The Psychology of Middle School Kids Bullying a Bus Monitor ...

The Psychology of Middle School Kids Bullying a Bus MonitorWith over 1.6 million views at the moment, this video ? filmed by one of the students who was apparently involved in the incident ? shows a small group of middle school students in Greece, NY bullying Karen Klein, a 68-year-old grandmother and Bus #784?s unfortunate bus monitor.

Klein is shown crying in the video, while the kids hurl profanity and insults at her. Klein reportedly said the comment that hurt the most was when a student told her she is so ugly that her kids ?should kill themselves.?

Klein?s son committed suicide ten years ago, according to Metro.

While the school district makes noises about all the kids involved facing ?disciplinary action,? the question remains ? how did we get here? How did this bullying situation occur, and why did it occur?

The answer is a little more nuanced than you may appreciate.

Bullying has been a rising problem among children and teenagers for years. The Internet?s (often false) sense of anonymity has amplified this trend in the past 10 years. Pair it with a teen?s inexperienced (and often poor) judgment, and you have an recipe ripe for growth.

School districts that don?t have a proactive anti-bullying program in place may often find themselves at a disadvantage when an incident like this happens. But most school programs don?t address this kind of opportunistic bullying ? a group of kids bullying a lone adult.

The video (below) captures a confluence of factors which provided an opportunity for the 10 minutes of bullying to occur:

  • The lone adult around them was vulnerable.

    Young teen bullies have a sixth sense when it comes to vulnerability, no matter the person?s age. The person in the video viciously attacks Karen because he?s a pro at identifying Klein?s weaknesses. The fact that the group is attacking an adult doesn?t even seem to enter into the equation.

  • The adult was a senior citizen.

    Undisciplined children and teenagers today, more so than at any previous point in history, have virtually no respect for senior citizens. Whether it?s because they were never taught it, or believe the older people have nothing of interest to offer them of relevance to their lives, it?s not clear.

    But when a child or teen isn?t taught to give at least a modicum of respect people who are seniors, they may believe there?s nothing wrong with insulting them.

  • The adult was apparently given no real authority to discipline the children.

    Putting an adult into a situation where they are meant to police children, but making them powerless to actually do so, is a situation just begging to be exploited. Some young teenagers are very aware when adults have no real authority over them. These teens will then sometimes take advantage of such a situation when the moment presents itself.

    If the point of a ?bus monitor? is to sit there and help keep kids on a bus more under control leaving the bus driver to the important ask of actually driving the bus, then the bus monitor must be given a set of tools they can use to enforce appropriate behavior on a moving, motorized vehicle. Just plopping an adult into a moving room of 60 kids isn?t going to have the same effect it might have had 30 or 40 years ago.

  • The environment provided the opportunity.

    In normal situations, a group of teens wouldn?t dream of bullying an adult at their school for 10 minutes straight. But put kids on a bus, and suddenly kids have unfettered access with very little oversight until their stop. This has long been a recipe for disaster that school districts for decades have been aware of (it was little different when I went to school and was bused into the neighboring inner-city for desegregation).

    What?s different is that parents are providing less discipline at home and expecting schools to do more with less. Parents today are often more likely to back up their kids in disputes with schools, rather than taking the school?s side in a dispute or discipline problem.

    This provides a simple message to some teens and kids ? ?I can get away with murder, and my parents will back me up.? Allowing inappropriate behavior without consequences is a very good teacher.

  • The environment reinforces a ?mob mentality.?

    ?When people are part of a group, they often experience deindividuation, or a loss of self-awareness,? says Tamara Avant, Psychology program director at South University ? Savannah. ?When [this happens], they are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity.?

    ?Groups can generate a sense of emotional excitement, which can lead to the provocation of behaviors that a person would not typically engage in if alone.?

    But mob mentality doesn?t form every time you get a group of kids together. So why did one form this time?

    ?First, many people believe they cannot be held responsible for violent behavior when part of a mob because they perceive the violent action as the group?s (e.g., ?everyone was doing it?) rather than their own behavior,? notes Avant.

