The video of an upstate New York bus monitor being bullied that has thus far raised more than half a million dollars for the woman who was subject to some middle school bullying on a school bus has been viewed millions of times on YouTube , and one type of comment keeps coming up over and over.
Technically, it’s not just the bus monitor being bullied that seems to prompt remarks about “kids these days” and how disrespectful toward authority or adults in general they seem to be. If you’re a parent yourself, you have probably experienced someone telling you basically daily that the answer to “kids these days” is to smack them, and the lack of kid-smacking is why we’ve got these middle school tyrants running about the place, making bus monitors cry.
And indeed, watching the bus monitor get bullied does kind of make anyone probably over the age of 25 wonder what the hell has gotten into kids, and why they’re not afraid of adults — even the adults who should probably be appointed to stick up for a bullied bus monitor.
But experts say in recent years, cyberbullying and generally more lax parenting and schooling parameters have made for a generation of kids who are sort of fine with this whole thing. Ken Trump is president of the National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm, and he spoke about what the video indicates in a recent interview.
Trump explains that a lot of adult authority has been eroded, and the AP article states that 8% of secondary school teachers report having been physically threatened by a student — an even more serious matter than the bullied bus monitor:
“Is what we saw in this video occurring with many children every day with adults? No… One incident is one too many, but we certainly have a problem where the authority of educators and school support personnel has been undermined.”
Do you think the bullied bus monitor video is indicative of how authority among adults has been undermined in school and at home for many kids?