A Seventh Grader Stabbed Dead In Bangkok School

[webfact]

A seventh grader stabbed dead, another severely injured

A seventh grader was stabbed to death by a sixth grader during a quarrel in their Bangkok school Friday noon, police said.

The fight took place inside the Yannawes Witthayakhom School on Sathu Pradit 8 in Sathorn district.

Police quoted the sixth grader, who surrendered after the incident, as saying that he stabbed the senior students in self-defence because he was being assaulted by several seventh graders.

He said the seventh graders assaulted him after he refused to pay them protection fee.

-- The Nation 2009/11/06

[newsfooter][/newsfooter]

[brahmburgers]

So sad, what more can one say?

What sort of home environment does a kid like that have?

[lost_in_space]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

[phetaroi]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

Well, it's a mostly fair rant you ranted.

I am a retired principal from the States, and it was an issue we dealt with repeatedly, and even got worse when cyber bullying opened up another whole avenue of abuse.

I agree with you that any administrator that turns a blind eye is involved in a dereliction of duty.

One place I disagree with you is that you put almost all the responsibility on the administrators and a little on the parents. Yet, it is the teachers who can see the bullying take place in the classroom (and trust me, it does happen right inside the classroom). 60-80 teachers in the hallways during class change can see a lot more than 3 administrators.

But let me state this very clear. Every professional educator has a responsibility to watch for it, identify it, and act on it.

[highlander76]

Very sad to hear this but it is nothing new this could happen anywhere

[crazyswede]

He said the seventh graders assaulted him after he refused to pay them protection fee.

They start early dont they?!

[givenall]

He said the seventh graders assaulted him after he refused to pay them protection fee.

They start early dont they?!

New generation getting bigger and with the new world and people having one or two kids they become quite spoiled at home and sometimes they don’t see the difference between homes and real world.

[Publicus]

Very sad to hear this but it is nothing new this could happen anywhere

And of course it does.

In 2005 when I was in the 90% Muslim Satun province at the border with Malaysia there was a handgun shootout at a government high school where I taught in which one student was killed. Satun is an oasis of tranquility admist the southern unrest so the violence wasn't separatist related, simply a feud.

Of course no one heard of it beyond a 50km radius of the school, hardly even in Had Yai. The killing certainly wasn't reported anywhere, so how much of this happens anywhere, anytime without our knowing of it?

More than I'd care to think of as it's reasonable to extrapolate that these social menaces aren't isolated or infrequent. However, LOS doesn't have a CNN does it?

Edited November 6, 2009 by Publicus

[Thai at Heart]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

Well, it's a mostly fair rant you ranted.

I am a retired principal from the States, and it was an issue we dealt with repeatedly, and even got worse when cyber bullying opened up another whole avenue of abuse.

I agree with you that any administrator that turns a blind eye is involved in a dereliction of duty.

One place I disagree with you is that you put almost all the responsibility on the administrators and a little on the parents. Yet, it is the teachers who can see the bullying take place in the classroom (and trust me, it does happen right inside the classroom). 60-80 teachers in the hallways during class change can see a lot more than 3 administrators.

But let me state this very clear. Every professional educator has a responsibility to watch for it, identify it, and act on it.

I am so glad to hear that you take it so seriously.

There are far too many school Principles/Head Teachers/Owners in Thailand that have absolutely no idea of the reality of what is going on in their school.

[fullerphoto]

Well this is one subject where we can't rant about how much better it is the west... The complete opposite in reality, school bullying, violence and murder is a far greater problem in America and the UK for example. This is a terrible tragedy but leaves little room for us to criticize.. No parent should have to outlive their children in this way.

[Rumfoord]

Very sad to hear this but it is nothing new this could happen anywhere

And of course it does.

In 2005 when I was in the 90% Muslim Satun province at the border with Malaysia there was a handgun shootout at a government high school where I taught in which one student was killed. Satun is an oasis of tranquility admist the southern unrest so the violence wasn't separatist related, simply a feud.

Of course no one heard of it beyond a 50km radius of the school, hardly even in Had Yai. The killing certainly wasn't reported anywhere, so how much of this happens anywhere, anytime without our knowing of it?

