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June 26, 2009

Some see graduation as an escape from bad experiences

By JERRY McGOVERN, School Ties

Local students are graduating from high school this weekend, closing a chapter in their lives they won't forget.

Some high-school memories and friendships are wonderful. Every once in a while, I reconnect with two classmates to solve the world's problems. We talk about books, movies, politics and sports.

One is a theology professor, the other a school superintendent, and I raised goats and had season tickets to the Expos, so we each have areas of expertise.

One is named Jeremiah, the other Gerard. At a Vermont tavern called "The Three Jerrys," we thought the bartender should treat us. He didn't.

I enjoy the conversation and the relationship, glad we went to school together and stayed in touch.

WORDS DO HURT
But school memories are not always pleasant, because school can be horrible. A parent recently described to me the cruelty visited upon a youngster by a group of students.

From my own high-school days, I remember one classmate who was especially unkind. He had a gift for making the most vulnerable suffer, teasing one of us into total insecurity and silence.

When I was teaching at Peru Central School, a boy told me how badly a group of supposedly nice, well-respected, well-dressed girls treated one of their classmates.

"They're vicious," he said.

The Press-Republican has carried stories about schools trying to sensitize students and diminish bullying.

I'm not talking about students who bring assault rifles and bombs to school. These kids bring only words, words they know will hurt. (What idiot said, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me"?)

The perpetrators of this cruelty are "normal" kids. They play sports, are in the band, are on the honor roll. They don't wear "I'm a Bully" signs.

They might have been us, and they might be our kids.

KIDS ACTING BADLY
Thinking these thoughts about school on this graduation weekend, I remembered the words of an Everly Brothers song:

"An old ragged high school yearbook

That falls open to just one page

With a picture of a young girl's face

Full of beauty, dreams and rage."

High school is such a dramatic moment in our lives: "full of beauty, dreams and rage." It happens during the agony of adolescence, so everything is magnified. The good is the absolute best, the bad is the absolute worst. We're not sure what we feel, but we feel more intensely than we ever do again.

Gather up intense emotion, add insecurity and poor judgment, and you have a recipe for kids acting badly.

That school can be a painful place is obvious to any adult with a memory or a child in school. Some of the kids graduating this weekend are happy to leave high school — with its cliques, unwritten rules and unelected leaders — in the rearview mirror.

They leave hoping that the rest of their lives are not like the last few years.

It's a step in the right direction that schools are addressing this issue, raising students' consciousness about diversity and sensitizing kids to the feelings of others. Schools will become safer if kids react to bullying the way New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg counsels subway riders to react: "If you see something, say something."

In my high school, we saw something but didn't say enough. The boy who was teased by our oh-so-clever classmate didn't find happiness and success after high school. He died of leukemia the year after we graduated.

I treasure my friends and memories, but I also remember that we could have done better.

Jerry McGovern, the Press-Republican's coordinator of Newspapers-in-Education, taught in New York state's public schools, and now teaches in the Communication Department of Plattsburgh State. He can be reached at gmcgovern@pressrepublican.com or 565-4126. This column is the opinion of the writer and not necessarily of this newspaper.

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