The concept of parents complaining about their children being disciplined at school has been of increasing concern over the past decade or so. Whether it’s moms freaking out about a kid’s mouth being taped shut, taking issue with a double entendre-loaded exam, or even the slippery slope of how to handle a kid who’s outed his school secretary as a porn star, educational institutions are having to contend with some interesting stuff.
This might just be the topper.
Yup, it seems that a 13-year-old kid received a five-day suspension after recently posting on Facebook that she “wished Osama bin Laden killed her math teacher”, and her …
… mother is not happy … with the school.
All right, not gonna lie, I laughed when I heard about this. I totally did. I’m not sure if it’s because I experienced a disproportionally large number of incompetent and sometimes even cruel math teachers or that I’ve been teaching middle schoolers this year and have learned to roll with the sometimes bizarre punches thrown out by early adolescents, but it cracked me up.
At first.
Then I got thinking about how I would feel if my own daughter had put something like this on Facebook, and I stopped laughing. Quickly.
Why?
Because following basic societal norms is something that I have tried very hard to instill in my children. You must say please and thank you when you’re at someone’s house. You must behave respectfully toward your elders, even if you don’t necessarily respect them. You must clear your dishes from the table. You must never publicly air your desire for your teacher to be taken out by a terrorist. You know, the basics.
If my child did this, there would be serious consequences, beginning with accepting the school’s punishment gracefully and ending with restitution that would probably involve a public apology via media including but not limited to Facebook—following forced research into the atrocities Osama bin Laden committed and the required inclusion of said research into the act of contrition (aren’t you glad I’m not your mother?).
Kimberly Dell’isola sees it a bit differently, with her main concern being the school’s screwing around with her daughter’s right to free speech … oh, and that this is a parenting issue, not a school one.
[Dell’isola] said she agrees with the administrators at Rundlett Middle School that the post was wrong, but thinks the punishment is too harsh.
“You are denying her an education based on something she did at home. That’s my business, not your business,” Dell’isola said.
She said that while her daughter’s profile did have privacy settings on, a parent of one of her daughter’s friends reported the post.
“They asked her to open her Facebook and she complied because she generally does what she’s told,” Dell’isola said.
The mother holds that the issue is a parenting one, and not school related. She said she expressed that sentiment to Principal Tom Sica.
“He just said what she said was really awful. I started laughing and said I agree with you there, but how did it come to you deciding to throw her out of school,” Dell’isola said.
While I agree that this is indeed a parenting issue, the specific circumstances do constitute a need for school-based consequences. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to this kid and assume that she was trying to be funny, but the fact remains that the message sent was essentially a threat to a school employee.
That’s an egregious breaking of societal norms, in my opinion, and that message needs to be driven home to this kid.
Of further concern, though, is the continued dichotomy that exists between home and school. Until parents and the schools they send their children to are on the same page, kids are getting a mixed message … and you’d better believe they’re happy to take advantage of the fact.
It goes both ways, too.
My daughter got a skirt at Abercrombie and Fitch a few years ago while shopping with friends that was, in my opinion, unacceptably short. We had words when she tried to wear it to school, and she pulled out her school handbook and showed me that, according to her interpretation of it, the skirt met the dress code requirements.
I called her school and asked that she be given a consequence for breaking the dress code (like I said, aren’t you glad I’m not your mother?). I was put on hold while they went to look at her skirt, and was shocked when I was told, “Technically it breaks dress code, but she’s a good kid, and we tend to blur the line with good kids unless it’s really short.”
It’s easy to forget how hard—yet how integral—consistency is for kids.
That and facing up to the repercussions of your actions.
[Delli’sola] said that while her daughter’s suspension is over, she has not returned to class out of fear of facing the teacher she made the comment about.
Dell’isola wants the school to remove her from the class and give her a private math tutor instead.
“She’s anxious to go back and terrified to go back all at the same time,” Dell’isola said.
I find this story quite disturbing as both a parent and a teacher on many, many levels.
What are your thoughts?
Private maths teacher?
I feel like the lass can deal with the consequences of her actions and apologise to her teacher then come to terms with the rest of her time under his tutelage.
Suspending a kid over something like this seems ridiculous to me, and obviously it hasn’t had the intended effect. Why couldn’t the principal have given her a stern lecture and explained why stating something like this in public has consequences, and given her detention or removed some privileges?
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The mother’s desire for the school to provide a private math tutor is ridiculous too. Either her daughter can continue to take her math class, or the mother can pay for the private tutor. The school is under no obligation to pay for a private tutor.
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This whole situation was blown out of proportion in my opinion. I get that parents often overstep their boundaries and fail to adequately discipline their own children, but suspending a kid is also taking the easy way out. That’s not disciplining a kid at all, it’s removing the her so you don’t have to deal with her. No one is in the right here.
I wish Osama bin Laden would fly a tornado into whatever bar you’re drinking in and fling you to Oz.
Katie, you are an awesome mother.
