Dear Karen Klein, Please Retire

via bullyingproject

I'm writing this off of the top of my head, so it may be messy,

but today I saw some of the video of the bullying that occurred

on a school bus in Rome, NY  (outside Rochester), and I felt the need

to write something about it, and post it, if only to join in the outrage

against it.

Now if you haven't seen the video, 

and you feel like being sickened,

go on YouTube;

it seems to have gone so viral

that people are reposting it 

for the attention it brings.  

I will not post that video on this blog.

Or you can read this story, from CNN 

The basic details are these:

Four or five middle schoolers on a school bus

taunted, swore at, jeered, made fun of, 

were absolutely nauseatingly awful

to a 68 year old woman named Karen Klein, 

who was on the bus as a monitor.

Someone took a video of it,

and posted the video on You Tube, and it "went viral."

I watched about 30 seconds of that video,

and it made me sick.  Now, the questions bound up in this video

and its "popularity" are many.  To begin, there's the horrifying question

of who raised kids who would act that way?  Yes, I will also blame the kids; I

like so many others who have commented on this, feel they should be

disciplined, severely.  But, as the saying goes: "the apple doesn't fall too

far from the tree."  I'll come back to this thought in a moment.

I also can't help but wonder who took the video?  That person

was sitting right next to the elderly victim, and the video captures

that woman's reaction: she cried; yes, she cried, as her assaulters

commented on her weight, her glasses, her ears (and then I stopped watching).

Why would someone want to capture that woman's reactions to this,

and then post it on YouTube?  Whatever the

motivation, as one You Tube commenter said,

the internet works fast, and no matter what the poster's intent,

within hours there were people all over the world responding to it with horror.

This included a blogger starting a collection to send this woman, Karen Klein,

on a trip.  I sure hope she just retires.

Now, bullying has been around for a very long time,

especially among children.  There's garden variety bullying,

I think, like my sister as a child teasing me because I was fat

(or so she said) or because I had a lazy eye.  That 

often comes from sibling rivalry.

But bullying has become such a huge issue

in the United States in particular.  A few months ago, just down

the road from Rochester, in Buffalo, NY,  a 14 year old boy

became famous because he committed suicide; he could no longer

tolerate the bullying against him. 

This caused a national campaign against bullying,

but did it make any difference?  

The common feeling about the Karen Klein case is that

these young people should be punished,

but would punishing these kids make any difference?

These kids have no respect for authority --

this woman was on the bus as a monitor,

and they attacked her, so punishing them might just

roll off them like water off a spaniel.

Furthermore, it's only a matter of hours before

their parents and other family members start

posting videos about how their poor, innocent child

is so misunderstood.   Which, let me say immediately,

is just a load of bullshit.  Those kids are perfectly understood

to be messed up.

I tend to think that whatever system

produced kids who felt it was ok to harass

an elder needs to be 

examined very carefully, and changed, immediately  --

and that includes calling to task their parents,

or anyone else who led these kids to feel

that they could gain popularity or respect

by harassing other human beings.

I do tend to feel parents are a huge part of

this sad equation of dysfunction: 

what I hear in these young peoples'

jeers are the jeers of an immature father or mother

who bullied their children with similar insults.

The U.S. education system is at fault, too:

it so wrapped up

in teaching kids to pass a test that it

isn't really paying attention to teaching

human dignity.

And then there's the entertainment industry:

the glorification of bullying and ridiculing through figures

such as Gordon Ramsey, Charlie Sheen, or even cartoon

characters (like those on Family Guy) who ridiculously

become models for human interaction.

The problem is very very deep, and it's only going to get worse

unless we all take responsibility for it now.

I'm going to have to teach some of these kids in university,

and I will say right here and now that it's already happening:

a year ago, I had a young woman in a university level English class

who took great delight in taunting me, calling me "stupid" in front of her peers,

and writing on her final course evaluation that I was just ugly

and she hated coming to class and looking at me.

Of course, she never did her classwork, and also

wasted precious class time by asking me, over and over again,

to repeat the requirements of any given assignment.

What gives me the chills is that she is now a year away

from graduation,

with an education degree no less. 

This type of behavior should not be validated

in any way, shape or form. They should not be allowed

to graduate from high school.

They should not be admitted into a college or university.

I'm not sure how to fix this system as quickly

as it needs to be fixed.  So I add my voice to the chorus

of online distress over Karen Klein's sad experience.

Perhaps shame, as this gets broadcast all over the world

by countless bloggers just like me, will be what it will take

for every person in this country to stop being preoccupied

with an election that is costing way too much already,

and put that money into teaching people how 

to be humane, and how

to live in the world.