ANOTHER shocking LETTER published IN the VOICE of LAKEWOOD

Joseph,

This should have been addressed to the father rather than the mother.

The letter writer was probably the boy’s mother. Are you suggesting that a frum married woman should address correspondance to men who are not her husband?

If the letter is correct, absolutely call the police. Getting expelled is bad, but anyone who would threaten to expel someone for seeking justice against physical violence is probably just a violent person trying to protect himself.

Private school personnel in NY are not mandated to report anytime when one child bullies or hits another child.

@Joseph
again, Take your NY blinders off.

Lakewood is NOT in NY.

You claim to teach in the NY public schools ad therefore are a mandated reporter. I assume you’ve had some training. There is no reason that Yeshiva staff should also not be trained.

Bullying is a problem in most schools and Yeshivas are not exempt

The other boys should not be expelled either. It’s not their fault that nobody ever taught them that hitting people is wrong.

Joseph, you are falling to a new low this time. A letter is talking about dinei nifashos, and you choose to focus on which parent should write the letter, who it should be addressed to, and whether the school is required to handle it.

I repeat: this is DINEI NIFASHOS. A child being bullied in school can have long-term effects. I DON”T CARE WHICH PARENT WRITES THE LETTER!!! Joseph, you are the very definition of a chossid shoteh. I really don’t know why the mods still tolerate you – if it were up to me, I would have banned you a long time ago.

Whether the local laws require reporting or not shouldn’t matter. The school has a halachic responsibility to act on it. End of story.

@Joseph
WRONG, AGAIN!

Ongoing bullying can cause protracted impairment of emotional health…the language of the NY Statute.

STOP excusing bad behavior and start stopping bad behavior.

You may be a history teacher, but I’m a Family Law Attorney and certified Guardian ad Litem. If I represented a child and the school gave these repeated excuses, the school and staff would find themselves in court pronto. The cloak of a yeshiva being a private school is not an excuse for non-compliance with the law…and NY law makes every adult a mandated reporter…this is the broadest language in the nation.

Why people are even responding to @Joseph is beyond me. He just sits and trolls all day long. He loves Neturei karta, extreme Satmar views, hates anyone and everyone basically.

IGNORE HIM.

This mother should have reported the school to the police, and called Amudim immediately. Enough of the Shfichas domim!

Edited

Don’t equate fighting with bullying. A one time incident in which one child hurts another is very different from a case where a child is being bullied by a bunch of other kids. A child who is bullied like what’s described in the letter is likely to develop PTSD.

The five fifth graders should be treated like any other criminal children.

Maybe there is a bigger need to address the Elephant(s) / ZOO in the room!!!

– Fathers are learning all day and don’t make enough to support families. They are also not educated and have trouble finding jobs even if they NEED to work…

– Girls are expected to become mothers and primary breadwinners. They are educated with the skills to do that. An average high school age girl probably has 20-100x the education of a similar aged yeshiva student. [Both secular and Torah education – boys are not generally taught Nevi’im, barely enough Halacha]

– Families are kept on government programs, barely able to afford rent, forget ever owning a home.

– Children continue to be born, yet cannot be cared for by the working mother. Father may pitch in somewhat, but “bittul Torah” (there have been discussions about this in CR in the past)

– Children are often/somtimes? (stats anyone?) left in childcare, which cannot adequately provide the love and care that a mother can.

– Fathers need to end up working at some point, so they become Rebbes.

– Most people can’t afford tuition, so Rebbes are barely paid, and often paid many months late. It’s hard to feel any satisfaction in teaching, when you are 3 months late on your rent, and have countless insurmountable expenses. Frustrated Rebbes cannot provide love and care to students. They get home and this may spill over to rest of family.

– Kids grow up with little to no formal secular education, lacking guidance from proper teachers, parents. Get frustrated at what they experienced and lack of future if they continue the trend. The ones who were bullied, molested, whatever, want nothing to do with the religion that they see as having hurt and disadvantaged them so much. Others never want to be poor like the way they grew up and try to get into (sometimes shady) business. Etc…

– Marriageable age men who realize they cannot provide for a family, go to work, cutting their shidduch options. The girls claim to want only “learning” boys, but often truly want a financially stable life.

The system is falling apart. Is this not a recipe for disaster? Maybe the OTD phenomenon is correlated with this? Am I the only one who notices this?

Joseph, you’re treating young people who break the law wrong.

How about 15 year old?

Joseph, children are young people. That’s just what they are. They’re people, and they are young.

Mama1, Joseph doesn’t think women should do things.

Mama1, because it is the fathers responsibility to discipline their sons. And the father of who was hurt should address it to the fathers of those who did it.

I don’t know which system is better. I know that this one needs a lot of work. Many others know it too. I know that the Tannaim worked and made money to support themselves. I know Hillel carried bundles of wood to make a living. I know that in most frum neighborhoods, even a man with a really good job can barely (if at all) make ends meet while supporting a family. We all know a lot of things, but what we DO is all that matters.

I honestly feel that if Moshe Rabenu would happen to live among us, he would not recognize much of the “religion” that we practice. We might even shun him for not being frum enough. I believe we have somehow strayed so far off the reservation, that we glorify some image of “Yiddishkeit” that is not Torah, and may sometimes even border on Avoda Zara – each community in its own way.

