If the police and institutions are not doing anything about it then the parents can take this in their hands. I’d rather go in court and get sued for battery than have my child get assaulted repeatedly.
Fucking hell. This is messed up.
I grew up in a different part of the world where this was common, and believe me when i say that this is a perfect recipe for future gang activity. When no one helps you, you find yourself forced to affiliate yourself with certain kids, to guarantee safety.
These are children, and any difference that kids see in each others’ backgrounds is either seen as a source for bonding…or hate. And as more people move here with different backgrounds, this can only get worse.
A lot of the effort needed to stop this sort of stuff is preventative. So I don’t understand why authorities wouldn’t want to stop this now before it has a chance to grow. It makes no sense.
I just have one question though: in Luxembourg, is this a problem in only “rich kids schools” or is it across the board?
Which school is this? The jnternational school?
Having gone myself through one of the rich kids schools within the past decade this doesn’t surprise me. I vowed to homeschool my kids, because of how bad the school was.
Bullying was common place, especially a lot of verbal violence and cyberbullying between girls. Fights between groups of kids were normal, say a dozen kids around the age of 10 having a fight in the open.
Later on in the older years drugs were available everywhere. This wasn’t even soft stuff like marihuana, I’m talking cocaine and the likes. To say alcohol was tolerated would be an understatement, once we got so drunk *with a teacher* that multiple teens ended up puking on the floor and blacking out.
Many times I’ve seen people get in trouble for threatening another teen with a knife or another device.
As a cherry on top sexual stuff was through the roof too. Not just stuff happening in the bathrooms during break, but rapes outside school during parties, blackmail through naked pictures, girls getting touched up at every opportunity. From around the age of 12 or 13 boys would already ask for, and often receive, naked pictures, from their female classmates.
If the education were worth it then maybe one could stomach through it, but besides the first few years of primary where you learn to read and count it’s a total waste of time. Not to mention the rapidly dropping standards, my parents did far more math in far fewer hours, I had to waste a year of university just learning the stuff my parents had in school.
Schools have a near monopoly on educating the youths and like all other monopolies that lends itself to massive inefficiencies and a profound drop in standards. Especially for the foreign kids school choice is nonexistent – what are you going to do? Put your kid in a luxembourgish school where they don’t even know the language?
So if you care about your kid, please either homeschool it yourself, or find a private tutor. Forego the second car and you can afford it. You’ll save the kid from prison-like conditions made up of fights, drugs, alcohol, sexual abuse, and waiting in traffic every morning 😉
It’s appalling. Nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse. Not least because of the pandemic. And in one of the richest, most developed countries on the Earth. The schools need more funding, teachers need better pay. There need to be more of them. Mental health needs to be focused on instead of ignored, and play a more active role in school. And there needs to be a complete shift in the way bullying is handled.
No schools have a zero tolerance policy even if they say they do. Teaching staff don have the time or the energy or the resources to manage it. They can only do so much at once. And kids often don’t report it because a) they’re likely to also get punished, especially if they’re involved in a fight (despite simply defending themselves), and b) it just makes the bullying worse. So kids fall through the cracks.
And even when it is reported and they aren’t punished, it isn’t sufficiently handled, which just demoralizes kids. Why report it if nothing gets done and it just further angers the bullies — on top of the embarrassment and shame of having to admit to being bullied, of being weak, of being unable to defend yourself, and all the other feelings that abused kids will carry with them.
And I don’t think the answer is to immediately expel bullies either. Bullying shouldn’t be tolerated, but you can’t just kick them out. It doesn’t make them stop bullying, just moves them to a different school, and makes things worse. And they’ll move around until the stay somewhere and wreak havoc there. So schools don’t enforce their zero-tolerance policies cause then they’d start running out of students.
I think there are distinct parallels to the heavy handed approach to law enforcement and incarceration that places like the US take, that don’t treat the core issue, but just perpetuate a cycle of abuse and trauma. It’s too extreme. These are also kids. They’re not rational. They’re not gonna behave better because you tell them to, because you explain the far off consequences. They can’t see that far ahead.
