43 years, Three Students, Two Generations, One School System

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I will avoid names in this piece, because the reality is that they don’t really matter. The same problems are occurring, and have been occurring for a long time, all over America.

Picture a young boy in 1978. His young father has just moved his family back home after spending several years with a distinguished post in Washington D.C. The young boy adopts an adult collie over the summer before school starts as the family nestles into their small home in this military community. Kindergarten and First Grade had been great near D.C. and everyone was sure that Second Grade would be no different.

They were very, very wrong.

Second grade went off the rails almost immediately. The young boy learned one of his classmates lived near him and he wanted to play with him. We’ll call the classmate, MM. MM came to their home, sized everyone up, and began systematically terrorizing the boy and his family, both in their neighborhood and at school. When the boy’s mother complained to the school, MM threatened to kill the boy’s dog and serve his head on a platter. Whenever MM was alone in the classroom he would target the boy for verbal and physical abuse. Complaints to the school never received…