The school holidays are nearly over and it’s time for kids to go back to “get an education” and of course give the parents a rest.

As someone who actually loved every minute of my school life, and who wouldn’t if they went to Margaret River Primary and High Schools where learning and living was fun, I find it difficult to comprehend that many youngsters are truly dreading having to front up at class.  Of course being good at sport and finding learning easy certainly didn’t hurt my school experience.

So why do some kids, and I understand that the number is significant, find going to school to get an education such a traumatic experience?? There are no obvious answers in my background as to why I excelled and others floundered.

It seemed inconceivable to me that the answer could lie in the recent school massacres in the US, or even the frightening kidnap and torture case of a young school boy here in Perth by three of his classmates. Yet, I have just reread Dot Lenthall’s unsettling book Don’t Just Stand There 5 Steps to protect your child from school bullying and there are a number of pointers to why these things are happening.

If you have school age children you should grab a copy of Dot’s book because it will surely open your mind to what is actually going on.

By co-incidence, I have been reading about similar concerns about the safety of schools in the US and one of my favourite authors Robert Ringer has a point of view on this issue that is worthy of our consideration.

Ringer writes about what he calls The Cho Factor.  Ringer was prompted to take action and bring to light the crisis in our Western schools systems following Seung-Hi Cho’s bloody assault at Virginia Tech which left many people dead or injured.

Ringer ponders what part bullying played in this and the actions of other notorious school yard killers Klebolds and Woodhams or the suspect in the murder of Natalie Holloway in Aruba, Joran Van Der Sloot who is apparently remember by many former classmates as a school yard bully.

Quoting Ringer from the January 7th, 2008 issue of his fantastic newsletter, A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World:

“.. the words from Janis Ian’s 1970s song “At Seventeen” that have stuck with me over the years are: 

“And those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball.” 

The reason for this is that every day, on playgrounds all over the world, teachers still insist on having the kids in their PE classes choose up sides.  Which means that one child — and only one child — is chosen last.  And it’s almost always the same one. 

Actually, I take that back.  The last child is not chosen.  He (or she) is directed to be on whichever team did not have the next-to-last pick.  Teachers who have described this to me say that when the child is told which team he will be on, the members of that team usually respond with such comments as, “Oh, no, not him!”  Or, “Yuk!  Why do we have to get stuck with him?”  Or, simply, “We don’t want him.”

Can you even begin to comprehend the damage done to the psyche of a seven- or eight-year-old child who repeatedly experiences such humiliation and verbal abuse?  How can a child — who, at the same time, may be coping with learning and/or emotional issues — ever hope to recover from such ego-smashing devastation? 

I suspect that more than a few Chos, Klebolds, and Woodhams have graduated from their ranks.

Are the teachers who engage in such idiotic behaviour simply stupid?  Or sadistic?  Or perhaps just too lazy to divide up the children as evenly as possible — without commenting on their abilities? 

Regardless of the reason, such cruelty should be brought to an immediate halt.  And it should be made clear to all teachers that if they ever make such a mistake — even once — they will be dismissed immediately."

Challenging stuff… I hope you take the time to make the school environment a safe place for our children and quoting Robert Ringer again:

Show me a child who is secure, who doesn’t feel threatened or intimidated, who doesn’t have to think about how to negotiate his way past teacher and student bullies, who feels good about himself, who is genuinely happy, and I’ll show you a child who is eager to learn.  And if a child is eager to learn, he will learn.