There was an article published today about bullying and teen suicides. There is a link with athletics which is being unfortunately ignored.
"It was the fourth time in little more than two years that a bullied high school student in this small Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie died at his or her own hand — three suicides, one overdose of antidepressants."
"Some students say the problem is the culture of conformity in this city of about 50,000 people: If you're not an athlete or cheerleader, you're not cool. And if you're not cool, you're a prime target for the bullies."
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In other words - athletes and cheerleaders are doing a lot of the bullying - because they are not virtuous.
It is not about being anti-bully ... we should be Pro-Virtue. Especially the virtues of charity and respect ... striving to think and speak WELL of others, encourage them, praise them, thank them ...
The logical conclusion: the more coaches we have mentoring their athletes in the virtue of charity = less bullying, fewer suicides. Sounds pretty important.
Let's help our schools be Pro-Virtue.
Lou,
ReplyDeletethis is so profoundly true, thank you.
Sometimes messages can be just so succinctly put and the answers to problems are so obviously evident. It's actually humorous at times,but can be very tragic. You have captured that here.
TRUTH, in itself, is almost always humorous. Heck the best comedy skits are all about the obvious truths in our daily lives that happen regularly, yet go undetected or unconsidered. The comedian just magnifies and exposes what keeps slipping by us,then we laugh and say "OH Yeah!" "That's Right!" "ha ha ha"!For example, George Carlin says "Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?"
This is a case tragic deaths, so by no means do I find humor in this. But this is what I do see, outright "obviousness". We can put our eyes on the bullies and say we have "a bully problem" and look for solutions to the problem. Or we can take our eyes off the "problem" and put them on another tragic truth, some men just choose not to mentor boys while knowing in their hearts that it is the right thing to do, and in fact that they themselves know that they could have benefitted from more as youngsters.
so we can look at these lives lost, and say, "sheesh, if they only had someone to talk to, they would still be here today", or we can say "if we as adults, all of us, practiced the Virtue of generosity and gave ourselves to others through the simple act of mentoring, there wouldn't have been a bully for these dead teenagers to have discussed".
The problem is with us, the men. That's the TRUTH, and that ain't funny.As a group we are "Parked, engine off, on the TRUTHWAY"