Powerful op-ed in today’s New York Times from the girl assigned as shooter Nicholas Cruz’ peer tutor. Should be required reading for school officials and parents, warning of the danger of shifting responsibility for psychopaths to their classmates
Thank you for posting.
It was the responsibility of adults to deal with this mentally ill cognitively disabled person. Not only were peers failed but he was too. This doesn’t mean he has no responsibility for his action but I’m very uncomfortable with the death penalty in this case.
I read the op-ed earlier today, and found the message very powerful. It happened to be on the same day I was spending a great deal of time someone who appeared to be personality disordered and poorly socialized, to his great detriment health wise. An entire committee of caring hospital staff was attempting to help, coach, understand and treat, to mixed and sometimes very hostile reception. Often, the medical system and schools are supposed to be the stop gap for cultural and societal deficiencies.
Not just the medical system and schools… a significant amount of police work ends up being social work.
Oh yes, right about the police work being social work.
S came to hate peer tutoring as he was always assigned the “problem” kids and never was allowed to do things he wanted at his pace because he was supposed to help peers. It was neither fair to him nor the peers he was supposed to tutor.
So many people need social workers but sadly they are over-worked, undervalued and underpaid. It burns out a lot of good people and overburdens those who have to be social workers in addition to their official jobs.
There is merit in being kind to oddball kids sometimes.
I remember doing this more-or-less accidentally in high school. In one class, I found myself sitting next to a girl who was ostracized because she was clumsy and a bit odd-looking. We ended up talking quite a bit and becoming friends, and I discovered that she was a perfectly nice person who happened to have mild cerebral palsy – so mild that you wouldn’t spot her as disabled (something that worked to her disadvantage socially because most of us made a point of being friendly with the kids with obvious disabilities).
But there’s a big difference between this girl and kids who are frightening or hostile. I think sometimes people who tell kids to be nicer to the classmates who don’t fit in are thinking primarily of harmless but unusual people like the girl who became my friend, but the idea gets extrapolated to bullies and downright scary kids, who need a different kind of response.
It was a remarkably effective answer to those promoting “walk up not out” campaigns.
There is always merit in kindness and inclusiveness, which makes this difficult. My sarcastic but serious retort to those who say walk up, is to say “of course”. And I hope that those promoting inclusiveness are modeling that for their off spring, being kind and friendly to the homeless, and making sure that refugees and others are being treated fairly and kindly. But in dealing with harder populations or individuals, of any sort, having a good understanding of safety and boundaries is part of self care.
The FBI had several complaints about Cruz. The police were called dozens of times. The school officers stood down during the shooting.
Disturbed and dangerous students have no business being in school in the first place. This is a comparison of apples to oranges.
It is a relevant response to those trying to undercut the walkout movement by encouraging students to “walk up”, as if that would solve anything like the school violence problem. Several teachers in my area have been promoting kindness as a cure for sociopathy Doctors say it won’t work.
Excellent.
No one thinks that sudden student kindness would now completely solve the issue of already disturbed students.
What they are saying is that there is something wrong with this culture that is producing an ever-increasing stream of highly disturbed students, and discussing possible actions that may help change the school environment, beginning in the early years. That’s all.
Have rates of sociopathy actually increased in recent years? Or just the possible lethality that sociopaths can cause?
Yes, it is rising. We have screwed up the kids and need to reverse that.
"But while anxiety and sadness aren’t new phenomena among adolescents, there’s been a significant increase in the percentage of young people aged 12-20 who have reported having a major depressive episode (MDE).
A study of national trends in depression among adolescents and young adults published in the journal Pediatrics on November 14 found that the prevalence of teens who reported an MDE in the previous 12 months jumped from 8.7% in 2005 to 11.5% in 2014. That’s a 37 percent increase."
http://time.com/4572593/increase-depression-teens-teenage-mental-health/
Anxiety and depression in high school kids have been on the rise since 2012 after several years of stability. It’s a phenomenon that cuts across all demographics–suburban, urban and rural; those who are college bound and those who aren’t. Family financial stress can exacerbate these issues, and studies show that girls are more at risk than boys.
http://time.com/4547322/american-teens-anxious-depressed-overwhelmed/
How are rates of sociopathy in a society even measured?
@TranquilMind you are citing studies on depression and anxiety. These are not the same as antisocial personality disorder.
The kids are a mess. I didn’t realize that you were limiting for specificity, as to exactly what kind of mess is happening. The rise of all kinds of issues is very alarming. And there are signs:
Research studies have suggested that individuals with antisocial personality disorder have exhibited behaviors associated with the disorder before age 15.
https://healthresearchfunding.org/antisocial-personality-disorder-statistics/
http://ct.counseling.org/2013/11/facing-a-rising-tide-of-personality-disorders/
Anxiety and depression are not the same as sociopathy.
If there have been true increases in anxiety and depression in young people (rather than just increases in reporting), that would mean that a lot more kids are having a hard time, but it doesn’t mean that they are a threat to others. People don’t shoot their classmates because they have generalized anxiety disorder or because they’ve experienced a depressive episode.