More than I'd care to think of as it's reasonable to extrapolate that these social menaces aren't isolated or infrequent. However, LOS doesn't have a CNN does it?

so there wasn't any on-site live report on TV and CNN, like with the balloon boy recently, but can you read and speak Thai to say it wasn't reported anywhere.

and my guess is that also on CNN you get only selected news and not every crime reported that involve high school students.

but you could spoil the change to mention that there was a shootout in a 90% Muslim province to prove the point that this could happen anywhere.

sad thing is, it seems to be really happen everywhere. whoever is to blame, kids growing up in a certain sort of home environment ? even if some want to start finger-pointing at Thais or Muslims it happen in the western world as well. nowadays only the ones who are killing a couple of other students making the big headlines.

how schools can deal with it, prevent it?

an other extreme is reported in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/educatio...pline.html?_r=1

6 years old first grader suspended from school, because he brought his boy scout camping tool to school, a spoon, fork and knife in one device, for using it at lunch. so he had the violated zero-tolerance policy on weapons.

[phetaroi]

I am so glad to hear that you take it so seriously.

There are far too many school Principles/Head Teachers/Owners in Thailand that have absolutely no idea of the reality of what is going on in their school.

And probably everywhere. Most of the principals in my system were reasonably proactive about bullying, but there were always a few who just didn't seem to get it, and ultimately would they themselves would get into hot water because they ignored a bullying situation that would go over the top.

To me, I had two responsibilities in regard to bullying/harassment. First, to deal with it in a strong but reasonable manner (you'd be surprised how many parents balked at in- or out-of-school suspension even for very serious bullying/harassment...after all, they'd say, "boys will be boys"...although girl bullying is often more intense). Second, to frequently remind my staff about their responsibilities regarding bullying. Let's face it, no one in a school sees more interaction between students than teachers. We would have occasional inservices about bullying/harassment...some years just dealing with the legal aspects (which are mounting in the U.S.), and other years going into depth about the topic (once with a non-profit outside organization that specialized in school bullying. We earned a reputation for being proactive about it, and our large school system actually did a video with me and a proactive elementary principal (I was middle) about bullying, particularly cyber bullying. I'm not trying to say I was super-principal, but perhaps my sensitivity to the topic was because I had been bullied while in the 7th grade by David K. I can look back now and think what a little ass wipe he was, but at the time (though mild compared to much bullying), it was damned unpleasant and pretty much ruined 7th grade for me. I often think that had I reported him as often as necessary, others probably wouldn't have been bullied either.

[ralphlsasser]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

Well, it's a mostly fair rant you ranted.

I am a retired principal from the States, and it was an issue we dealt with repeatedly, and even got worse when cyber bullying opened up another whole avenue of abuse.

I agree with you that any administrator that turns a blind eye is involved in a dereliction of duty.

One place I disagree with you is that you put almost all the responsibility on the administrators and a little on the parents. Yet, it is the teachers who can see the bullying take place in the classroom (and trust me, it does happen right inside the classroom). 60-80 teachers in the hallways during class change can see a lot more than 3 administrators.

But let me state this very clear. Every professional educator has a responsibility to watch for it, identify it, and act on it.

I am so glad to hear that you take it so seriously.

There are far too many school Principles/Head Teachers/Owners in Thailand that have absolutely no idea of the reality of what is going on in their school.

Of course they know. But they don't do anything about it.

[Ijustwannateach]

Mostly agree with what Phetaroi says, although:

1. Students can be surprisingly canny about collaborating to avoid detection of bullying, cheating, etc. - in which case it's one boy's word against the words of a larger group who all cover for each other. In which case, teachers cannot always be sure about what is happening.

2. In Thai schools, some teachers can actually be intimidated by gangs of students, depending on what kind of culture has developed at the school and what kind of support (or lack thereof) they have received to deal with the problem from parents and managers.

3. If managers will not support teachers in punishing students who need discipline (which is a surprisingly common scenario in many Thai schools, where there are few officially approved disciplinary tools anymore- few schools have suspension, detention, or academic disciplinary punishments, for instance), there isn't much that teachers can legally do.

