There are over 100,000 schools in the US, and replacing their multi-user bathrooms with single-user is prohibitively expensive. And will make vaping and drug use much easier, as well as provide privacy for in-school sex and sexual assault.
Also, single-user bathrooms would quickly become sex closets. Hell, I would have hid out in one myself and made out with my high school boyfriend for hours.
My sister teaches in a city school in Minneapolis; (I work in an elementary school in PA) She says they can't even get the hordes of teenagers into the classrooms. They wander in the hallways all day, vaping and making Tik Tok videos. They can't possibly hire enough school resource officers to get the kids into the classrooms. Truancy levels are insane.
All suspensions should be out of school.
The biggest problem with schools? The parents. The parents create the problem, and the school is left holding the bag.
The schools also actively sabotage the parent-child relationship. It's a shared problem. Abigail Shrier's new book "Bad Therapy" is a hard read, but lays out the complexity of the problem quite well.
I was very surprised that gender identity ideology is not on the list of insidious factors in American schools. Dagny "Nex" Benedict is said to have identified as "two spirit" or "non-binary." The likelihood that she was either is slim to none. It's far more plausible that she was influenced by peers, gender identity programming in the school and the toxic media she absorbed through her cell phone into believing she was a gender snowflake of some sort. Press reports indicate Dagny was being harassed by her peers at school for being non-binary.
There's a crucial difference between vape pens/drugs, bathrooms, cell phones and the mental health crisis, on the one hand, and gender identity ideology on the other. It's that while private schools likely have the resources and the autonomy to crack down on cell phones, harassment and criminal activity in bathrooms and search students' belongings for drugs, when it comes to indoctrinating students on gender identity ideology, most non-religious private schools are worse even than public schools.
In a better sort of world, school districts would be sued within an inch of their lives in order to force changes. Changes have to include firing every school district employee or contractor who holds the ideologies that condone or spread chaos in US public schools or make it difficult to combat.
Thanks for the comment, the piece was trying to address the factors that have been missed in the media/social media conversations. I feel that the gender identity has been the only element discussed by those wanting to push this story and I wanted to highlight the other important aspects that I felt were hiding in plain sight. I feel that many have been making this a one dimensional story and missing the other aspects of this students life that were contributing factors. You will get no disagreement from me that gender ideology is an insidious factor in American schools.
Thanks so much for helping us make sense of this! Press accounts up here in Chicago have 1) depicted this as a hate crime pure & simple, and 2) studiously avoided saying anything that would reveal poor Nex's biological sex. As a result, I had assumed Nex was biologically male, and the girls were objecting to them using a bathroom that didn't match their birth certificate. I think most readers are making the same assumptions.
Turns out neither one is true -- the coroner has concluded that trauma was not the cause of death and is waiting for toxicology and other tests. And of course Nex's bathroom choice and birth certificate were in alignment -- the girls were making fun of Nex' but were not trying to kick them out of the girls' room. (I'm still not clear what the gender-identity-bathroom policies were in that school ... was Nex required to use the girls' room, or allowed to use either one?} It confirms my feeling that the vigils being held in Nex's memory all over the country are premature and not helpful.
Too many people don't realize that many opioid overdoses now involve folks who were not looking for opioids -- the culprit is either a different recreational drug laced with fentanyl, or a phony prescription pill. One problem is the kids (and sometimes their parents) are entirely too comfortable with Xanax and Adderall -- they are on so many medicines, after all! -- so don't see it as dangerous to buy a few pills on the street. They have even less awareness that the "Xanax" might actually be fentanyl. I hadn't yet heard of vape cartridges as a source. That's truly scary. Wishing you all the best in your struggle to keep your kids safe without locking them in their rooms or something ... there are no easy answers!
Let's also remember that Nex SAID the students were teasing her, which is why she aggressed against them. We have no way of knowing what happened. She was suspended, after all.
You have an excellent point! I was so fortunate to be in junior high and high school between 1967 and 1973, when schools were much better governed and children were less screwed up by their family of origin and community. My 7th grade history teacher actually had the time and the skill to teach us how to write essays on top of teaching us ancient history.
However, the drug scene at the private high schools I attended between 1969 and 1973 was pretty intense. The difference was that most of the kids were also high achievers who had a work hard/play hard ethic. The worst that happened when they got caught by the school authorities was they were expelled. The administration wouldn't have dreamed of calling the cops, and the police never would have raided the dorms.
That was a sobering read and important for all to read. Here is what authorities do when there are rising mental health problems : fund more mental health programs. It is a dangerous game leading to more prescription meds on which youth loose their minds. My kids are post high school but this was happening 10+ years ago. Kids would share their prescriptions before tests to help them stay awake. As tensions in America rise, it is far worse. Lookout for telehealth - those phones will be the gateway to mental health aps and drugs leading them into the abyss. If phones go to school, they belong in lockers and turned off. Schools would be wise to reinvest in physical books and reintroduce all the senses into learning.
