ODESSA, Texas — Violence anywhere, but especially in our schools, should not be tolerated. However, what about the students behind the camera filming the fights? Do they have responsibility too?
There were plenty of bystanders last Thursday at Bowie Middle School. A student attacked their teacher shown in a disturbing video captured by one of their classmates - this being due to the teacher not allowing the student to have their phone, causing the student to take physical measures towards the teacher.
"I think it had to do with the expectation," said Child Psychiatrist from West Texas Psychiatry Dr. Shamsuddin Pepermintwala. "If a child expects something to go their way and it doesn't, that causes disappointment. Most of the children nowadays have not been taught by their parents about how to cope with disappointment."
Like all middle school or high school fight videos, there’s always plenty of people in the background, watching.
"The person recording this was clearly aware of what was going on but they didn’t expect it to get this bad, and 40 seconds is a very short period of time for a 13 year old to jump into action or anything especially when they were never ever encouraged to do that," Pepermintwala said. As adults we have a totally different way of looking at things, but as teenagers [...] they’re never gonna step in between two people fighting [...] that’s just not what they’ve been encourage to do ever in their life."
It’s a question as old as the smartphone: Why is the first instinct for someone who sees a fight going on, take out their phone and start recording?
"The children, they get a dopamine hit from the number of likes they get on their videos, so they’re trying to record the weirdest thing, the most outrageous thing, so that it goes viral and they accomplish something," Pepermintwala observed.
It begs the question, should parents let their children know that they should interfere?
"No parent wants to be responsible for their child getting hurt because they tried to intervene and not succeed."
The doctor does not advise for children to interfere with these type of fights.
"I would not want any child to intervene in these types of violence situations and risk hurting themselves," Pepermintwala advises. "What would be best is to train children with consistent parenting, consistent consequences."
Even though your children shouldn’t risk themselves getting hurt, the best way to help out during a situation like this is to let an adult know or tell the individuals to stop.