The Superintendent of the Boston high school 16 year old Phoebe Prince attended before bullying and harassment by classmates resulted in her suicide, claims "we are not to blame".
But they are...
Public school curriculums fail to prepare students for life. Following century old traditions, schools teach students the Pythagorean Theorem, the date the Erie Canal was opened, factoring binomial equations etc etc etc (none of which 99% of them will ever need to know). They choose to have students read Moby Dick, Jane Eyre and Catcher in the Rye without showing them the relevance and utility of those stories to their lives. They choose to teach them the symbols for chemical compounds, how to dissect a frog, and what our ape-like ancestor may have looked like 4 million years ago, nothing of which gave Miss Prince a defense to the verbal and physical abuse leveled against her.
Phoebe's school failed to teach her basic and critical subjects about life and living, including:
Psychology...how to find happiness (something we all seek), developing self-esteem, dealing with life's stresses and failures...and where to go for assistance when they become overwhelming; and
Morality...the standard to use for a pro-life code of conduct, what specifically and provably are the virtues of life, why it is in one's interest to act morally, and the unavoidable punishments reality inflicts on the immoral.
There are others, but those two might have saved Phoebe's life.
The answer to the chaos in the world begins with education. There is an urgent need of a major overhaul of antiquated, irrelevant, school curriculums in our country. Teachers must be retrained and requalified. School administrators must implement better procedures to monitor what is happening at the school, both inside and outside the classroom.
During the hours a student spends at school, the school has two functions: education and safety. Phoebe's school flunked on both counts.
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