Thoughts on the whole Karen Klein thing

[jemma]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered. 

[Cleargleam]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered.

I think before we condemn the victim for doing her job badly, we need information about her authority to do anything. In a prison, a noncompliant prisoner can be moved to a different cell, can be placed in additional restraint, etc. What authority did Ms. Klein have to do anything? If she had no authority to remove the offenders, she may have felt stuck. Perhaps her attempt at a coping mechanism in dealing with bullies was to ignore them - that's the limit of what I was taught when I was in school.

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

[Shoo]

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

Why?  She couldn't even protect HERSELF on that bus.  I seriously doubt she would have been able to protect a child being bullied.  The evidence has been posted for the world to see.  This woman may be very good at a lot of things, but monitoring school buses isn't one of them.  How she handled the situation is a perfect example of incompetence.  It doesn't matter why.

I, personally, think the public's reaction (the giving of all that money) is kind of ridiculous.  But people are free to do with their money whatever they wish, and she is free to spend it however she wishes.

[jemma]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered.

I think before we condemn the victim for doing her job badly, we need information about her authority to do anything. In a prison, a noncompliant prisoner can be moved to a different cell, can be placed in additional restraint, etc. What authority did Ms. Klein have to do anything? If she had no authority to remove the offenders, she may have felt stuck. Perhaps her attempt at a coping mechanism in dealing with bullies was to ignore them - that's the limit of what I was taught when I was in school.

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

Do you really think the person who came out of this situation $750,000 richer is the victim, not the children who received death threats?

[Cleargleam]

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

Why?  She couldn't even protect HERSELF on that bus.  I seriously doubt she would have been able to protect a child being bullied.  The evidence has been posted for the world to see.  This woman may be very good at a lot of things, but monitoring school buses isn't one of them.  How she handled the situation is a perfect example of incompetence.  It doesn't matter why.

I, personally, think the public's reaction (the giving of all that money) is kind of ridiculous.  But people are free to do with their money whatever they wish, and she is free to spend it however she wishes.

Was she actually a "monitor" or the driver? She should not have had to protect herself from a bunch of hyenas and jackals. Where we're the boys' parents as the developed this behavior?

[RingTailedLemur]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered.

And what about these kids, who were old enough to know exactly what they were doing - are they not responsible for their own behaviour?

[Cleargleam]

Do you really think the person who came out of this situation $750,000 richer is the victim, not the children who received death threats?

Yes, those poor angels who never did anything wrong before this, and we can't understand why they suddenly ganged up on this poor bus monitor with no authority to stop them.

They are receiving the consequences of their actions. If their actions had had consequences before, it might not have come to this. And before condemning the bus monitor as incompetent, look at what her actual authority as - if it was to tell the kids to sit down and be quiet, with no teeth behind it when one of them said, "make me" - that's not her fault. It's a symptom of a broken system from the school administration *to the parent* who needed to have raised their jackals to treat adults with the respect due their position, at a minimum.

And the fact she wouldn't make a good prison monitor should be a red herring, unless we are conceding that society is so far gone our youth are more like criminals than proto-members of an honest, courteous and respectful population.

[Sharnita]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered.

I think before we condemn the victim for doing her job badly, we need information about her authority to do anything. In a prison, a noncompliant prisoner can be moved to a different cell, can be placed in additional restraint, etc. What authority did Ms. Klein have to do anything? If she had no authority to remove the offenders, she may have felt stuck. Perhaps her attempt at a coping mechanism in dealing with bullies was to ignore them - that's the limit of what I was taught when I was in school.

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

Do you really think the person who came out of this situation $750,000 richer is the victim, not the children who received death threats?

They actually made death threats against her.  I don't condone the fact that anyone responded in kind but she received deatht threats from them.

[cocacola35]

Victim blaming is ugly. Perhaps she didn't have the natural talent to control children, but when we get a colleague likethat we support them and create consequences. These kids obviously felt that there were not going to be consequences which tells me there was a systemic failure.

