What Approach to Conflict are We Modeling for our Kids?
In the hallways of an Akron school a police officer was videotaped throwing a 13 year-old girl against a locker and breaking her arm.  The girl was not arrested and the officer’s report says she had been persistently disruptive in the hallway, ripping down posters and swearing, and (just before what appears on the videotape) he claims that she chest bumped him, daring him to do something.  She was a recent transfer to this school for unstated disciplinary problems at her previous school.  She is black.  Her mother is suing the officer.

A retired principal wrote a letter to the editor to say that the 13 year-old represents the problem of the ‘persistently disruptive’ student whose behavior would likely invite a police response in a shopping mall, so why not in a school, where this behavior makes the already challenging task of teaching and learning even more difficult?

A parent wrote a letter praising Alabama football coach’s father for beating the coach as a boy when the boy was disrespectful to an elder and concluded that the beating was the right thing to do and that the 13 year-old’s mother ‘should be seeking advice from a counselor on how to be a parent as opposed to legal advice.’ 

This is the kind of challenge we do not ponder as we should.  How can we respond to these letter writers, respecting and honoring their perspective, while disagreeing in a way they might hear?  It would be easier to dash off an angry retort, but that will only deepen the division.  Or to ignore it and swear never to read another letter to the editor, but that will only deepen the failure to communicate.  We might write a book-length manuscript, but that will neither be printed nor read so how can that even be seen as an honest effort?  I would be very interested in how others might suggest we respond, but here is my best effort.

As a teacher, I understand the very frustrating and sincerely challenging obstacles to learning presented by a disruptive student as outlined by the retired principal.  At the same time, however, we know that expanding the scope of teenage behaviors that will trigger a formal response from the criminal justice system is not likely to reduce disruption in the hallways unless there are so many cops in our school hallways that (1) our schools will no longer just look like prisons, they will actually function as prisons with even less focus on learning and more focus on enforcement and (2) there will no officers left to police outside of the schools.  Further, it is highly likely that only the behaviors of certain kids will be categorized as disruptive, amplifying the already cancerous impact of racial prejudice on our educational and criminal justice systems.

As a parent, I understand the very frustrating and heart-breakingly challenging dilemmas we face when our teenagers act like teenagers.  At the same time, however, we know that children raised in families where violence is the approach to conflict are more likely to become violent themselves.  What makes this such a challenge is to teach them right from wrong without ourselves behaving wrongly.  Further, it is at least as likely as not that this 13 year-old comes from a family where physical violence is used as a form of discipline, and the fact that this approach to conflict did not work here is a surprise to no one who has studied this questions.  It just does not work.

Even as write all this, I am already fairly certain I have failed.  The letter writers have stopped reading.  But here are the final paragraphs in an already too long response that I had initially envisioned.

As a teacher and a parent I share you concerns, but I also wonder why you chose to target this 13 year old girl and her mother.  Of course, you are making a connection between two current stories in the news:  the officer assaulting this girl and either stories about educational reform or the story about Nick Saban’s father.  But the biggest story in the news at this time, that neither of you chose to connect with, is the Steubenville rape case.  And this story is also about ‘persistently disruptive’ teenagers roaming school hallways destroying property and the learning environment. 

But the parents of those (very few) star athletes who exploit their status are not excoriated for their parenting failures; they are praised for raising a star football player.  The ‘persistent disruption’ of these students is not highlighted as behavior in need of a more punitive response from police officers, despite the fact that their violence is far more destructive than ripping posters off the wall.  Why do we leap to criticize the mother of this 13 year-old but not the parents of (the minority of) star athletes who raised much more destructive monsters who terrorize hallways with the protection of principals, parents, police officers, and prosecutors? 

 

Are we incapable of seeing other parents or teenagers as struggling, as did as both, with tough challenges?  Are we only capable of empathy when the look like us?  Are we only eager to point out their moral failures because they did not do what we claim we would have done when they do not look like us?  Even as we know from being there ourselves that it is always more a complicated and heart-wrenching struggle to parent well, to survive teenage years with dignity, or to learn to do both with empathy and humility.

Now the Stuebenville rape case is in court...

Now that we are reading about the trial. The news story today included at least one odd note.  One of the teenagers granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony said this and it is difficult for me to see the first observation as anything but conclusive evidence of criminal behavior and then I am left to wonder what exactly this same witness was ‘agreeing’ to in the second comment.

“Cole testified he saw Mays unsuccessfully try to have the girl perform oral sex on him later in the basement of Cole’s house. Cole also testified that the alleged victim was intoxicated and slurring her words.
 

On cross-examination, defense attorney Walter Madison suggested that the alleged victim was behaving no differently than anyone else the night of the party.
 

Madison, who represents Richmond, suggested that Cole was remembering events differently because so much attention was now being paid to what happened. Cole agreed with Madison’s suggestions.”