[neverdie]

WOW, things certainly have changed. I use to be the tough guy at my school because I could bowl a cricket ball the fastest and i was the first to ride a skateboard down the main school steps......now the stabbing each other to death. Very sad times

[trogers]

Development of the human instinct is similar to animal instinct in the early years. The pack needs to be control by a leader who will chastise any going out of line.

Bullying in school has started becoming a serious problem when teachers are not permitted to punish students for deviating from the class norm. Since there is no defined leader (the class teacher), student gangs with their appointed leaders emerge and clash. Those not in a gang become victims of bullies.

[lensta]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

Well, it's a mostly fair rant you ranted.

I am a retired principal from the States, and it was an issue we dealt with repeatedly, and even got worse when cyber bullying opened up another whole avenue of abuse.

I agree with you that any administrator that turns a blind eye is involved in a dereliction of duty.

One place I disagree with you is that you put almost all the responsibility on the administrators and a little on the parents. Yet, it is the teachers who can see the bullying take place in the classroom (and trust me, it does happen right inside the classroom). 60-80 teachers in the hallways during class change can see a lot more than 3 administrators.

But let me state this very clear. Every professional educator has a responsibility to watch for it, identify it, and act on it.

I am so glad to hear that you take it so seriously.

There are far too many school Principles/Head Teachers/Owners in Thailand that have absolutely no idea of the reality of what is going on in their school.

Actually the teachers do report it, but the owners of the school do nothing about it. Why?? simple, money

[Thai at Heart]

Very sad, indeed. Bullying in schools is a big deal. The admin needs to get a grip on the situation.

Regarding home environment, it's too bad the boy either couldn't go to his parents about it, or he did and they didn't give him the help he needed.

My daughter is in K2 and there are already bullying issues, in an international school!

It strikes me as dereliction of duty for administrators and parents not to come to grips with this. And not just in Thailand.

OK, rant over.

Well, it's a mostly fair rant you ranted.

I am a retired principal from the States, and it was an issue we dealt with repeatedly, and even got worse when cyber bullying opened up another whole avenue of abuse.

I agree with you that any administrator that turns a blind eye is involved in a dereliction of duty.

One place I disagree with you is that you put almost all the responsibility on the administrators and a little on the parents. Yet, it is the teachers who can see the bullying take place in the classroom (and trust me, it does happen right inside the classroom). 60-80 teachers in the hallways during class change can see a lot more than 3 administrators.

But let me state this very clear. Every professional educator has a responsibility to watch for it, identify it, and act on it.

I am so glad to hear that you take it so seriously.

There are far too many school Principles/Head Teachers/Owners in Thailand that have absolutely no idea of the reality of what is going on in their school.

Actually the teachers do report it, but the owners of the school do nothing about it. Why?? simple, money

I think often teachers are scared to report it because there are always certain kids in schools who come from families that are basically beyond reproach. I have seen some parents who believe that since they may be paying for their kids to attend no one has the right to tell them that "little Johnny" is a little buggar who needs a good whack on the ass.

[Xangsamhua]

2. In Thai schools, some teachers can actually be intimidated by gangs of students, depending on what kind of culture has developed at the school and what kind of support (or lack thereof) they have received to deal with the problem from parents and managers.

I believe IJWT is right. Some (most?) Thai teachers are afraid of their students (and their students' families). They really don't want to make an enemy even of a 6th grader if that child has powerful connections in the community. It may be that the school administrators are afraid, too.

I suppose this could happen anywhere that teachers depend for their employment and tenure on the goodwill of fee-paying parents and people of influence in the local community, including members of school or district education boards (as in the US). Centralized staffing, though schools don't like it, provides some protection to teachers and administrators and lessens the influence of local power brokers.

Yannawes is a government school, I believe, so perhaps the influence of the clients (parents) is less than in a private school, but could still make itself felt.

[Publicus]

WOW, things certainly have changed. I use to be the tough guy at my school because I could bowl a cricket ball the fastest and i was the first to ride a skateboard down the main school steps......now the stabbing each other to death. Very sad times

School violence in Bangkok used to be reported in media and discussed but Thai authortities seem to have given up on discussing or dealing with it. It certainly hasn't subsided for any reason.

