The school fight, the cops, and the taser

You can't be an English teacher without discussing point-of-view with students.

There is the narrator's point-of-view---what perspective the narrator takes---and that can be first person (I), second person (you), and third person (he/she/they). Third person encompasses omniscient (knows everyone's thoughts/feelings), limited omniscient (knows one character's thoughts/feelings) and objective (doesn't tell anyone's thoughts/feelings).

It is critical to think about characters' points of view, even the "villains." 

When I have students read Macbeth, I really focus them on what leads Macbeth to do the horrible things he does, and there are plenty of reasons to consider feeling some pity for Macbeth. It doesn't make what he does right, but readers can understand better what leads him down the path he takes. He is humanized. 

My middle school students are reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and last week I asked them to consider Harlan Granger's POV. Granger is the landowner who is prejudiced against the Logans and all Blacks, and it is very easy to dismiss him as the "bad guy." What he does is wrong....there is no question.

But he is still a human being, and he has feelings, even if they are ignorant or biased or what I would consider as wrong. 

The recent incident at a local high school, in which a student was subdued by 3 police officers and tasered, has forced me to consider POV because there are two videos of the event. One shows the officers subduing the student. The other shows the student hitting a police officer and then body-slamming him into the wall, which then leads the officers to subdue the student. 

My "go-to" response is to support the underdog, which in this case would appear to be the student. He is a kid, after all. His pre-frontal cortex hasn't fully developed; his emotional response has led him to action long before his rational brain says, "Wait a minute! It is probably a bad idea to punch a cop."

But watching the video of the student hitting the officer reminded me of every time one of my kids hit me when they were preschoolers.  

Every kid goes through a phase in which they hit their parents. Nothing set me off like my kid hitting me, even though rationally I knew that 1. they were toddlers/preschoolers and 2. I was the grown-up, and 3. it was a phase. 

On the occasions when my kid(s) hit me, I wanted to beat the shit out of them. I did not, but I would be lying if I said I was gentle and kind and talked to them nicely that "it is wrong to hit others." Sometimes, I grabbed their hands forcefully or picked them up roughly or otherwise made it very physically clear that "I am the mom, the adult, and you are NOT GOING TO HIT ME." 

Now, someone might read this post and think I am saying the teenager in this situation is a toddler, and I am not. I have to consider his POV. Like my children when they were younger (and even now, for that matter), this student felt frustrated. He was angry, and he lashed out. Who knows how much baggage this student has in his life. I don't know his story, but his action comes from a place of frustration. That I understand.

The problem is that whether you are a toddler or nine or a teenager or an adult, you cannot hit people out of frustration. 

I would be remiss to not say that there is likely a cultural difference between me and this student. In his world, physical altercation might be the "norm." I have to be sensitive to that, but within a school, that is not the norm, and it cannot be.

One child's frustration can quickly become a bunch of other students' fear and chaos, which is what it became. While there are students who feel the cops were too forceful, I suspect there are as many who felt like the cops were doing their best to restore order and were glad the cops subdued the student.

Does this break along racial lines? Perhaps. 

I recently subbed at a local middle school and helped break up a fight between two 8th grade girls. I happened to be in the middle of a hallway during dismissal when the other adults were at the two opposite ends of the hall.

As I was passing through, I saw the fight erupting. I probably could have interjected myself before the first hit was launched, but I did not.

Call me irresponsible or wrong, but I don't get paid enough to get my jaw broken by a student by sticking myself in the middle of two students hell-bent on punching each other. Once contact was made, the girls quickly landed on the floor, and from behind, I grabbed a girl and pulled her off the other one. As I pulled her backward onto her feet, two other adults came towards me and took her out of my arms. 

It took hours for my adrenaline level to go back to normal, and I hadn't been hit or hurt at all. I cannot help but think of this situation when I think of the officers in that recent situation. This is the kind of thing they do everyday. Even though they are charged with being fair to all, it is difficult to be fair and gentle after you've been hit in the face.

I don't envy these officers being in the middle of a ton of high schoolers (none of whom have their developed pre-frontal cortexes). Given that one student had just hit and tackled one of the officers, it doesn't seem inappropriate that they would feel they needed to show the surrounding students the taser, to let them know that they had force and would use it if any other student or students felt the need to respond physically.

Sometimes understanding other people's POVs makes it a whole lot harder to try to figure out what is right or wrong....or just where on the continuum of right or wrong situations are.