Reports of Student Suicides Related to Bullying Should Make us Consider How we Address Bullying and the Threat of Suicide

June 1, 2012 by

MSNBC is reporting that 12-year-old Joel Morales of New York City killed himself after being badly bullied in two different New York City Schools.  The boy’s mother and other relatives allege that the boy was repeatedly bullied because he was intelligent, because of his stature and because his father was dead.  Morales had been seeing a therapist but had been reluctant to discuss some of the problems he was encountering.

It is important to consider the broader situation when media accounts report that students have committed suicide due to bullying.  There are often other factors at play.  I have assisted a school district client after a student in the district committed suicide at home and the case was intensely and inaccurately covered in the national media.  The inaccurate coverage caused immense emotional harm to the student’s mother as well as to school officials.  In addition, a number of mental health professionals have expressed concern that sensationalist media coverage of student suicides combined with the manner in which student suicide is treated in the movie “Bully” could contribute to the decisions of students who are bullied to commit suicide.

At the same time, there does appear to be a link between severe bullying and the decisions of some students to commit suicide.  This is another reason schools and school districts should:

  1. Evaluate the level of bullying in schools using assessment based approaches
  2. Carefully consider how victims of school violence are protected by school disciplinary strategies (for example, the New York City School System has been under intensive pressure not to arrest students who attack other students and a number of school districts have dramatically reduced the use of court intervention for misdemeanor attacks on students by other students leaving them virtually defenseless).
  3. Implementing an evidence-based approach to bullying prevention such as the free Stop Bullying Now Campaign provided to any school in the nation at no cost by the federal government.  Top bullying prevention experts tend to agree that evidence based approaches can dramatically reduce bullying and the impact it has on students.
  4. Focus on improving student supervision.  This is one of the least expensive and most effective ways to reduce problematic behaviors among students as long as effective disciplinary strategies are in place.
  5. Focus on efforts to improve the connection and communications between students and staff.
  6. Suicide prevention screenings for students and training for school staff on how to detect students who may be at risk for suicide should be considered due to the significant levels suicide among school-aged students.

Bullying and student suicide are both significant issues for schools.  Research-proven bullying and suicide prevention approaches can not only help make students safer, they can help improve school climate and culture.   

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Parent Pleads Guilty After Arrest for Abandoning Daughter at a Mall Because of Bad Grades

June 1, 2012 by

 

 This photograph taken by the author in Quinhon, Vietnam depicts several thousand Vietnamese parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family members waiting in the heat for most of a day while their students sit for college entrance exams.  As the test results will not be available for about two weeks, their presence is to demonstrate to the students that education is important and that their family supports their efforts.

47-year-old Tuan Huynh plead guilty to a charge of child endangerment yesterday.  Huynh left his 16-year-old daughter at the Cheltenham Square Mall in Pennsylvania because she made a grade he considered to be unsatisfactory on a calculus test.  Fox News affiliate WTXF-TV reported that he told his daughter that she no longer met her parent’s expectations due to the grade.

Prosecutor Cara McMenamin told reporters that the young lady wandered around the mall for approximately four hours before a minister approached her and learned what had happened and notified authorities.  The court sentenced Huynh to attend parenting classes, to serve 100 hours of community service and two years on probation.  The prosecutor stated that Mr. Huynh showed no remorse for his actions.

There are aspects to this case and to the behavior of Ms. Diane Tran in the highly publicized Texas truancy case that are not surprising to me being married to a Vietnamese and having spent considerable time in Vietnam over the past seven years.  Working with school officials in Vietnam and having visited many schools there, I have noted a number of stark contrasts with our schools and culture.  Though by far not all Vietnamese could be described this way, I feel pretty comfortable stating that many Vietnamese parents and students exhibit an extraordinary focus on education.  My wife is now working on her third graduate degree after graduating with a 3.93 GPA for her second masters at Texas Tech University.  About halfway through her current degree she is maintaining a 4.0 GPA by dedicating about 40 hours per week on her studies while working on average about 60 hours per week and raising a child.  As she has told me numerous times, she does not attend school to make B’s.  She also feels that it is important for her to truly learn any subject she studies so she works far beyond what is required to make a top grade in her effort to master her subjects.  My suggestions that she reduce her study time to achieve balance in her life are dismissed offhand.

I can understand how Ms. Tran can hold down a full-time job, a part-time job and maintain her status as an honor student.  I can also understand how she maintains that she does this in part to support her family members because I have seen many examples of this in my wife’s family.  Her niece completed a BA in New Zealand and an MBA in Australia and now sends home much of her paycheck each month to help repay her parents for all of the money they invested in her education. This in turn can help them fund a college education for her younger sister.  While not all Vietnamese have this dedication to family and education, there is a very noticeable trend for these types of priorities in Vietnam and in Vietnamese Americans.

If you look at the photo and caption with this story, I submit that the reader consider if there would even be the need for a term such as AYP if  this significant a percentage of American parents found the education of their children to be so critical.

While like people from any culture, Vietnamese Americans must conform to our legal system, it may help some readers to understand the cultural factors that are likely at work in these two cases.  Many Vietnamese in Vietnam and in other countries still view a superb education as the way to a decent standard of living. Though Vietnamese society is rapidly changing, there is a pervasive hunger for education that is far different than what is the norm in the United States.

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Will Unintended Consequences Follow now that the Judge has Dropped the Charges and Offered to Clear Record in Diane Tran Case

May 31, 2012 by

Under intense public pressure, Texas probate court judge Lanny Moriarty has dismissed contempt of court charges against 17-year-old honor student Diane Tran who missed 18 days of school this school year and failed to comply with the judge’s order to attend school.  While these actions are very likely appropriate and necessary, they could have some negative and unintended consequences around the country.

Tran has stated that she was working a full-time job as well as a part time job to help family members after her parents abandoned her following a divorce.  The case has drawn an international outcry from people who are critical that the judge did not make an exception for Ms. Tran due to her grades and work situation.  People from 13 countries have reportedly donated more than $90,000 to help Ms. Tran.

Many communities in Texas and in other states have utilized assistance from courts in an effort to try to reduce the often significant and sometimes massive levels of truancy and drop-out rates with a number of large school districts graduating only about half of all students due to high drop-out rates.  School and court officials are often frustrated by sheer numbers of student violators and unsupportive parents.  Situations like the Tran case can help to show school and court officials that they should be flexible in unusual cases.  These types of cases can also make school, public safety and court officials afraid to act due to fear of similar backlashes should they make a mistake or be portrayed in the media as having made an error.

Schools and communities today face a number of these difficult challenges as they continually are required to take on what had traditionally been parental responsibility for students.  It is sadly all too common to see situations where parents abandon responsibility for their children putting pressure on students and those who educate them.  Apparently, in Ms. Tran’s case, the parents may have totally abandoned their daughter putting her in a clearly challenging situation where she needed to work many hours while she was still attempting to perform at high academic levels.  More typically, uncaring, irresponsible or ineffective parents fail to hold their children accountable and allow them to fall into unhealthy patterns such as truancy and excessive tardiness.

While schools in many other countries simply give up on these students and expel them, American schools as well as those in a number of other countries have attempted a number of innovative approaches to try to keep at-risk students in school.  Approaches utilizing local courts have often been effective in reducing truancy and drop-out rates when thoughtfully developed and administered.  Cases like the Tran case can unfortunately create an unfavorable impression for court intervention when they are misconstrued as the norm rather than the exception by groups that see almost any court intervention in student cases as inappropriate.

The Diane Tran case is truly a sad situation that will likely have a negative impact beyond the experiences for those who were directly involved.  

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