    ?Second, physical anonymity also leads to a person experiencing fewer social inhibitions. When people feel that their behavior cannot be traced back to them, they are more likely to break social norms and engage in violence.?

    Teenagers often have a very poor sense of judgment, since they lack enough experience to know when their behaviors can be traced back to them. This group of teens, who took the video and posted it to one of their own Facebook pages, obviously thought it would never be seen outside their group of friends. So they felt more empowered to act like farm animals than human beings.

  • The bus driver didn?t provide back-up the bus monitor.

    If the bus driver had been paying attention, they would?ve provided needed back up to the bus monitor. For reasons that remain unclear, the only other adult on the bus apparently ignored the situation.

There?s plenty of blame to go around in this incident. The school district needs to provide better tools to adults if they?re going to put them into these kinds of situations. Parents need to step up and recognize that their failure to parent ? or rely on others to provide the discipline and skills to their children ? contributes to situations like this. And most of all, the teens directly involved in this incident must learn that bad behavior has very real consequences. Poor judgment in a moment like this will reflect on them for the rest of their lives.

And we mustn?t kid ourselves that this is a lone incident. This sort of bad behavior goes on everyday, on dozens of buses around the U.S., in many, many more communities. The only reason we know of this incident is because one of the students involved had such poor judgment, they decided to film it.

Our hearts and prayers go out to Karen Klein, and we wish her all the best in her future life (made all the more richer by the donation fund below).

?

Watch the video (warning: contains profanity and bullying of a senior citizen):

Show your support and donate to Karen Klein?s vacation fund (which ? now at over $250,000 and climbing quickly! ? is more likely a retirement fund). Update: About 18 hours after I wrote this entry, the fund is now at over $450,000!

Read the Metro article: Karen Klein: Supporters donate thousands for school bus monitor harassed by kids

John Grohol, PsyDDr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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Catch up on other posts by John M. Grohol, PsyD (or subscribe to their feed).



????Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 22 Jun 2012
????Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.

APA Reference
Grohol, J. (2012). The Psychology of Middle School Kids Bullying a Bus Monitor. Psych Central. Retrieved on June 22, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/06/21/the-psychology-of-middle-sch...

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Zimmerman re-enacts Trayvon shooting on video

"He took my head and slammed it against the concrete several times, and each time I thought my head was going to explode and I thought I was going to lose consciousness," George Zimmerman told police the day after he shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

"I started screaming for help," but Martin pressed his hands over Zimmerman's mouth and nose, he said. "He told me to shut the fk up, and I was suffocating."

Zimmerman told police he was lying on the ground, but his head was on the concrete.

"I didn't want him to keep slamming my head on the concrete so I kind of shifted. But when I shifted my jacket came up?and it exposed my firearm. That's when he said you are going to die tonight. He took one hand off my mouth, and slid it down my chest. I took my gun aimed it at him and fired."

The latest and most detailed account yet of what happened in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26 comes from a voice stress test that Zimmerman passed, along with a video re-enactment, a handwritten statement and audio interviews conducted in the days after the shooting by investigators.

The material was released by Zimmerman's attorney today on the website gzlegalcase.com, a website managed by the Zimmerman defense team.

The relatively consistent statements portray a man trying to convince investigators that he was in a life and death struggle that left him with little choice but to kill the unarmed teenager.

The documents also show that in the days following the shooting, the lead investigator was not accepting Zimmerman's version of events and recommended that charges be filed against Zimmerman.

"I shot him, and I didn't think I hit him because he sat up and said, 'Oh you got me. You got me, you got it,'" said Zimmerman during a nearly 20-minute re-enactment shot by investigators at the scene of the shooting the next day.

In the video Zimmerman, 28, gives a blow by blow description of how the fight began and depicts Martin as the aggressor, a key point as his legal team builds his defense on Florida's controversial "stand your ground" law.

