SHE SHAMES DAUGHTER IN PUBLIC
Girl,12, bullies student over racist comment, so US school suspends her. But her mother is not satisfied
May 21, 2007
SHE is one tough mum.
Mum's making me: Miasha Williams, 12, looking downcast as she stands with her handmade sign of remorse outside her school. -- picture: ap
Not satisfied with the punishment meted out to her daughter by her school, she decided to go one step further.
Call it tough love, but Mrs Ivory Spann felt her daughter needed a new form of punishment: Public humiliation.
The California woman first checked to see if what she planned to do was legal. Then she forced her 12-year-old daughter, Miasha Williams, to spend four days in front of several California schools carrying a big sign saying, 'I Engaged in Bullying Behaviour. I Got Suspended From School... Don't Be Like Me. Stop Bullying.'
'I felt I needed to do something that would make an impression,' MsSpann, 34, told the Los Angeles Times.
It may have done the trick.
Miasha displayed the placard in the mornings when kids arrived at school and in the afternoons when they left. At each stop she was surrounded by baffled students. Sometimes she looked sheepish and embarrassed, other times as if she was enjoying the spectacle.
'This is my fault,' she said, holding her sign in front of Gardner Middle School in Temecula, where she is in Secondary 1.
'I agree what I did was wrong. Bullying is not a nice thing to have happen to you. The person who is bullying feels tough, but you have to understand what the other person must feel like.'
What's her crime?
Miasha and a group of friends heard they had been insulted by a fellow student and aggressively confronted the girl on 10 May.
No violence occurred, she said, but the girl felt intimidated enough to complain. Miasha and another student were suspended for a week.
'At first she was boo-hooing and saying, 'But Mom, I didn't do anything.' Well, let me tell you, you did do something,' MrsSpann told the Associated Press.
She said she doesn't feel the punishment was too harsh.
'I don't want that kind of environment at the school my child attends, or the school any child attends,' MrsSpann said, adding she plans to organise anti-bullying rallies at high schools.
'Time will tell if this is effective,' MsPatricia Mathis, assistant principal at Gardner told the Los Angeles Times.
'I'm not a psychologist. I'm not sure what effect this will have on Miasha. We do know this parent. She is a loving, supportive parent and very active on campus.'
MsMathis said the school takes bullying seriously and has a bullying-prevention programme.
A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 2001 found that bullying was a serious problem in US schools, with 16 per cent of students saying they had been victims of it.
But MsMathis said bullying was not a major problem at the school. Of the five schools she has worked at, she said, Gardner has the lowest incidence of bullying.
As for Miasha, MsMathis said the girl works with severely disabled students and is rarely a problem.
'I would not put the label 'bully' on this kid,' she said. Miasha's mother aims to keep it that way.
The tough-minded mum has two other children and was raised in a family of 10. She said her mother never tried to be her friend and didn't believe in such things as 'timeouts' for misbehaviour.
After the suspension, MrsSpann took her daughter to an office supply store to buy some poster board. She told her to think of something to write that would adequately express her sorrow. MsSpann had her own ideas but decided they wouldn't fit on the sign.
'My daughter didn't think I was really going to do it,' she said. 'I have had people ask me, 'Aren't you embarrassed?' And I say, 'Why would I be embarrassed? It's not my behaviour. It's not a reflection on me or my parenting.' ' As she spoke near Gardner Middle School, the bell rang, and hundreds of kids poured out. Miasha stiffened a bit, bracing for the onslaught.
The students were drawn to the tall, thin girl with the sign. They read it closely. Some snickered; others frowned.
'I think it's kind of good,' said classmate India Bowers, 14.
'I think its very effective to use humiliation as a tool. It will teach them a lesson not to be bullies.'
A boy walked past muttering, 'This is messed up.' A few students debated the incident that led to the suspension.
'If she is guilty, then okay,' said Malen Blackmon, 13. 'But it's a little harsh.'
A parent said her son had been bullied at the school.
'Given the seriousness of bullying,' said 32-year-old Christina Banzer, 'I think the punishment fits the crime.'
What does Miasha have to say after the experience?
'It's humiliating at times,' she said. 'And it's also embarrassing.'
The punishment has drawn comments from all over the US.
One reader named Kelly wrote to the Daily Breeze.com: 'Bravo to this mother for making her child accountable for her actions. If more parents made their children accountable instead of making excuses, we would have a lot less problems.'
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WILL S'PORE PARENTS DO THIS?
IT CAN happen in the US but not here. Of the six principals, teachers and parents The New Paper spoke to, not one said they agreed with what MsIvory Spann made her daughter do.
They all accepted that Singaporean kids need disciplining but not public shaming.
Madam Hau Bee Lian, 50, a homemaker with two children in their 20s, said: 'Singaporeans won't do that because Singaporeans love face. If you let the child go around carrying a sign like that, the child has no face. We also don't have face.'
In addition, she said, Singaporeans tend to dote on their children. She may expect her children to be responsible for their own actions, but she would never punish them in such a manner.
'Whatever the children do, we cannot do such a thing,' she said.
Ms Helen Choo, principal of Tampines Junior College, also felt public humiliation was never appropriate.
'Deprivation of some TV rights or going out on weekends would be more appropriate than shaming,' she said.
But are Singaporean parents too soft on their kids when it comes to bad behaviour?
Last week, The New Paper reported that a Junior College student bashed up a bus driver. It was the student's father who apologised to the driver on his son's behalf. Was that correct?
Another parent, Mrs David Teo, 62, a retired teacher, said: 'Parents here think their kids are right - and scold other people.'
On Singaporean parents' mindsets about bullying, she added: 'If he's hitting another person, there must be a reason. Maybe he is actually the one being bullied!'
One teacher, 27, felt that not only did the US mother over-react, the school involved did, too.
'If it's a just verbal tussle, without violence, I don't see why she should be suspended,' she said.
Another teacher, 26, also felt the punishment was too harsh. But she wondered: 'Is there some alignment between what she did to the victim? Is the parent trying to put the girl in the shoes of the bullied schoolmate?'
Mr Harphal Singh, principal of Telok Kurau Secondary School, said what MsSpann did struck him as a desperate measure. An act of being cruel to be kind. He wouldn't do it himself to his children or his students.
But overprotective parents do worry him.
'If I have advice for parents, it is that they need to be firm and yet understand their kids. It's about being firm and friendly, not just friendly. They are not your friends,' he said.
'You are parents first. As a parent, you can be close to your kids, but you must understand the difference. If you lose command and control, they'll become bullies, they'll run away.'
