Features

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing to protest the irresponsible, inflammatory “news” story written about King Middle School by Matthew Artz and published as fact by your newspaper on March 26 “School District Fails to Protect Bullying Victim at MLK”). The article presented a distorted, one-sided viewpoint and was designed to create a negative image of our school and district. Artz deliberately omitted all evidence that King, as well as all middle schools in Berkeley Unified, are working hard to prevent bullying and harassment in our schools.  

I teach eighth grade English and history at King and am released from the classroom part time to coordinate BUSD’s anti-bullying efforts at the middle school level. Your readers should know that on Wednesday, March 17, Matthew Artz called me about the upcoming article. I explained to him that, in addition to current policies and practices already in place, all middle school staff members met together on our Feb. 2 professional development day to create action plans to further address bullying and harassment in our school communities. We have refined these plans at staff meetings in February and March and have made a strong commitment to further implement the activities throughout the school year.  

Matthew Artz was also provided with extensive materials related to our district’s efforts, including information about “Let’s Get Real,” a cutting edge documentary where teenagers talk frankly about their roles as bullies, bystanders and allies. The documentary was shown on Feb. 2 to staff and since that time, in all humanities and English classes as well as parents and guardians at King, Willard and Longfellow, followed by discussions and related activities. Every middle school department addressed some element of bullying. For example, math classes explored startling statistics about bullying and harassment; physical education teachers discussed safety in locker rooms; science teachers administered a survey to gather data about how safe students feel in various areas of school, and which forms of harassment are most common. In addition, each school conducted an anti-bullying poster design contest, with prizes generously funded by the East Bay Community Foundation.  

Although I spoke with Artz at length and arranged for him to receive the follow-up information, he did not include one word of what I said in his article; nor did he refer to the materials provided to him. Artz intentionally chose to ignore the positive and instead located people to support his false premise that King is an unsafe school with an irresponsible administration. 

Artz also failed to look at the bigger picture. Bullying and harassment exists in all schools in the nation, including at King. According to the Family and Work Institute’s 2002 National Survey of Students in grades 5-12, 66 percent of youth are teased at least once a month. The National Crime Prevention Council reports that six in every 10 teenagers witness bullying at least once a day (2003). Every school has problems. 

Furthermore, no district has found a viable solution to the problem. I recently spoke at the annual conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development which was attended by 10,000 educators from all over North America. The exhibit center was filled with programs to create “Bully Free” schools, teach respect and resolve conflicts among students. Each year, the number of these programs increase; this is an indication that harassment and bullying is a pervasive and complex problem with no simple solutions.  

Although it is certainly a school’s responsibility to create safe and respectful learning environments, we must also look at the society in which we are raising our children. We live in a violent, hostile world full of racism, sexism, homophobia, economic inequities and other forms of oppression. Children learn at an early age that some groups have power and others are marginalized. Violence is a sold as entertainment; put-downs are a source of comic relief in films; and disrespectful language is pervasive. Our country fights invisible enemies and limits the freedom of its citizens in the process. Yet, we expect students to respect themselves and others and resolve conflicts peacefully when they are surrounded by institutionalized bullying put in place by adults! The staff at King will continue to work hard to make our school safe, and it is an uphill struggle. 

When I received my B.S. in journalism from Boston University, we learned that the job of a reporter was, above all, to remain objective, present all sides of a story, put the facts in context of the bigger picture, and maintain impeccable ethics. Matthew Artz failed in all of these areas. His one-sided attack on our school is not journalism; rather, it is bullying and harassment given an audience by the Daily Planet. 

Jan M. Goodman 

Teacher, King Middle School