Zimmerman said he was driving to buy groceries when he spotted the unarmed teen walking near a house that he knew Martin did not live in and called police to report a suspicious person.

"I just felt like something was off about him?and there's been a history of break-ins ... so I said you know just better to call. I kept driving and I passed him, and he kept staring at me and staring around," Zimmerman said.

He took investigators to the house where he first spotted the teen and got on the phone with police. At that point he says he lost sight of Martin.

With bandages clearly visible on the back of his head in the video, he took investigators through the neighborhood showing them where he was when the responder told him that he did not have to follow Martin. Zimmerman says by the time of the request he was no longer in his car and wanted to figure out exactly where he was in the subdivision, so that the officer dispatched to the scene could find him.

"I was walking back. I didn't see anything again, came back to my truck and when I got to right about here, he yelled from behind to me."

"He said, 'Yo, you got a problem?' and I turned around and said no I don't have a problem," said Zimmerman.

Read George Zimmerman's Handwritten Statement

"I went to grab my cell phone, but I left it in a different pocket. I looked down at my pants pocket, he said, 'You got a problem now' and then he was here and he punched me in the face," said Zimmerman, throwing a punch near his own face to illustrate.

"I think I stumbled and I fell down, he pushed me down, somehow he got on top of me... I was trying to push him away from me. He got on top of me somewhere around here, and that's when I started screaming for help. I started screaming HELP as loud as I could. I tried to sit up. That's when he grabbed me by the head and he tried to slam my head down," Zimmerman said.

"He kept slamming and slamming, and I kept yelling HELP, HELP, HELP as loud as I could," he said.

In the voice stress test video, which begins with a bandaged Zimmerman commenting to an officer on the high price of health insurance as a reason he was hesitant to get treatment the night of the shooting, he later calmly questioned an officer about what she did on the force.

But in a Feb. 29 interrogation, lead investigator Chris Serino openly doubts the story.

"You ever hear of Murphy's law?" asks Serino. "This person was not doing anything bad. You know the name of the person that died?"

"Tavon," responds Zimmerman

"Trayvon," Serino shot back.

"Trayvon Martin" responds Zimmerman.

"Trayvon Benjamin Martin?He was 17?A kid with a future," said Serino. "In his possession we found a can of ice tea and a bag of Skittles. And $40 in cash. Not the goon."

Serino then peppered Zimmerman about if he had any law enforcement experience, and why he deemed Martin suspicious and decided to follow him.

"You know you are going to come under a lot of scrutiny over this, correct?" asks Serino. "Had this person been white would you have felt the same way?"

"Yes," responded Zimmerman.

Serino then questioned the extent of Zimmerman's injuries telling him that they don't seem consistent with someone involved in a life or death struggle. A medical report obtained earlier by ABC News revealed that Zimmerman suffered a broken nose and two lacerations on the back of his head.

Another investigator then asked why didn't he just identify himself as a member of the local neighborhood watch. Both investigators then ask if it was raining outside, and if he decided not to follow Martin after the non-emergency dispatcher asked him to get back in the car why didn't he.

"You wanted to catch him. You wanted to catch the bad guy," said Serino aggressively later in the interview, implying that it was Zimmerman who instigated the altercation.

Lead investigator Serino later recommended that manslaughter charges be brought up against Zimmerman, but Seminole County State's Attorney Norm Wolfinger rejected the request citing a lack of solid evidence. The initial lack of an arrest in the case led to widespread protests, and propelled the case into the national headlines. In April, a special prosecutor appointed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott charged Zimmerman with second degree murder.

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Iran: Cyber attack on nuclear facilities detected

Iran has detected a planned "massive cyber attack" against its nuclear facilities, state television said on Thursday, after talks with major powers this week failed to resolve a row over Tehran's disputed nuclear activities.

Iran's Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi said the country's arch enemies the United States and Israel, along with Britain, had planned the attack.