In 2007 I witnessed a violent assault by knife weilding students from a nearby school against students of a school I was visiting. Towards the end of the particular school day I'd met a farang English teacher friend at his government mathayom school and while walking to the bus stop we were almost trampled by hundreds of students running in a mad panic back toward his school. About 50 students from the other school were charging while slashing sticks with knives tied to the end of the sticks.

Several students were cut or had slashes in their arms but we were left untouched. My friend said such assaults happened as much as twice a week but that authorities at both schools ignored all of it. He said police never were called either. Parents had given up complaining so the kids were on their own.

Bullying is an ongoing problem but this goes far beyond bullying. Failure to address either is a criminal derelection of duty and responsibility.

Edited November 7, 2009 by Publicus

[Scott]

It's very sad. I hope there is further information about the situation. It's helpful to know the very earliest signs of bullying. This behavior often goes 'undercover' and then sometimes leaves the school premises. There is a lot less protection outside the school gates.

[Publicus]

Proprietary schools have their own particular problems, given that parents pay good money so the school either doesn't want to lose cash by expelling anyone or doesn't want to have parents in their face saying Somchai is a good boy or Sarinya is a good girl.

Teachers at such schools thus have little effect, if any, in guiding or coaxing students' behaviours (much less their study habits). Thai teachers well know how the system works, ie, parents pay the school and the school pays the teachers. Don't rock the boat.

[Scott]

Blaming is pretty easy. I don't know any teachers or any administrators who want to see students being bullied. I know students who are afraid to say anything is going on. I know teachers who have talked to students who deny 'doing anything'.

It's a very complex problem and requires a lot of effort from everyone.

[Publicus]

The large number of students I've taught in LOS are genuinely nice and pleasant kids, so the matter of bullying in Thailand is little known to me personally or from a professional standpoint. Students I've had are much more interested in having pleasant relations among themselves than in any bullying, spoiled and rich as the charmers may be.

[phetaroi]

Mostly agree with what Phetaroi says, although:

1. Students can be surprisingly canny about collaborating to avoid detection of bullying, cheating, etc. - in which case it's one boy's word against the words of a larger group who all cover for each other. In which case, teachers cannot always be sure about what is happening.

2. In Thai schools, some teachers can actually be intimidated by gangs of students, depending on what kind of culture has developed at the school and what kind of support (or lack thereof) they have received to deal with the problem from parents and managers.

3. If managers will not support teachers in punishing students who need discipline (which is a surprisingly common scenario in many Thai schools, where there are few officially approved disciplinary tools anymore- few schools have suspension, detention, or academic disciplinary punishments, for instance), there isn't much that teachers can legally do.

In re # 1...yes, very true. In fact, one has to investigate. Things are not always as they seem. Although it was sexual harassment and not bullying, we had a female student who swore up and down that a boy had done several things of sexual nature in rather public places. It sounded so fantastic, and there was so much contradicting information I refused to suspend/expel. A higher district official said, "You have to because we always believe the girl, without question." Now there's justice for you! I still refused unless the system did a police investigation. Guess what...a plot because the girl hated Middle Easterners (which the boy was) because of 9/11!

# 2. I can believe that, but the educator still ought to do the "right" thing.

# 3. You're correct, although in the case of significant bullying, at least in the States, it is clearly the teacher's responsibility to report it, but the administrator's responsibility to investigate and take action. A teacher should only have to deal with discipline related to everyday classroom behavior. Bullying goes well beyond that.

[phetaroi]

I suppose this could happen anywhere that teachers depend for their employment and tenure on the goodwill of fee-paying parents and people of influence in the local community, including members of school or district education boards (as in the US). Centralized staffing, though schools don't like it, provides some protection to teachers and administrators and lessens the influence of local power brokers.

Absolutely, and my situation in the States was that of a large centralized administration. We were fortunate, we had our own legal staff in the system, so that was an additional buffer. Yet, because of our location we had some unique challenges, particularly at my school. We had the granddaughter of a former president, the son of a former vice-president, and the children of a number of senators. The biggest jerks could be embassy personnel, however, who would try to claim diplomatic immunity. The school system would call that bluff every time, a.k.a., "Alright, then we'll call the State Department." They would back down every time on that. To be honest, it was the local power brokers who were the biggest problem and would say the dumbest things (e.g., "How dare you believe my son!").