
Jarrett, an old Chicago friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama, appears to exercise such extraordinary influence she is sometimes quietly referred to as “Rasputin” on Capitol Hill, a reference to the mystical monk who held sway over Russia’s Czar Nicholas as he increasingly lost touch with reality during World War I.
Darrell Delamaide, a columnist for Dow Jones’s MarketWatch, says that “what has baffled many observers is how Jarrett, a former cog in the Chicago political machine and a real-estate executive, can exert such influence on policy despite her lack of qualifications in national security, foreign policy, economics, legislation or any of the other myriad specialties the president needs in an adviser.”
Delamaide believes the term “vacuous cipher” that was applied to Jarrett stung so much because it could be used as a metaphor for the administration in general. He writes that what “has remained consistent about the Obama administration is that vacuity — the slow response in a crisis, the hesitant and contradictory communication, a lack of conviction and engagement amid constant political calculation.” The stunning revelation that President Obama wasn’t kept properly apprised of problems with Obamacare’s website is just the latest example of how dysfunctional Obama World can be.
Whether Jarrett’s influence is all too real or exaggerated is unknowable. What is known is the extent to which she has long been a peerless enabler of Barack Obama’s inflated opinion of himself. Consider this quote from New Yorker editor David Remnick’s interview with her for his 2010 book The Bridge.
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Up against a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team — from chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to political guru David Axelrod to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. All are known to have crossed her, and all are gone. As one former Obama aide once told me: “Valerie is ‘She Who Must Not be Challenged.’”
When the revealing histories of the Obama White House are written it will be fascinating to learn just how extensive her role in the key decisions of the Obama years was.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Friday, October 4, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Are Guns the Problem?
October 3, 2013
Are Guns the Problem?
Walter E. Williams
10/2/2013 12:01:00 AM - Walter E. Williams
What about gun availability? Catalogs and magazines from the 1940s, '50s and '60s were full of gun advertisements directed to children and parents. For example, "What Every Parent Should Know When a Boy or Girl Wants a Gun" was published by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The 1902 Sears mail-order catalog had 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. For most of our history, a person could simply walk into a hardware store, virtually anywhere in our country, and buy a gun. Few states bothered to have even age restrictions on buying guns.
Those and other historical facts should force us to ask ourselves: Why -- at a time in our history when guns were readily available, when a person could just walk into a store or order a gun through the mail, when there were no FBI background checks, no waiting periods, no licensing requirements -- was there not the frequency and kind of gun violence that we sometimes see today, when access to guns is more restricted? Guns are guns. If they were capable of behavior, as some people seem to suggest, they should have been doing then what they're doing now.
Customs, traditions, moral values and rules of etiquette, not just laws and government regulations, are what make for a civilized society, not restraints on inanimate objects. These behavioral norms -- transmitted by example, word of mouth and religious teachings -- represent a body of wisdom distilled through ages of experience, trial and error, and looking at what works. The benefit of having customs, traditions and moral values as a means of regulating behavior is that people behave themselves even if nobody's watching. In other words, it's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.
Moral standards of conduct, as well as strict and swift punishment for criminal behaviors, have been under siege in our country for more than a half-century. Moral absolutes have been abandoned as a guiding principle. We've been taught not to be judgmental, that one lifestyle or value is just as good as another. More often than not, the attack on moral standards has been orchestrated by the education establishment and progressives. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct so as to produce a civilized society. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. The more uncivilized we become the more laws are needed to regulate behavior.
What's worse is that instead of trying to return to what worked, progressives want to replace what worked with what sounds good or what seems plausible, such as more gun locks, longer waiting periods and stricter gun possession laws. Then there's progressive mindlessness "cures," such as "zero tolerance" for schoolyard recess games such as cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians, shouting "bang bang," drawing a picture of a pistol, making a gun out of Lego pieces, and biting the shape of a gun out of a Pop-Tart. This kind of unadulterated lunacy -- which focuses on an inanimate object such as a gun instead of on morality, self-discipline and character -- will continue to produce disappointing results.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
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