There seems to be no end. In a society purporting to be more advanced, more forward thinking, even in the face of restricted civil rights for millions of Americans, stories of suicide keep coming…
Over the weekend another teen suicide, resulting from bullying, has occurred. In Pennsylvania, freshman Brandon Bitner, 14, of Mount Pleasant Mills, ended his life by running in front of a truck.
Ironically, the school Bitner attended recently held an assembly addressing the consequences of bullying. Not surprisingly, many students didn’t take it seriously, even joking about the absurdity of the call to order. According to fellow students, while Bitner was bullied for his perceived sexuality, the perceptions were not correct.
Most importantly, letters to the local paper confirmed that while bullying may be reported to those in power, little to nothing is done about it. For those who have survived the dysfunction that is the public school system, it’s clear the real problem with bullying in schools does not rest with the student body, but with school officials, and complicit adults. Adults who more often than not do absolutely nothing to intervene, either because of internal prejudice, or the shackles placed on them through the intervention of the legal system which threatens to punish them for any act of exposure.
The real bullying problem today lies at the feet of those who have always enabled it, the adults. Mired in an era of parental belief that supports the concept that today’s children deserve access to everything while holding responsibility to nothing, we’ve come to a place that denies the solution to the problem we’ve created.
Children are not supposed to be in control of their environment, and certainly are not supposed to have access to everything. Children and teenagers don’t have the capacity, in terms of biological development, to participate in rule of law and behavior. Giving five year olds cell phones and allowing ten year olds access to Facebook exposes the evidence of a selfish and self centered generation that should perhaps have reconsidered having children in the first place.
Children don’t have a path unless it’s given to them. Adults are the demons here, not the children.
