Teenage hangs herself due to abuse on ASK.FM

[MKR&*42]

W.h.a.t. Ok I get the main priority of school is to educate on geography, maths, science and so on. But to outright deny students teaching about important issues in life is silly (in a subject which doesn't give you a grade can I just add before you start claiming "it'll lead to more nonsense grades in nonsense subjects") - many kids experience bullying/emotional problems and further go on to self-harm and suffer from various mental illnesses, and not being able to seek help for that in a school (where you spend 7 hours a day there...) is just ludicrous. I actually dread to think what school would be like without that kind of advice and education at all - there'd probably be a lot more ignorant people (like in this thread) turning a blind eye to the issues leading up to suicide and so on.

And pretty much everything Catchy said.

[Catchy]

agreed! All schools should provide good pastoral care for their students. Some people on this forum :rolleyes:

Honestly, it's like he has been living under a rock... Since when didn't schools offer counselling services and what not? As far as I'm aware pretty much all schools do. It's not to say they're not teaching them, if a child were to have a difficult home situation that is going to impact on their education and learning. That doesn't take a genius to work out, therefore these support services that the school has in place are there for a good reason. I am sick and tired of hearing @-:Undertaker:-; bang on about the bloody state to be quite frank. "The state this, the state that" give it a rest.

[Yawn]

this is getting goooooooooood

Edited by Matts (Forum Super Moderator): Please don't post off-topic!

[-:Undertaker:-]

You say some ridiculous things but this has to be one of the worst you've come up with in a long time. You've really outdone yourself lmao!

In future then, call me out on it and make me look a fool. Anytime dear.

Schools have a duty of care and responsibility to their students. If a student is suffering at home then the school has every right to get social services involved and I'm pretty sure it's more or less protocol that they have to? Dodgy doctors? Lol what on earth... I'm not even going to comment on that, I'm pretty sure a medical professional with 7 years training and years of clinical experience behind them knows what they're talking about.

So you clearly haven't understood what I said have you? sigh. What I mean is, the way schools are going now is that they are basically turning into de facto social services in school time which should be taken up by normal subjects rather than the useful subject time being taken up be quack doctors, school 'special needs' staff coming in every day and so on.

If social services genuinely need to be involved, then call them in - but do not dumb down school education even more by forcing ever more boring (and useless) 'citizenship' or PSCHE lessons on everybody else. In the case of this girl, we assume all of this social service was provided by the school do we not? (you say yourself below that most schools now offer this) - whereas i'm making the case that that would be unlikely to help and probably didn't help as she seemed pretty determined to upset herself by logging on the internet where she was being abused.

So assuming her school did provide social services etc, what more do you want done? tell me, i'd like to know.

i agree w/ jake your comments about schools only for education is ridiculous. education isnt just about skills, you can educate a child on life. schools are supposed to be a secondary education, they take you for about 7 hours a day so they have responsibility for looking after your children and that includes any bullying they may suffer. at least if schools are teaching morals then these suicides would happen less.

How can you educate somebody on life, which is an experience not a subject, in a classroom? do you know how absurd that sounds?

youre asking the wrong questions. the questions should be; why are kids throwing abuse to each other and telling them to kill themselves? why is nothing being done to stop this? i see people say kill yourself all over twitter & no-one bats an eyelid. yes, someone saying that to me wouldn't make me actually do it but im honestly so ******* shocked that someone could say that to another person.

Free speech - the meaning of which is, the right to say controversial, nasty or offensive things.

It's people like you and your emotional logic which ends up in draconian law being brought in after each tragedy like this whereby you can now be arrested in this country for calling a police horse 'gay' - incase it offends a homosexual. To prevent that from happening, i'll stand up for free speech everytime - no matter how horrid or appalling the speech is.

all we do is blame the victim for not ignoring it when it shouldn't be done in the first place. instead of blaming the victims parents, why not blame the parents of the vile children spouting such hate? what u can do to help is get police involved, try find out the people doing it WHILST keeping the child off the site, not just taking the child off. even if one child getting abuse stops going onto the site, then the bullies can simply jump to the next, so shouldn't they be the ones dealt with rather than the victims? :S

Not really no. Again, I return to the free speech point - and the same applies when Tom Daley was being insulted on Twitter. The right to not be insulted or offended does not exist, and should not exist. Now if it's outright threats then that's another story, but instructing somebody to do something that they do not have to do? No matter how you twist it, she didn't have to follow the instructions to kill herself nor did she have to use ask.fm nor did she have to continue to post her personal information whilst she was being insulted.

