Revenge of the Gamer

The United States has changed a lot since I was a child.  Back then we were taught some measure of accountability.  If I failed a class in school the teacher sent a note to my parents.  My father kicked my ass and before you knew it I was working hard in school again.  If I still failed then I either had to repeat the course, or was held back a grade.

Today things work quite a bit differently. 

If a child fails a class, the teacher is frowned upon because the school gets less money.  This makes it the teacher’s fault that the student isn’t doing his job.  It can’t be that the kid is slacking or goofing off.  No, the fault must lie with the teacher because little Johnny is an angel.  No parent is willing to accept that their little darling could be anything but perfect.

So what’s the corrective action for little Johnny when he fails?  They pass him anyway, because it will net more funds for the school and result in less angry parents.

If they used the same method as when I was a kid the teacher would be fired, and my father would be arrested for child abuse.  The thing is, what lesson does that teach little Johnny?  If he’s not doing well at school he learns to blame others instead of taking responsibility for himself.  Worse, he learns that there are no consequences for his actions.

Now this isn’t entirely Johnny’s fault, mind you.  If you have a puppy and that puppy chews on your shoes and pees on your floor whose fault is it?  The dog?  Of course not, the puppy doesn’t know any better.  The fault is yours because you neglected to train him.

If little Johnny’s not doing well in school part of that is his fault, but teaching him discipline is his parents responsibility.   Which, of course, brings us right back to accountability.  It can’t be your fault that your child is a monster.  It’s the TV they watch, or the kids at school.  It’s the teacher for not instilling discipline.

Everywhere you look in our society it’s the same.  People point at everyone but themselves when it comes time to assign blame.  No one is willing to stand up and say, you know what?  It’s my fault.

By now you’re probably wondering what triggered this rant.  It’s this article right here that angered me enough to post this:

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/01/phoebe_prince_15_commits_suici.php

In a nutshell the article tells the story of 15 year old Phoebe Prince.  She is an Irish immigrant who was brought to the United States by her parents in the hopes of a better life.  What she found was an endless assault of hatred and insults lobbed at her by the popular girls in school.

The abuse followed her online to places like Facebook, so she couldn’t even escape it at home.  In the end Phoebe couldn’t take it anymore and hung herself in her closet.  The mean girls won.

As horrible as that story is that’s not the part that pisses me off.  The girls in question continued to insult the girl online after she killed herself.  They made fun of her death.  But wait it gets worse.   The local news showed up to interview students, and one of them talked about the situation in detail. 

She explained that the popular girls in school had made Phoebe’s life miserable, and that they were so brutal that she wasn’t surprised she’d taken her own life.  Phoebe tried to get help from the faculty, but was ignored.

So what happened to the brave student who stood up and told the story to the press?  The girls in question physically attacked her.  That’s right, they beat the crap out of the whistleblower.  Their punishment?  They’re going to be *gasp* suspended from school. 

That’s right, they pushed a girl to suicide, laughed about it online, then beat up a student who told Phoebe’s story.  And their pubishment is effecively a school endorsed vacation.

What the hell happened to accountability in our society?  These girls should be prosecuted, and failing that expelled.  Yet they face no real punishment.  What does this teach them?  They can get away with anything.  Worse, it teaches the kids they victimize that there’s no help for them.  They can’t fight back, they can only put up with the abuse.

Is that the life lessons we want to leave them with?  These are the people who will be running the world when we’re too old to work.