having made it through high school (albeit remarkably unscathed), it's unfathomable to me that a girl so young would take her own life. can things really be that bad when you're fifteen? apparently they can.
i know teen suicides happens all too frequently and for a variety of reasons and it's always tragic. i just find Phoebe Prince's story especially troubling because she was seemingly relentlessly tortured by other girls at her school—via texting, Facebook, in the hallway. it continued even after they knew she had killed herself, in the form of nasty messages left on the message board of her internet memorial. and i just want to know—or maybe i don't—what goes on in these mean girls' minds. are they showing off for each other, yet secretly ashamed of how they behave? are they mistreated so badly at home that lashing out at innocents is the only way to ease the pain? is it possible they're just truly, to-their-cores malicious? whatever the reason, it's absolutely wretched.
earlier this week i started re-reading a book i bought a couple years ago, You Can Heal Your Life. the author, Louise Hay, is a fervent believer in positive thinking and i was feeling the need for a refresher. despite some loopy language and a few new-agey ideas i don't fully subscribe to, i think the book is amazing. just reading it for 20 minutes on the subway eases my mind. i highly recommend it.
anyway, Hay mentions in the book all the ideas people carry around with them—mistaken, misguided and outdated beliefs about themselves, most of which are developed in the early years of a person's life. these ideas are propagated by parents, teachers, siblings, friends. and when you're that young, you believe everyone else knows better than you so you take everything to heart and the next thing you know, you're an adult who walks around thinking everything from i'm ugly to i'm stupid to i suck at softball to i always have to clean my dinner plate. such negative ideas become ingrained and then—if they're not corrected—are passed on.
Hay writes in one of the chapters that she never understood why students are forced in school to memorize things like battle dates from hundreds of years ago yet are not taught basic, practical things like how to balance a checkbook, how to be a good parent, how to deal with emotions. maybe those are lofty subjects to throw at a middle- or high-schooler, but i like her thinking. and especially after reading about Phoebe Prince, i think educators should place equal emphasis on learning the usual things (science, history, spelling and math) and learning about the things that shape a person's character—like how to have empathy, how to be a better listener, how to develop integrity, the fact that it's always so much easier to be kind.
yes, these are things that should fall under a parent's jurisdiction but let's be honest—many parents have less and less time to spend with their kids these days, let alone the mental energy and opportunity to teach them important life skills. if kids spend most of their time at school, why not just build it into the curriculum?
very few people can rattle off details about the Battle of Bunker Hill—hell, most people don't know how many continents there are—so it's not like we all need traditional schooling so damn badly. i'd rather live in a world where people aren't afraid to be nice to each other than with people who can name the capital of Belarus.
i sincerely hope the Powers That Be—from school principals to the education czar—rethink some of our archaic ideas about a proper education. it's time to stop punishing bad behavior after it happens and make a serious, legitimate effort to influence good behavior from the start. because by the time kids start bullying other kids, it's too late.
the loss of Phoebe Prince—and all the others who've been shown no mercy by their peers—cannot be in vain.
mbm
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