Very powerful. I have been watching this story and wondering what the rest of the details were. Adults are failing if they refuse to look at all angles. So sorry you had to write about this. Sorry for the family.
I work in a high school, and I say “Amen” to everything this author has written, and double “Amen” to the part about phones. They are a scourge and steal students’ attention all day long.
Jamie, this makes me want to pull my middle school and highschool daughters from public school asap. I just didn’t know everything back when we were trying to figure out schools. My sweet girls...they’ve each had to navigate so much.
Real talk? We put all this time and effort into things like home birth and cloth diapering, believing those choices to be the best for our babies and our families, only to let someone else raise them and educate them for 8+ hours a day? Make it make sense! We continue to home school our children as we firmly believe it is still the best choice for our children and our family. Of course I will never say never to another schooling option, but reading about what goes on in public schools gets me as close to “never” than ever!!!!
Thank you again Jamie for whistle-blowing on the problems in American high schools. I really hope people are listening. You carry a big load for the good of us all.
I also wonder if the student had taken the covid "vaccines". Just as a Possibility that should be considered - across the world people are dropping dead during and soon after adrenaline spikes. Sports spikes adrenaline, so does being in a fight. Dr Peter McCullough explains the mechanisms of action far better than I can, but the tragic fallout of these shots Has killed and maimed many, many, many people. Of course, I don't know if this applies in this case. But it's the one thing not allowed to even be considered, when the media reluctantly, with confusion, covers excess deaths, and fast growing cancers.
Of course Fentanyl can also kill. Psych meds and strong THC in susceptible brains can contribute to aggression. On the Dissafected Podcast, there was footage of a police officer talking to the student in her hospital bed. Besides a bandaged arm, she seemed OK. She admitted that she started the fight, she was the first physical aggressor. Of course that does not deserve death, but it's not the picture the media paints. And legal and illegal drugs may be a factor in emotional stability / aggression.
"We are in a tsunami of COVID-19 vaccine induced cardiac arrests. Almost everyday another young person dies during sleep or athletic activity. Both of these periods there is a rise of adrenaline which is a known trigger for cardiac arrest in those who have subclinical heart inflammation from COVID-19 vaccines."
Well put! I agree, except for the bathrooms.
There are over 100,000 schools in the US, and replacing their multi-user bathrooms with single-user is prohibitively expensive. And will make vaping and drug use much easier, as well as provide privacy for in-school sex and sexual assault.
There is no substitute for supervision.
Also, single-user bathrooms would quickly become sex closets. Hell, I would have hid out in one myself and made out with my high school boyfriend for hours.
My sister teaches in a city school in Minneapolis; (I work in an elementary school in PA) She says they can't even get the hordes of teenagers into the classrooms. They wander in the hallways all day, vaping and making Tik Tok videos. They can't possibly hire enough school resource officers to get the kids into the classrooms. Truancy levels are insane.
All suspensions should be out of school.
The biggest problem with schools? The parents. The parents create the problem, and the school is left holding the bag.
The schools also actively sabotage the parent-child relationship. It's a shared problem. Abigail Shrier's new book "Bad Therapy" is a hard read, but lays out the complexity of the problem quite well.
I was very surprised that gender identity ideology is not on the list of insidious factors in American schools. Dagny "Nex" Benedict is said to have identified as "two spirit" or "non-binary." The likelihood that she was either is slim to none. It's far more plausible that she was influenced by peers, gender identity programming in the school and the toxic media she absorbed through her cell phone into believing she was a gender snowflake of some sort. Press reports indicate Dagny was being harassed by her peers at school for being non-binary.
There's a crucial difference between vape pens/drugs, bathrooms, cell phones and the mental health crisis, on the one hand, and gender identity ideology on the other. It's that while private schools likely have the resources and the autonomy to crack down on cell phones, harassment and criminal activity in bathrooms and search students' belongings for drugs, when it comes to indoctrinating students on gender identity ideology, most non-religious private schools are worse even than public schools.
In a better sort of world, school districts would be sued within an inch of their lives in order to force changes. Changes have to include firing every school district employee or contractor who holds the ideologies that condone or spread chaos in US public schools or make it difficult to combat.
Thanks for the comment, the piece was trying to address the factors that have been missed in the media/social media conversations. I feel that the gender identity has been the only element discussed by those wanting to push this story and I wanted to highlight the other important aspects that I felt were hiding in plain sight. I feel that many have been making this a one dimensional story and missing the other aspects of this students life that were contributing factors. You will get no disagreement from me that gender ideology is an insidious factor in American schools.
Thanks so much for helping us make sense of this! Press accounts up here in Chicago have 1) depicted this as a hate crime pure & simple, and 2) studiously avoided saying anything that would reveal poor Nex's biological sex. As a result, I had assumed Nex was biologically male, and the girls were objecting to them using a bathroom that didn't match their birth certificate. I think most readers are making the same assumptions.