Ehrlichkei has gone down the drain. Let’s work on making a renaissance of being a mensch. It’s a tall order, but if we start with that, there might be some hope. /rant

Mothers are also responsible to educate their children. Sorry, misogyny has no place in real Yiddishkeit.
I appreciate the validation that this issue is serious enough that the authorities should have been called, but if we follow that scenario to its probable end, my son would probably not have a school to go to next year. And then what would I do? Go to court? I can’t afford it.
I don’t know what the mandated reporting laws are here. What I do know is that anyone who reported such a thing would find him/herself out of a job (as per a mechanech I spoke to). And there are possible shmiras halashon issues here – so it’s not that simple.
I did try going to a community resource that purported to help with bullying claims. Not so helpful.
RebYidd23 – Maybe not expelled, but maybe disciplined? Anything. Definitely not laughing while it’s happening or telling my son that he “asked for it”. Anyone with any psychology background knows how terribly damaging that is to a child’s psyche.
Local rav – that would be a nice idea except what would a rav do? Think – if the school has no respect for mentchlichkeit, why would they have the middos and derech eretz to listen to a rav? And how, exactly, would the rav make them listen?
CTlawyer – you are correct, the damage to emotional health is staggering. Not to mention the damage to spiritual health – if this is how seemingly frum yidden behave, what’s the point?
Kotlorism – who is this Amudim and how do they help? I tried what I think is a similar program and they were basically useless.
The bullying went on for the entire year. I didn’t realize how bad it was until Pesach time. This child is in high school, so, a child, technically, but not a small one. CPS is not necessary. If the school had a zero tolerance policy instead of taking the easiest way out by attacking one kid (my son) instead of the whole gang of teenage miscreants (a much harder task) this whole thing would have been avoided.
Kollelman – I’m not sure if you’re saying these are issues with me or the parents of the bullies, but I would like to mention, my husband and I both work, not on any government programs, I have less than the ‘usual’ number of children and they are not close in age, I pay full tuition even though it makes making ends meet difficult (we believe that chinuch is a priority over a mansion), my children have a formal secular education and we frequent the public library. And I grew up in Lakewood. So I don’t think I fit your stereotype.
Daas Yochid – It’s not the system, it’s the people who are falling apart.
It’s a simple solution:
Educators should be college educate in the psychology of their target demographic. Parents should insist on an in-house psychology professional that students can see, and discussions should be kept confidential from parents and faculty unless the child signs a release form – or if mandated by law.
Both of these should be mandatory, or the school gets no public funding, including tax deductions, Pell and Tag grants, and whatever else they get.
When my grandfather was dying, he told my grandmother that when looking for shidduchim for their daughters, she should look for a man who was a “mentch, a yaray shamayim, and ken lernen a bissel, in THAT order”. Those were the priorities I grew up with, and that is what I was lucky to find as well. So this “learn gemara all day and beat up and taunt kids during recess” thing is beyond my comprehension.
Bashing “the system” is not the point here. Make a change. Call your school Find out their policies. Don’t pay tuition if your child is suffering and no one is helping. Keep calling and pushing the school until they change. And if your child describes trouble in school, take it seriously. Write down names so that you can keep track of emerging patterns and address it. And educate your children – teach them what bullying is and to never do it. Teach them about the beauty in every neshama, even if they can’t see it.
These boys are all required by halacha to ask mechila. My child is older than 13. But no one will think that it’s them or their child. Ask yourself this: what if you discovered that your child is the bully? What would you do?

The Solution is simple, as in every job people get burnt out. A principal, dean, rabbi,teacher should have a stature of limitations of a few years, this way they will be enthusiastic about their job and care enough to tackle bullies not just push it aside because there may be a confrontation. This is unfortunately not just in the wonderful 08701 area code but all across the world sad sad sad. You are your child’s only advocate there should be no threat in the world that can stop a parent from setting the record straight for their children. A well known mechnuch once told me 90% of parents don’t get involved so the small amount that do are generally considered a nuance but continue to make wave and keep the schoo on their toes so that they know they will have to answer still in this world.

You’re asking me why? The given reasons were that since my son annoyed them, it made sense that they hit him (he talks a lot in class) and also, “that’s just how boys behave, Mrs -, you don’t understand!”
If that’s the basic attitude, then there’s nothing to punish.
It’s easier to gaslight the victim than to address the perpetrator.
My short answer, laziness.

@LoveAll these mechanchim aren’t old enough or experienced enough to be ‘burnt out’. I think one has to be teaching for longer than they have been to earn that excuse. I still call laziness and lack of knowledge.

Being an elementary school mechanech does not qualify you to say that.

For an elementary school mechanech your grammar is atrocious. Maybe that part of the problem, we have people with no education educating our children.

Mama1, Oh this is terrible. I really feel for you and for your son. I hope some change happens.
Kollelman, thanks for breaking things down so clearly.
CT Lawyer, I’m glad we have an expert here.
Reb Yidd, you’re being a real voice of reason tonight, Thanks.