"Based on obtained information, America and the Zionist regime (Israel) along with the MI6 planned an operation to launch a massive cyber attack against Iran's facilities following the meeting between Iran and the P5+1 in Moscow," Iran's English-language Press TV quoted him as saying.

"They still seek to carry out the plan, but we have taken necessary measures," he added, without elaborating.

Security experts said last month a highly sophisticated computer virus, dubbed "Flame", had infected computers in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

Iranian officials were quick to say the country had defeated the virus, capable of snatching data and eavesdropping on computer users. It was not clear if the cyber attack referred to by Moslehi was "Flame", or a new virus.

Iran's nuclear program came under attack in 2010 by the Stuxnet computer worm which caused centrifuges to fail at the main Iranian enrichment facility. Tehran accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.

Iran has been locked in a row for nearly a decade with Western countries over its disputed nuclear program which the West believes is aimed at making nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the charge, saying it only wants peaceful nuclear technology to generate.

Earlier this month current and former U.S. officials said the United States under former President George W. Bush began building Stuxnet to try to prevent Tehran from completing suspected nuclear weapons work without resorting to risky military strikes against Iranian facilities.

They said President Barack Obama accelerated the efforts after succeeding Bush in 2009.

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World powers and Iran failed to secure a breakthrough at talks on Tehran's nuclear program in Moscow on Tuesday, despite the threat of a new Middle East conflict if diplomacy collapses.

After two days of talks, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said significant differences remained and the two sides had agreed only on a technical follow-up meeting in Istanbul on July 3.

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Southern Baptists elect 1st black president

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? At the end of the day Wednesday, the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention will pass to an African-American pastor for the first time.

The nation's largest Protestant denomination voted Tuesday to elect the Rev. Fred Luter Jr. to lead them, an important step for a denomination that was formed on the wrong side of slavery before the Civil War and had a reputation for supporting segregation and racism during much of the last century.

In a news conference after the vote, Luter said he doesn't think his election is some kind of token gesture.

"If we stop appointing African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics to leadership positions after this, we've failed," he said. "... I promise you I'm going to do all that I can to make sure this is not just a one-and-done deal."

Faced with declining membership, the SBC has been making efforts to appeal to a more diverse group of believers.

Delegates to the SBC annual meeting adopt voted to adopt an alternative name for churches that feel the "Southern Baptist" title could be a turn-off to potential believers.

Those who supported the optional name "Great Commission Baptists" argued it would help missionaries and church planters to reach more people for Christ.

The Great Commission refers to Jesus's command to his apostles to go forth and make disciples of all nations. Delegates voted on Tuesday but the results were not announced until Wednesday morning. They approved the motion by 2,546 to 2,232.

Luter was unopposed when he was elected shortly before the name vote by thousands of enthusiastic delegates in his hometown of New Orleans.

At a news conference afterward, he spoke about the decline in SBC membership. He described his own efforts to grow his church, which included intensive outreach to men, and he expressed his concern that men in his inner-city neighborhood were not taking responsibility for their children.

He began to cry as he recalled growing up with a divorced mother and no father in the house, saying he asked God, "Let me be that role model to my son that I didn't have." And he recounted how his son followed him into ministry and asked Luter to be his best man at his wedding.

Luter described what he hopes to achieve for the convention, saying he has always had the ability to get along with everyone. He plans to use that skill to bring denominational leaders together to discuss how they can leave aside their differences and work together to spread the Gospel.

He said it was unrealistic to think that the SBC would become less political, but he prays "we can do it in a way that won't offend other people."

Pastor David Crosby of First Baptist New Orleans nominated Luter, calling him a "fire-breathing, miracle-working pastor" who "would likely be a candidate for sainthood if he were Catholic."

Crosby said the SBC needs Luter at the head of the table as it increasingly focuses on diversifying its membership.

"Many leaders are convinced this nomination is happening now by the provenance of God," he said.

Luter wiped tears from his eyes as he accepted the position. Two female ushers from the Franklin Avenue congregation embraced, swaying and weeping with joy.

