The Personal Bias, Prejudice and Oppression

 

A couple of months ago, there was an accident at the school I work at when seven children students were playing. It was just a normal common game children usually play during a recess, but this time it was quite fatal that caused one student named Ruben (not his real name) fell down and got a concussion. The school directly brought the child to the hospital. Among these seven students, there was one named Randy (not his real name). He was a very big and fat boy, around tripled in size compared to other boys at his age. Within a couple of days, rumor spread through bbm (blackberry broadcast messenger) among parents of the students that blamed Randy to be the person who caused this incident. It went worse by days because parents of other students of the same grade who were not in the incident put comments and it became a serious issue. The funny thing, the parents of the child who was hospitalized did not feel bad about this and understood this incident as childlike game. I knew this because I met them at the hospital. The situation was getting ‘hotter’ and those parents wanted to have a meeting with me. At the meeting attended by eleven mothers, they intentionally accused Randy, and wanted the school to take the responsibility for letting such fat boy existed in the school which they believed had harmed other students. They mentioned some other day-to-day incidents at school which were not significant to make their statements stronger.  Worse, Randy was bullied by his classmates to be the person who caused their friend hospitalized.

It indeed diminished equity. All children have the same right to play and study no matter how big or small, weak or strong, smart or not smart he/she is. The way those parents blamed Randy was not reasonable, and was just based on their bias, prejudice and dislikes. They arrogantly accused Randy without witnessing, but by asking the children who were playing at the time and witnessed the incident.  Their act of gathering inputs or comments among each other and put these as the reasons to make the school think it was not right to let Randy study in the school together with their kids, I think, was really a cruel action. They judged and tried to not only diminish but eliminate Randy’s right as any child deserves to have.

My heart cried. I could not believe how those parents dared to do such thing to a child. They made a collusion to make others and their own children believe that Randy was a real ‘trouble maker’ in the school.  I just could not understand and imagine if Randy had been my son. I l could not understand why those parents did not even think of how Randy and his parents felt about it. Randy and his parents visited Ruben in hospital and met Ruben’s parents. The other parents did not even consider this, but had too much prejudice against Randy and illogically assume that what had happened to Ruben may also happen to their kids someday.

Those parents should have been more sympathetic by not spreading assumption and asking for a clarification only from the children, but also involving the school. The school in this case, should put their position to bridge the communication among the parents and children. That was what we did. We asked the children to do the reconstruction of the incident, and helped those children to analyze how and why it happened. This reconstruction helped a lot. They just followed the way each child re-played what they did during the game, and finally they realized that it was just an accident, no one to blame, and we asked all of those seven children and Randy’s classmates to forgive each other.  Since then, they stopped bullying Randy, the parents did not have other words to say, and they go to play again as common children usually do. This incident has taught all parties to be open, not to have prejudice against someone’s identity, but to treat everybody equally.

 

 

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.
~Angela Schwindt