Legal Research

Finding the good?

By Patricia Hughes

One of the most disturbing news reports over the past week or so (and of course there are many contenders) is that of the Keswick school and York School Board’s response to the altercation between “the school bully” and the bully’s victim (not so much a victim) who struck back. After punishing the victim and letting the bully go free, the School Board has reversed its decision.

What were the principal of the school and the School Board thinking? We read constantly about the harm that bullies do in schools. And we shouldn’t forget that this bully punched or shoved the victim first, after using a racial slur towards him. His target used his martial arts skills and his discretion in using his weaker hand to strike back. Yet the principal recommended that the victim be expelled from all schools in the region and the boy was given a 20 day suspension, the maximum allowed, until the expulsion hearing. What an example of Canadian justice for this Korean family who have come to make a new life in Canada!

Would the School Board have come to its senses without the media revelations? Would the media have bothered had 400 of the Korean boy’s fellow students not rallied in his support?

Is there a good news story in this? Perhaps such a fuss was made of this because it and events like it are a less and less common occurrence - but we are talking about a principal and a school board here: didn’t they get the memo? Perhaps we should take heart that the young people at the school, or a good number of them, understand the need to stand up to bullying — and to racism? — even if their elders don’t get it. We might even take solace that the bully (former bully?) and his family and the Korean family were able to sit down and show respect for one another’s dignity, displaying grace by the latter and an openness one might not have expected from the former.

Remember the kids who convinced almost half of their classmates at a high school in the Annapolis Valley to wear pink to protest the bullying of another kid who had worn a pink shirt, a protest that spread to other schools in Nova Scotia in very creative pink ways (pink hair, clothes, faces)?

It seems that some qualities, such as courage, come only in the face of adversity. If only the adversity was not also of our own making.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 05, 2009 (boomark / email).