So what if she 'should' have controlled the children? The children should not have *needed* to be controlled in that way. It's NOT a prison it's a school bus. I bet prison guards and even teachers get a lot more training in dealing with this than this lady had. She may have been entirely capable of dealing with ordinary bad behaviour, which is all that should have been required for the job she had.

I agree with Iris.

I find the comments condemning this woman for being incompetent to be over the top.  I think we need more than a 5 minute video to have enough information to make that judgement call.  We don't know what training (if any) she may have had, what her experience was with middle-school kids, or most importantly what policies the district had in place for the staff to handle these situations.  Sometimes the staff has no power but to tell the kids to be quiet and sit down or they cannot even touch the kids for fear of a lawsuit from the parents.  Also this woman did not put this video on youtube, did not ask people to give her money, and did not shop her story around to networks, so I don't see her as "playing the victim card".  It was an unfortunate incident all around and the only good I can see that came out of it was to increase the awareness of bullying and maybe for the district to change their policies on how to handle these types of situations.

I'm a trained professional that works in the school system.  I've had kids call me names on rare occasions.  This doesn't bother me, as most of them have been laughable and I could care less what some random 11-year-old thinks of me.  However if my son recently had committed suicide and someone was taunting me by saying my family killed themselves to get away from me, I think I'd have a hard time keeping it together.  Those kids weren't just calling her stupid names; they were downright vicious and I'm glad they were called out on their behavior.  If they can do that to an adult imagine what they do to some of their peers who REALLY don't have the training to handle bullies like that. 

[Hmmmmm]

This whole situation is bothersome on so many levels.  This woman was a bus monitor, who's job it was to keep order on a bus of Jr. high school students. In a single isolated incident the students acted in a reprehensible manner, and should have been punished. My problem is that they should have been punished by her. That was her job, to make the children behave. She did not do that, instead she got very upset and sat in a corner and cried. For this she gets over half a million dollars.

I agree with this.  I think those children were out in a terrible situation with inadequate supervision that will haunt them forever, and the adult responsible for monitoring and controlling their behavior was rewarded for her failure. I imagine if their parents had been there, or more adults, or adults who had a knack for managing children, they would not have received death threats.  The school dropped the ball on this, and it was the children suffered.

I think before we condemn the victim for doing her job badly, we need information about her authority to do anything. In a prison, a noncompliant prisoner can be moved to a different cell, can be placed in additional restraint, etc. What authority did Ms. Klein have to do anything? If she had no authority to remove the offenders, she may have felt stuck. Perhaps her attempt at a coping mechanism in dealing with bullies was to ignore them - that's the limit of what I was taught when I was in school.

Condemning her as incompetent seems a bit over the top.

Do you really think the person who came out of this situation $750,000 richer is the victim, not the children who received death threats?

I do not see these "children" as victims.  They were the aggressors.  When kids have gotten to the stage where they will not only act atrociously in front of adult supervision but actually attack the adult, I'm not sure what else other than ignoring them could be done on a bus.  Do you really think the school district would have supported a decision to stop and kick the tormentors off the bus?  No, they would be held accountable for endangering children.  So trying to ignore their attacks on her was probably the best approach. You have no evidence she would have reacted the same way had the victim been a student.

I'm sorry for the embarrassment and shame they have heaped upon their families.  But I have no sympathy for the boys.

[Sharnita]

Depending on where you live schools and disctricts might have a complex system by which they were judged.  In the "old days" the answer was fre quently to kick out the "trouble makers".  Now schools are held accountable for educating absolutely everyone (No Child Left Behind) and so they can get into real trouble if their suspension rates are too high.  In certain areas there are students wearing electronic tethers.  The judge  might order that they attend school  but not that they get certain grades.  Schools are really stuck as far as dealing with behavior.  They might take action when a student is bullied because that student's parents could sue, although it is less likely in a poor district.  Staff aren't seen as needing to be protected the same way and so students get away with bullying to a greater degree.