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Opinion

John McCaa: Back to school with our heads held down

Fear of violence and cyberbullying are part of our new reality.

(Michael Hogue)

As their children begin a new school year, a quiet worry grows among parents. Between now and the end of the coming school year, they know somewhere, someone’s child will face bullying, and a few so severe, they will take their own life.

They fear that some children, hopefully in some town other than their own, will fall victim to a school shooter. They still remember the 10 lost in 2018 at Houston’s Santa Fe High School, and the 19 kids and two teachers gunned down in 2022 in Uvalde.

Had they lived, the Uvalde children would be entering junior high school this year. A new and exciting life would be ahead, new friends, new challenges. All of them, all their dreams, all their promise is now lost to us.

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Surely, at least for a moment, that thought crosses the minds of the parents of their living classmates or of any youngster in Texas.

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Big school, small school, city school, country school, deep down they know no campus will be completely immune.

The Colorado-based anti-bullying group Rachel’s Challenge estimates every year in America there are just under 1.5 million incidents of violence in American schools.

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More incidents will arise this school year.

Some of the “threats” will come from fighting, violence during a dating relationship, the use of weapons and verbal threats.

And now we must add to it all the pernicious activity of cyberbullying through methods like texting. While youngsters can hide at home from abusers who engage in all other forms of harassment, cyberbullies plague their targets in the very digital spaces most popular with kids and teenagers. And that terrorizing can happen day and night, around the clock. At home, at school, even while they are away on vacation.

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In addition, with the start of this school year, many are taking their desire for more parental involvement in stopping harassment to social media, asking every parent to sit down with their child and have a heart-to-heart talk about the dangers of bullying.

On Facebook, thousands and have seen the post from someone called the “The Quincy Dux” asking parents to “sit with your child for 5 minutes and explain that there is never a reason to make fun of someone for the height, their weight, their skin tone, their home life, or the things they enjoy.” The post also goes on to request that adults caution their kids against making fun of people or their clothing.

There are various versions of that message on Facebook, Instagram and every place where we gather.

We can only hope that they help because in many of the school shootings that have taken place, it later emerges that the shooter himself suffered bullying in the past.

So, let us pray now for a more peaceful school year, for those who will be among tomorrow’s victims, for potential “aggressors” who now contemplate violence as their only solution, and for the parents of both who hope they have seen their last Uvalde.

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