Whose Child is Next?

How is it possible that nothing is being done to prevent school massacres? How can parents, teachers, community leaders and elected representatives sit on their hands while mayhem is being committed?  Our children are more at risk than ever before in the history of our great country.  Yet we allow these horrendous acts to continue without being outraged or driven to prevent it from happening.

90 % of 4th through 8th graders report being victims of bullying.  In most schools, teachers are told not to intervene.  “Let the children figure it out for themselves.” Students realize that adult help is ineffective and infrequent at best.  They try to fend for themselves but are often intimidated and too scared.  They would rather skip school than be harassed and victimized.  At least one out of 10 children drop out of school due to bullying, while about 56% have personally witnessed incidents of bullying at or near their schools.  There are too many shocking statistics which continue to multiply while the country engages in speculation about Governor Christie' s Bridgegate or why the Mayor of New York eats pizza with a fork and knife.

When tragedy strikes on a school campus, the usual myopic bystanders in the media advance their theory about gun violence to alleviate the symptoms instead of trying to understand the illness and find a cure.  The illness is bullying and not enough is being done to understand it and treat it.

What can actively be done to stop this?  Some so-called activists have begun programs – mainly to further their own political ambitions.  Physical bullying and verbal abuse begin in elementary school, tend to increase in middle school and taper off in high school.  Whether we admit it or not, 75% of school shooting incidents are caused by either bullying or a youngster with emotional or mental problems who is going untreated or properly monitored by parents or teachers. 

It’s an appalling situation which starts with name calling, followed by the destruction or disappearance of their property, harassment, physical and emotional abuse until the child cracks and either commits suicide or draws up a plan of defense. In order to identify at-risk children, I devised a children’s task force which I immediately sent to President Obama.  Several months later I received a reply which never answered my pleas.  An abbreviated version ran in Studio City Patch. I realize there are privacy issues which conflict with the plan of testing in order to identify at-risk students.  But something must be done.  There are children  being victimized, beaten up and tortured by other children.  Parents and teachers play a huge part in this violence by not speaking up, by remaining silent, by not intervening.  In the meantime, society is suffering in silence and tomorrow, next week or next month another poor little soul will find a way to get hold of firearms, carry it to school and exact vengeance on his enemies because nobody cared enough to stop him.