And a lot of this is out of school’s control, like domestic abuse. But that’s why there has to be such an investment in mental health services in schools, a place for kids to turn to when they have nowhere else, and place that tries to do the best it can where it does have the control. They have to be more open. This has to be destigmatised so this get talked about and doesn’t fester in the shadows.
And teachers need to be able to talk about it with students, and not fear the repercussions from angry (rich) parents and management. There need to be more of them. No teacher can control a class of 30 students, even the best mannered. You just can’t account for all their different needs and academic levels, their interests. You can’t keep tabs on the well being of that many kids, especially if they’re hiding their issues. Which they do and they will, often very well. And kids that get ignored, whether intentionally or not, will do worse, academically, mentally, and in all the other facets of life affected by it down the road.
A bit of a rant, but just my two-cents. It just saddens me. The shit I had to deal with, getting worse and worse. In a country as wealthy and supposedly progressive as Luxembourg.
It’s saddening to read this story and learn that no action has been taken.
Can we launch a petition for the government to consider a law, or even setup an institution, or setup a redressal framework for these kind of issues?
I am not well versed with the legal system here so I am just thinking how we can ensure that no even a single child suffers (ambitious much, but that should be the guiding principle).
Doesn’t surprise me. I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about the école européenne. That’s what happens when you create parallel education systems with no oversight. Very shameful.
Not that the income segregated public schools are much better.
Same shit , different millenium.
I had a couple of teenagers harassing and threatening me in a concert in Belval during the summer. They were following me at the end of the concert, I went to two policeman that were nearby and they just shrugged it off and said “they are just young and drunk”, like that’s something normal and acceptable. The society here in general has a posture of allowing teenagers to do the shit they want without any consequences.
A lot of people here are making baseless assumptions that “rich kids schools” means ISL or European School.
The Athenée, Michel Rodange or any “classic” Luxemburgish public school would also qualify that description.
Having been at the Athenée myself, I can confirm having suffered bullying and witnessed drug and alcohol consumption.
The main issues here are helicopter parenting and overpaid teachers not understanding that educating kids is more than lessons and homework.
11 comments
Holy shit😮
If the police and institutions are not doing anything about it then the parents can take this in their hands. I’d rather go in court and get sued for battery than have my child get assaulted repeatedly.
Fucking hell. This is messed up.
I grew up in a different part of the world where this was common, and believe me when i say that this is a perfect recipe for future gang activity. When no one helps you, you find yourself forced to affiliate yourself with certain kids, to guarantee safety.
These are children, and any difference that kids see in each others’ backgrounds is either seen as a source for bonding…or hate. And as more people move here with different backgrounds, this can only get worse.
A lot of the effort needed to stop this sort of stuff is preventative. So I don’t understand why authorities wouldn’t want to stop this now before it has a chance to grow. It makes no sense.
I just have one question though: in Luxembourg, is this a problem in only “rich kids schools” or is it across the board?
Which school is this? The jnternational school?
Having gone myself through one of the rich kids schools within the past decade this doesn’t surprise me. I vowed to homeschool my kids, because of how bad the school was.
Bullying was common place, especially a lot of verbal violence and cyberbullying between girls. Fights between groups of kids were normal, say a dozen kids around the age of 10 having a fight in the open.
Later on in the older years drugs were available everywhere. This wasn’t even soft stuff like marihuana, I’m talking cocaine and the likes. To say alcohol was tolerated would be an understatement, once we got so drunk *with a teacher* that multiple teens ended up puking on the floor and blacking out.
Many times I’ve seen people get in trouble for threatening another teen with a knife or another device.
As a cherry on top sexual stuff was through the roof too. Not just stuff happening in the bathrooms during break, but rapes outside school during parties, blackmail through naked pictures, girls getting touched up at every opportunity. From around the age of 12 or 13 boys would already ask for, and often receive, naked pictures, from their female classmates.
If the education were worth it then maybe one could stomach through it, but besides the first few years of primary where you learn to read and count it’s a total waste of time. Not to mention the rapidly dropping standards, my parents did far more math in far fewer hours, I had to waste a year of university just learning the stuff my parents had in school.