I agree. Creative punishments are awesome.
Although I usually tried to make the punishment fit the crime when my daughter was growing up, there were times when attempting to bore her to death was the appropriate punishment.
That girl can still identify farm equipment from the time that her punishment was to read “Farm and Farming” from the encyclopedia and write me a report…
Thanks :-) My kids might disagree with you, though…
You ratted your own kid out after setting her up by letting her wear the skirt to school? God, you are the queen of all rats.
I agree that what she did was stupid, rude and insensitive, but I can’t agree that this is a threat against a school employee.
One thing that makes this not sound like a threat is the fact that she never intended the teacher to see it. She wasn’t behaving in a threatening manner. She posted her personal opinion on her private account.
Most importantly, it wasn’t actually a threat. It wasn’t even essentially a threat.
She said she wished a dead person (who she had no influence over) would’ve killed her teacher.
If she’d said she wished her teacher had died in a car accident (which she also has no influence over) would it still be considered a threat?
I don’t think so.
If she was suspended for threatening a school employee, I would say it’s way off base.
This IS a parenting issue, not a school issue. I don’t see it as a threat either. That is pretty far fetched if you ask me.
However, the mom is bat-shit crazy for thinking the school should pay for a private tutor. Please, that child can step up and face the consequences of things being awkward in her math class and chalk that up as a learning experience.
I interpret the girl’s statement as a threat to a school employee, and thus it should be dealt with as a school related issue. Also, if she was allowed to get away with the threat, wouldn’t her behavior progress? Wouldn’t she become emboldened by the lack of response, and given more direct threats to the teacher, or anyone else she didn’t like?
Please explain how this is a threat.
Does this girl have hidden ties to al-Qaida?
Can she go back in time and change past events so that her teacher was in one of the 9/11 targets when they were hit?
Your entire premise that if left unchecked this girls behavior could escalate is based on the notion that she actually made a threat.
At this point, the natural escalation of her behavior would be wearing a t-shirt that says “I wish people I didn’t like would die.”
That would escalate her behavior from sharing a mean opinion on a private social networking account to sharing her mean opinion with the world at large.
I just don’t see it as an actual threat, more of an omg I hate my math teacher soooo much and continue on with 13 year old mentality blathering. I have a 13 y.o. and I can tell you at this age it’s all about the drama, the smallest of slights can be turned into huge ordeals. I also don’t see where it was stated that anyone was planning on letting her “get away with it”. The mother said she agreed it was wrong, but that it was her responsibility to deal with it, not the schools.
The lines of school and home are getting terribly crossed lately. It seems that the schools are trying to take on the responsbilities of some parents, while some parents are trying to make the schools responsible for their jobs.
In no way should this have become a school issue. No threat was made, a wish was stated. Was it a nice thing to say..no, but where does this stop. It is the parent’s responsibility to instill values into their children and to either choose to find this “wish” as something that needs discipline or not. It did not happen on school grounds and is of no business to the school.
Now, the kid needs to suck it up and go back to class.
And if I put on my facebook page that I wish **someone** would drop dead, am I now going to be arrested for a threat?
Since this involved a teacher, it IS a school issue. I would say it was not if this was the pizza delivery person she had a death wish for, and in that case, I would hope they would stop delivering her pizza, but in that case it would not be a school issue…just a pizza issue.
How about the other parent reporting the issue to the school authorities and not the child’s parents. Whatever happened to “it takes a village…”? The little girl should have apologised to the teacher and lost her Facebook privilege at home for a while.
If there is one thing that was drilled into me growing up is that: difference between a privilege and a right. (The woman knew the barest I could live with.) That is a lot of these kids’ problem.
Fight the power!
Private tutor idea is ridiculous. Suspension is off. If the child was allowed access to fb to school she should lose internet rights at school and issue an apology to her teacher & sit through some detentions. If it was just a post accessed at home, the parent who saw should have reported to the mother, and then the mother talked to the school about the issues with the maths teacher. It seems that the US uses suspension as a punishment… Doesn’t mean the children are on house arrest, just not receiving the education.
this makes me laugh… hahahahahahahaha
first of all what person would take that nonsense as a threat and then report it to the school
if all the kids who wrote something bad about their math english or any other teacher got suspensions their would be no kids left at school.
why they went through all this trouble to eleminate the “teenage threat” (for a week or two) i will not understand.
facebook isnt even safe to post what you want to say anymore. GOD HELP US
This is a prime example of why children no longer respect school employees or society in general: their Liberal , narrcissistic parents don’t. Mrs. Dell’Isola is well known for her strange and individualistic demands of school authorities while setting an awful example for her children. The truth is that dysfunctional families leech their dysfunction into the schools and then expect the schools either to fix it it or completely ignore it. In this extreme case, the parent not only excuses her child’s egregious post as free expression, but then denies the rights of the teacher and school community to exist in civility. What she is teaching her children by her rantings — this not being the only one — should be classified as child abuse.