The schools like to talk a good talk about their firm stances against bullying. They make a big deal of having the kids wear pink to school for International Stand Up to Bullying Day. They hang colorful posters and spend classroom time discussing bullying. They even have the students sign pledges saying that they will stand up for the victims of bullying.
But what happens when a kid takes the message to heart?
He spends the day in the principal’s office, has his locker searched, and is questioned by the police if he is at Sir John A MacDonald School in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
13 year old Briar MacLean interceded and disarmed a knife-wielding bully at his school last week.
The trouble started over an altercation between two boys at the school, located at 6600 4 St. N.W.
Again, school scraps are nothing unique — but then one of the boys pulled out a knife, turning an angry scuffle into something far more serious and potentially deadly.
At this point, according to the strict rules of the Calgary Board of Education junior high, MacLean should have left the scene to find a teacher, abandoning the unarmed student to his fate.
But instead of doing what was required, MacLean did what was right.
The young teen charged into the fray and tackled the knife-brandishing student.
The jolt sent the student and knife to the floor, leaving the potential stabber with a nasty bump on his noggin — but that was the extent of injuries received at Sir John A. Macdonald school that day.
No cuts, no stab wounds, and no need to call an ambulance — all thanks to a kid who chose to act rather than cower or run.
“He pulled out his flip knife so I came in and pushed him into the wall,” said MacLean.
“It was just to help the other kid so he wouldn’t get hurt.” (source)
The young hero spent the rest of the day in the principal’s office, where he was told that he should have run away and gotten a teacher.
His mother, Leah O’Donnell, received a call from the school to let her know that her son was in trouble for his part in the incident.
“They phoned me and said, ‘Briar was involved in an incident today,’” she said. “That he decided to ‘play hero’ and jump in.”
Ms. O’Donnell was politely informed the school did not “condone heroics,” she said. Instead, Briar should have found a teacher to handle the situation.
“I asked: ‘In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher, could that kid’s throat have been slit?’ She said yes, but that’s beside the point. That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.’ ” (source)
Fortunately, Briar is undeterred by the schools grim look on his response to the bully and says he would do the same thing again. His mother is firmly in his corner.
“We’ve taught him to do the right thing and to step in — in our family we teach our children that they need to stand up for others and not run from danger out of self-preservation…
When did we decide as a society to allow our children to grow up without spines? Without a decent sense of the difference between right and wrong?” (source)
If anyone wonders how a person can be brutally attacked and left to bleed to death on city streets while pedestrians side step the assault and look the other way, the answer is clear – they’ve been taught to do so in school. During their formative years, children are being programmed. They are punished for doing what is right, instead of running away. They are taught to go and tattle instead of taking responsibility and helping another person, thus transferring the burden of safety into the hands of an “authority figure”. Having a nation full of people who are accustomed to standing up for the right thing, even at risk of their personal safety, does not make for a nation of malleable followers and worker bees. Instead, the current school policies and protocols are designed to create a nation of dependents who look to others to take care of problems, never even realizing that they have given up their liberty in exchange for safety.
Putting another person’s safety ahead of your own is the true definition of heroism and “anti-bullying”. All of the pink shirts in the world can’t fix this until the paradigm shifts and heroism is embraced again.
Thank goodness for parents who teach their kids to do the right thing and back them up when the authorities don’t like it. Also for kids who practice what these parents teach and save lives. This boy us a real hero, not a media-fake one.
Your analysis is right on, Daisy.
I want to say that this entire incident and reaction by the “screwl” is INSANE. But, I fear that would denigrate the label of INSANITY.
This is entirely worse than insanity in every possible way imaginable. NO HEROICS, go “tell a teach-creature” and HOPE no harm comes to the victim…BECAUSE IT IS POLICY.
Stupid, moronic, ignorant, and even IDIOCRACY all fall short of a gut-felt and accurate description. Someone else have a word/phrase that could possibly accurately describe this (fill in the blank)?
It seems clear to me. He broke the school rules, and should be punished, by the school, accordingly. After that, his parents and the parents of his classmates should throw a party for him, raise him up on their shoulders, and THANK HIM for his courage. Great story, great kid (great parents!)
Oh, and THEN his parents should consider a transfer to a more suitable school!
…It is ridiculous that such intellectual homonunculi are allowed near children.*
This boy did the right thing in standing up and stepping in to help. Yes, he may have broken the school rules but when seconds count you have to act. He should not have been punished. The worst that should of happened was to make sure that he realized he may have been hurt as well. My congratulations to him and his parents. Shame on the school for trying to turn every student into a coward.
Most likely if the school didn’t have the policy in place, and the hero boy got stabbed while helping, the parents would be crying out “Why didn’t the school do anything?!” – so before we throw all the stones at the school, let’s look at why that policy is there in the first place. You’d think the schools wouldn’t be held legally accountable for just wanting folks to use common sense, but the amount people like to sue… well, it just isn’t possible to remain defenseless.
All that being said, it was f***ing classless to tell them “we don’t condone heroics” – it’s not heroics, it’s common decency, and the school’s only response should have been “We’re happy no one was seriously hurt” and left it at that. Or maybe they could have stated “we will work with the knife wielding jackass on why he’s such a bullying prick to see if we can prevent this sh*t in the future”
The kid did the right thing. Are we gonna raise cowards? Or men. As always, we must always remember to be in the right, and when we are, take it all the way.
The policy is designed to simplify life for the teachers. There are lots of rules that when you untangle them and research the particular education department policies being cited, turn out to be rules designed to govern student behaviour in such a way as to make them easy to manage. Rules are designed in teachers interests, in the interests of ease of management, not in the interests of developing creative, thoughtful young people.
This happens consistently. The boy left in defence the whole game while his team makes goals at the other end. Pretty deadening experience for the student, but nice and easy for the teacher – don’t have to rejig the team positions. So from the littlest decision to the critical ones.
If you can find a principal who does not lever bureaucracy in that way, enrol your child, quick.
Good on him, if people like this kid were running our countries the world would be a better place, Briar is the true face of humanity, how we should all be, its inspiring, well done dude.
In volume two of The Gulag Archipelago, the author mentions how the USSR also waged its war on self defense. The way he put it was: “If you took any action before the thief jabbed his knife between your ribs, you faced harsher punishment than your attacker.”