Schools have a near monopoly on educating the youths and like all other monopolies that lends itself to massive inefficiencies and a profound drop in standards. Especially for the foreign kids school choice is nonexistent – what are you going to do? Put your kid in a luxembourgish school where they don’t even know the language?
So if you care about your kid, please either homeschool it yourself, or find a private tutor. Forego the second car and you can afford it. You’ll save the kid from prison-like conditions made up of fights, drugs, alcohol, sexual abuse, and waiting in traffic every morning 😉
It’s appalling. Nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse. Not least because of the pandemic. And in one of the richest, most developed countries on the Earth. The schools need more funding, teachers need better pay. There need to be more of them. Mental health needs to be focused on instead of ignored, and play a more active role in school. And there needs to be a complete shift in the way bullying is handled.
No schools have a zero tolerance policy even if they say they do. Teaching staff don have the time or the energy or the resources to manage it. They can only do so much at once. And kids often don’t report it because a) they’re likely to also get punished, especially if they’re involved in a fight (despite simply defending themselves), and b) it just makes the bullying worse. So kids fall through the cracks.
And even when it is reported and they aren’t punished, it isn’t sufficiently handled, which just demoralizes kids. Why report it if nothing gets done and it just further angers the bullies — on top of the embarrassment and shame of having to admit to being bullied, of being weak, of being unable to defend yourself, and all the other feelings that abused kids will carry with them.
And I don’t think the answer is to immediately expel bullies either. Bullying shouldn’t be tolerated, but you can’t just kick them out. It doesn’t make them stop bullying, just moves them to a different school, and makes things worse. And they’ll move around until the stay somewhere and wreak havoc there. So schools don’t enforce their zero-tolerance policies cause then they’d start running out of students.
I think there are distinct parallels to the heavy handed approach to law enforcement and incarceration that places like the US take, that don’t treat the core issue, but just perpetuate a cycle of abuse and trauma. It’s too extreme. These are also kids. They’re not rational. They’re not gonna behave better because you tell them to, because you explain the far off consequences. They can’t see that far ahead.
And a lot of this is out of school’s control, like domestic abuse. But that’s why there has to be such an investment in mental health services in schools, a place for kids to turn to when they have nowhere else, and place that tries to do the best it can where it does have the control. They have to be more open. This has to be destigmatised so this get talked about and doesn’t fester in the shadows.
And teachers need to be able to talk about it with students, and not fear the repercussions from angry (rich) parents and management. There need to be more of them. No teacher can control a class of 30 students, even the best mannered. You just can’t account for all their different needs and academic levels, their interests. You can’t keep tabs on the well being of that many kids, especially if they’re hiding their issues. Which they do and they will, often very well. And kids that get ignored, whether intentionally or not, will do worse, academically, mentally, and in all the other facets of life affected by it down the road.
A bit of a rant, but just my two-cents. It just saddens me. The shit I had to deal with, getting worse and worse. In a country as wealthy and supposedly progressive as Luxembourg.
It’s saddening to read this story and learn that no action has been taken.
Can we launch a petition for the government to consider a law, or even setup an institution, or setup a redressal framework for these kind of issues?
I am not well versed with the legal system here so I am just thinking how we can ensure that no even a single child suffers (ambitious much, but that should be the guiding principle).
Doesn’t surprise me. I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about the école européenne. That’s what happens when you create parallel education systems with no oversight. Very shameful.
Not that the income segregated public schools are much better.
Same shit , different millenium.
I had a couple of teenagers harassing and threatening me in a concert in Belval during the summer. They were following me at the end of the concert, I went to two policeman that were nearby and they just shrugged it off and said “they are just young and drunk”, like that’s something normal and acceptable. The society here in general has a posture of allowing teenagers to do the shit they want without any consequences.
A lot of people here are making baseless assumptions that “rich kids schools” means ISL or European School.
The Athenée, Michel Rodange or any “classic” Luxemburgish public school would also qualify that description.
Having been at the Athenée myself, I can confirm having suffered bullying and witnessed drug and alcohol consumption.
The main issues here are helicopter parenting and overpaid teachers not understanding that educating kids is more than lessons and homework.