Turns out neither one is true -- the coroner has concluded that trauma was not the cause of death and is waiting for toxicology and other tests. And of course Nex's bathroom choice and birth certificate were in alignment -- the girls were making fun of Nex' but were not trying to kick them out of the girls' room. (I'm still not clear what the gender-identity-bathroom policies were in that school ... was Nex required to use the girls' room, or allowed to use either one?} It confirms my feeling that the vigils being held in Nex's memory all over the country are premature and not helpful.
Too many people don't realize that many opioid overdoses now involve folks who were not looking for opioids -- the culprit is either a different recreational drug laced with fentanyl, or a phony prescription pill. One problem is the kids (and sometimes their parents) are entirely too comfortable with Xanax and Adderall -- they are on so many medicines, after all! -- so don't see it as dangerous to buy a few pills on the street. They have even less awareness that the "Xanax" might actually be fentanyl. I hadn't yet heard of vape cartridges as a source. That's truly scary. Wishing you all the best in your struggle to keep your kids safe without locking them in their rooms or something ... there are no easy answers!
Let's also remember that Nex SAID the students were teasing her, which is why she aggressed against them. We have no way of knowing what happened. She was suspended, after all.
Thank you, Jamie.
You make some excellent points.
How I wish that the many pieces I read by Substack authors could be printed as guest Op-Eds in the NYT.
I do hope that Substack authors will keep a running tally of pieces submitted & rejected by NYT , WAPO, etc.
You have an excellent point! I was so fortunate to be in junior high and high school between 1967 and 1973, when schools were much better governed and children were less screwed up by their family of origin and community. My 7th grade history teacher actually had the time and the skill to teach us how to write essays on top of teaching us ancient history.
However, the drug scene at the private high schools I attended between 1969 and 1973 was pretty intense. The difference was that most of the kids were also high achievers who had a work hard/play hard ethic. The worst that happened when they got caught by the school authorities was they were expelled. The administration wouldn't have dreamed of calling the cops, and the police never would have raided the dorms.
That was a sobering read and important for all to read. Here is what authorities do when there are rising mental health problems : fund more mental health programs. It is a dangerous game leading to more prescription meds on which youth loose their minds. My kids are post high school but this was happening 10+ years ago. Kids would share their prescriptions before tests to help them stay awake. As tensions in America rise, it is far worse. Lookout for telehealth - those phones will be the gateway to mental health aps and drugs leading them into the abyss. If phones go to school, they belong in lockers and turned off. Schools would be wise to reinvest in physical books and reintroduce all the senses into learning.
Very powerful. I have been watching this story and wondering what the rest of the details were. Adults are failing if they refuse to look at all angles. So sorry you had to write about this. Sorry for the family.
I work in a high school, and I say “Amen” to everything this author has written, and double “Amen” to the part about phones. They are a scourge and steal students’ attention all day long.
Jamie, this makes me want to pull my middle school and highschool daughters from public school asap. I just didn’t know everything back when we were trying to figure out schools. My sweet girls...they’ve each had to navigate so much.
Real talk? We put all this time and effort into things like home birth and cloth diapering, believing those choices to be the best for our babies and our families, only to let someone else raise them and educate them for 8+ hours a day? Make it make sense! We continue to home school our children as we firmly believe it is still the best choice for our children and our family. Of course I will never say never to another schooling option, but reading about what goes on in public schools gets me as close to “never” than ever!!!!
Thank you again Jamie for whistle-blowing on the problems in American high schools. I really hope people are listening. You carry a big load for the good of us all.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. Enlightening and powerful.
I also wonder if the student had taken the covid "vaccines". Just as a Possibility that should be considered - across the world people are dropping dead during and soon after adrenaline spikes. Sports spikes adrenaline, so does being in a fight. Dr Peter McCullough explains the mechanisms of action far better than I can, but the tragic fallout of these shots Has killed and maimed many, many, many people. Of course, I don't know if this applies in this case. But it's the one thing not allowed to even be considered, when the media reluctantly, with confusion, covers excess deaths, and fast growing cancers.
Of course Fentanyl can also kill. Psych meds and strong THC in susceptible brains can contribute to aggression. On the Dissafected Podcast, there was footage of a police officer talking to the student in her hospital bed. Besides a bandaged arm, she seemed OK. She admitted that she started the fight, she was the first physical aggressor. Of course that does not deserve death, but it's not the picture the media paints. And legal and illegal drugs may be a factor in emotional stability / aggression.
But, really, there are excess deaths all over the world, especially in highly vaccinated countries, and many are of very young people. https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-applied-to
"We are in a tsunami of COVID-19 vaccine induced cardiac arrests. Almost everyday another young person dies during sleep or athletic activity. Both of these periods there is a rise of adrenaline which is a known trigger for cardiac arrest in those who have subclinical heart inflammation from COVID-19 vaccines."