Honestly, it's like he has been living under a rock... Since when didn't schools offer counselling services and what not? As far as I'm aware pretty much all schools do. It's not to say they're not teaching them, if a child were to have a difficult home situation that is going to impact on their education and learning. That doesn't take a genius to work out, therefore these support services that the school has in place are there for a good reason. I am sick and tired of hearing @-:Undertaker:-; bang on about the bloody state to be quite frank. "The state this, the state that" give it a rest.

I apologise for being specific. In future i'll make sure i'm more vague and won't read properly what people have written - like you.

[lemons]

jesus

[-:Undertaker:-]

Should add this as summary really - look, my basic point is that when tragedys like this happen people always jump to emotional conclusions and call for bans, more funding for this and that etc - and often it completely misses the point/results in unintended consquences.

All i'm saying is that a rational approach should be taken to these things with everything in mind, rather than being emotionally driven by this one event.

[Cupids]

heard about thats this morning, horrible

[Catchy]

@-:Undertaker:-; You seemed to be very anti pastoral care. Your first post wasn't specific, it was vague. I hardly think educating children on issues which are talked about in citizenship classes aren't doing any harm. I mean really? I'm sure most of us here had to do it and did that harm our education? No. If children aren't being educated about these things who else is going to educate them so that they're able to make informed decisions later in life? Some parents aren't as open as other parents or some children simply can't talk to their parents so these classes are pretty valuable for a kids development in my opinion.

Your comment to @buttons; is ridiculous. How can you educate someone on life? Ever heard of a life coach? In all seriousness though, you can share experiences with them, teach them about the risks and dangers of certain aspects of life and provide them with facts which aren't myths. Do you know the amount of people in my class who believed that if you drink coke before having sex you can't get pregnant? Or something ridiculous like that anyway. Lol, just one example. Your whole free speech argument doesn't even exist and you're an idiot if you believe it does.

[-:Undertaker:-]

@-:Undertaker:-; You seemed to be very anti pastoral care. Your first post wasn't specific, it was vague. I hardly think educating children on issues which are talked about in citizenship classes aren't doing any harm. I mean really? I'm sure most of us here had to do it and did that harm our education? No. If children aren't being educated about these things who else is going to educate them so that they're able to make informed decisions later in life? Some parents aren't as open as other parents or some children simply can't talk to their parents so these classes are pretty valuable for a kids development in my opinion.

Well i'll just give one example with sex education lessons. At one point it was decided, in order to lower the low numbers of teenage pregnancies, STDs and abortions - that sex education lessons would allow pupils to grasp sex properly and thus the numbers would decrease. It seemed a sensible idea, except that the numbers of all three of those have increased massively since ex education was brought in which suggests a correlation between the two. That's an example of a seemingly good idea but which backfired with unintended consquences.

In this regard, I return to the point you made that most schools now have these services in place - so my question to you was, and still is, assuming this girls school had these services in place - what more can you possibly do that would have saved her? you are seemingly calling for more to be done, but i'm not sure you yourself even know what more can possibly be done.

all seriousness though, you can share experiences with them, teach them about the risks and dangers of certain aspects of life and provide them with facts which aren't myths. Do you know the amount of people in my class who believed that if you drink coke before having sex you can't get pregnant? Or something ridiculous like that anyway. Lol, just one example.

I send you back to the sex education example and look forward to your response to that.

Your whole free speech argument doesn't even exist and you're an idiot if you believe it does.

Is it that you don't understand it or actually disagree with it? if you disagree with it, i'd like to know exactly what you disagree with.

[FlyingJesus]

I didn't want to get involved in this but it absolutely is possible to educate people on "life", and if that wasn't the case then empathy couldn't exist because no-one would be able to understand anything they haven't personally been through. I don't think bans on certain sites (or types of sites) will solve anything, but neither will saying WELL DON'T LOOK AT IT!!!! or pretending that verbal/textual abuse isn't abuse.