"I think I'm just too overwhelmed by it right now to speak," said another member, Malva Marsalis.

A minister from Luter's church, Darren Martin, said the SBC's past support of slavery and segregation are well known, but Luter's election was "a true sign ... that change from within has really come. ...Christ is at the center of the SBC."

The proposal to adopt an alternative name was more controversial than Luter's election. The Tuesday vote was too close to call by a show of hands so paper ballots were cast.

Speaking against the motion, delegate Gary Hunnicutt of First Baptist Church in Benton, Ark., said, "We have a much longer history of doing good than we did of supporting slavery. We have a good name ? a good brand. ...If it's not broke, don't fix it."

Delegate Susie Hawkins of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, urged the crowd to vote in favor.

"Our brothers and sisters in Christ, in these pioneer areas, in diverse communities, have said ... it would be useful to them," she said. " ... We should do everything we can to advance the kingdom of God."

___

Online:

Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting: http://www.sbcannualmeeting.net/sbc12/default.asp

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Former Giffords aide sworn in as House member

In an election to fill former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., congressional seat, Democratic candidate Ron Barber, left, gets a hug from Giffords as they celebrate a victory before Barber addresses supporters at a post election event, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. Gabrielle Giffords' former district director, in a special election for the seat Giffords left in January to focus on her recovery from a gunshot wound to her head during a gunman's shooting spree a year earlier.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, pool)

In an election to fill former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., congressional seat, Democratic candidate Ron Barber, left, gets a hug from Giffords as they celebrate a victory before Barber addresses supporters at a post election event, Tuesday, June 12, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. Gabrielle Giffords' former district director, in a special election for the seat Giffords left in January to focus on her recovery from a gunshot wound to her head during a gunman's shooting spree a year earlier.(AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, pool)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Ron Barber, who almost died in the Arizona shooting that wounded former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was sworn in Tuesday as a member of the House.

Barber is a Democrat who won a special election to succeed Giffords, his former boss.

He was shot twice, once in the face and once in the leg, in the January 2011 shootings in Tucson that left six dead and nearly killed his predecessor.

Barber defeated Republican Jesse Kelly, who narrowly lost to Giffords in 2010. Giffords was in Tucson during the campaign's final days to help her former district director.

Barber won about 52 percent of the vote while Kelly had 46 percent.

Both parties made claims about the significance of Barber's victory. Democrats cast the race as a referendum on Republican proposals for Social Security and Medicare. Republicans stressed that Barber's victory came after he emphasized his differences with President Barack Obama on health care and other issues.

Barber, in his maiden speech, paid tribute to his former boss.

He noted that he was standing "on the floor of the House in the very spot where five months ago, my friend and my predecessor Gabrielle Giffords bravely delivered her resignation from Congress.

"I thank the congresswoman for her vision and leadership and the inspiration she gives to our country."

Barber said he does not want to be driven by partisanship, and cited the example of the late Rep. Mo Udall, a Democrat, and the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, a Republican ? Arizona lawmakers who disagreed "but did so without being disagreeable." Barber said they came together many times for the good of the country.

Barber will serve for the remainder of Giffords' term, but will have to run again in November.

There are now 242 House Republicans, 191 Democrats and two vacancies.

Associated Press

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Google to pay $0 in damages to Oracle, wait for appeal

Google to pay $0 in damages to Oracle, wait for appeal

After watching Judge Alsup strike down its patent and Java API infringement claims, Oracle seems to be cutting its losses, agreeing to accept $0 in damages from Google. Confused? So was the Judge, who reportedly responded to the proposal by asking, "is there a catch I need to be aware of?" No catch, but Oracle isn't giving up, stating that it's taking its case to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. If successful, the appeal could put the two firms back in Alsup's courtroom, perhaps asking for somewhere between the previously proposed $32.3 million and today's sum total of zilch. We'll let you know when the drama comes around again.

Google to pay $0 in damages to Oracle, wait for appeal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 22:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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