Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2008-04-15 07:00:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

In the good old days, we used to tell unruly kids, “Pick on somebody your own size.” This meant the big kids shouldn’t bully the little kids. But, in the modern context, the line’s taken on new meaning: The children shouldn’t pick on the poor, outnumbered teachers, who have been wondering for years whether anybody out here is on their side.

Jolita Berry must be wondering, and she’s not alone. As much of America now knows, she was pummeled by a female student at Reginald F. Lewis High School last week while other young scholars in the classroom stood by and cheered and one filmed the attack on her cell phone. This was later shown on local TV stations, the Internet and, for the full humiliation, on NBC’s “Today Show.”

There’s the art teacher Berry, 30, on the floor, trying to curl into the fetal position to protect herself, and howling like the damned, while this 10th-grade girl pounds her mercilessly. It’s awful to witness the attack, and to see these other kids stand by and cheer it on as though watching a scuffle among a couple of numbskull classmates.

Usually, such scuffles are broken up by a teacher. But who’s to break it up when it’s the teacher who’s crying for help?  

And who’s on Berry’s side? She says her principal, Jean Ragin, suggested the attack might have been Berry’s fault, as she uttered a buzzword or two that could have set off the attacker. We used to call this “blaming the victim.”

Then we had school Superintendent Andres Alonso issuing a statement so contorted with legalisms that it barely bisected English. Thus Alonso, in whom so much hope has been invested, has been openly mocked on the radio talk shows.

And why not? Instead of instant outrage, we had poor Berry leaving school to get treatment for a battered eye and shoulder, having to walk past the girl who attacked her. At that point, the girl hadn’t yet been tossed out of school. Instead she was standing there, Berry said, bragging to friends about what a fine thing she had done.

Then we had Marietta English, head of the Baltimore Teachers Union, describe the attack as “appalling.” This was the right word but the wrong timing. She’s late by at least a decade. She says she’s complained repeatedly to the bureaucrats on North Avenue. But those complaints should have been made in public, where everyone could hear them and understand the atmosphere in which so many teachers and students find themselves every day.

Mayor Sheila Dixon, at a news conference, said, “This might sound harsh, but I believe we have to come up with some very stern discipline action.”

Harsh? It doesn’t sound harsh, mayor, it sounds late. And everybody on North Avenue knows this. They know this because they can count the number of reported attacks, scores and scores of them, and they know because teachers are not shy about describing the vulnerability they feel, and their fear that administrators in their safe offices won’t stand behind them when the going gets rough.

In the aftermath of Berry’s beating, we had Yvette Brebnor, 47, an elementary reading teacher, telling The Examiner of repeated attacks from a fourth-grade boy who “slapped me in the face. ... Then he was coming through the door with a chair on his head, coming to hit me.” After that, she said, “He told his mother I was abusing him.”

A fourth-grader.

All of which gets back to the original premise: Pick on somebody your own size.

This isn’t about the system coming down hard on violent students. It’s about acknowledging just how many of them there are, and how quick their tempers trigger and how profound their anger is and their lack of boundaries, and trying to deal with it before the violence gets even more dangerous.

Because this rage didn’t come from nowhere. It comes from kids living in a world where many leave school and head home through streets infected by a gang mentality, and by drugs and guns, and the music they hear on the radio seems to validate their rage. They can turn to YouTube on their computers and see teenage girls in Florida beating up another girl for the hell of it. On the television, problems are solved by blowing things up. And these kids look around and find no father, an exhausted mother, and all of this is brought to school the next day, and the day after that.