All The Rage

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? 

Feral is an apt term to describe the maniacal and calculating behavior of individuals who often arm themselves with willing though often unsuspecting accomplices to terrorize others. Feral - physically aggressive and psychologically manipulative. The feral (person) habitually engage(s) in:

  1. physical intimidation
  2. cancellation; people deemed a threat are ostracized, boycotted or shunned
  3. deplatforming, which is a threat to free speech
  4. gaslighting - "People who engage in gaslighting may do so for a variety of reasons. They may be trying to gain control over the victim or trying to avoid accountability for their own actions, mistakes, insecurities, and feelings. An underlying mental health condition, like narcissistic personality disorder, may also play a part." - E. Feldman

What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? - Romans 8:31

In many western societies, grade school and college teachers are especially vulnerable to attack. Teachers are highly susceptible to the conspiratorial behavior of their students.

  • A feral student may interpret normal correction and guidance as a threat.
  • If a student is unbalanced or inclined toward retributive behaviour, they may employ a variety of resources and allies in an attempt to undermine the credibility and well being of someone they deem a threat. For example, they might deliberately provoke others and then secretly record their targets' reactions on their phones. Then - to indict their target(s) - exploit those reactions by editing the results to increase the likelihood of a negative perception.

Feral children are nothing new. In the earlier times, a child or youth guilty of criminal behaviour was identified as a delinquent who, being held responsible for his or her actions, might then be sent to reform school or be incarcerated to protect others from his or her bad behaviour. Nowadays, individuals guilty of questionable behaviour are practically fawned over, seen as victims, and accommodated.

The frequency of physical and emotional violence committed by students on campuses, and the feral behaviour of mobs turning formerly thriving communities into no-go wastelands, should be all the evidence needed to inspire a modification of social policies that enable and escalate violence.

Former teacher awarded almost $1.3m after college gave him 'feral' students

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/16/former-teacher-awarded-damages-feral-students

Australian Associated Press Tue 16 Sep 2014

Former teacher awarded almost $1.3m after college gave him 'feral' students

Victorian court awards Peter Doulis damages after hearing college failed to act when teacher reported concerns about disruptive classes

The court added damages to Peter Doulis’s costs. A former Melbourne teacher who suffered a breakdown after being forced to teach “feral” students has been awarded almost $1.3m in damages. 
A judge on Tuesday awarded Peter Doulis a further $510,000 for future earnings, and ordered the state to foot the bill for his legal costs. The Victorian supreme court this month ordered the state to pay Doulis $769,094 in damages for pain and suffering and lost wages. Doulis blames his stressful experience at Werribee Secondary College for a depressive condition that has kept him out of the classroom for seven years. Doulis, 48, said he was allocated classes of “feral” students who were “impossible to teach”. 
He said fights broke out in his classroom and on one occasion he was forced to discipline a boy who had burnt another student with a flamethrower made from a deodorant can. 
After breaking up a brawl between students on another occasion, a boy told him, “You’re gone, I’m going to get you”, and made a throat-slitting motion. Doulis said the school failed to act when he raised his concerns. The school denied Doulis’s allegations and argued he was not allocated an unduly heavy workload. But Justice Tim Ginnane found the college failed to minimise the risk posed to Doulis, who worked at the college between 1999 and 2004. Ginnane said Doulis had changed from an active, bubbly person to a shell of a man. Doulis’s lawyer, Michael Magazanik, said his client was now focused on trying to get better. “There’s no quick fixes here,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “This win doesn’t immediately repair his mental health.”

Teacher awarded $770k for dealing with 'feral' students at Werribee College

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-05/teacher-awarded-770k-for-dealing-with-feral-students/5722678

Mr Doulis said he was so traumatised by teaching at the school he was left exhausted and shaking after every class. He did not want to speak to the media, but in a statement said it was never about the money. "I thank the judge for finding in my favour today," he said. "The last 10 years have taken an enormous toll on me and my family." (10 years of this man's life made hellish!) Mr Doulis said he once loved being a teacher. "Unfortunately, I was forced out of the education system after being put in a really unfair position that caused me a great deal of stress, anxiety and depression," he said.

Carman: Nearly 2 years into COVID, the kids have gone feral and teachers are their prey

https://coloradosun.com/2021/11/21/covid-teachers-schools-opinion/?mc_cid=412ac0e43c&mc_eid=153e3cec9f&fbclid=IwAR0MTfvLSZgsX2IXpMwcMOjBF5wwWytcl_3pLpZdN-QTjhcVsGXTb-YOL0A

Insecure about fitting in, behind in academics and empowered by the messages they were receiving from cynical social media platforms, they set out to wreck the system rather than try to find a place in it. 
Now overwhelmed faculty members are pleading with parents to help. 
“I am writing you to not only share my concern but to ask for your partnership,” Silva said. “Will you join us by talking to your child about appropriate behaviors when they are in restaurants, stores, classrooms and on our campus with friends?” Stunningly, Silva is asking parents to help teach high school students such fundamental social skills as “Say please, thank you, excuse me and sorry … Pick up your trash … Don’t shout in the halls … Don’t run in the halls …”

This isn’t a joke. 
During the lockdown, dozens of memes circulated about parents realizing how hard it was to have their kids around the house with them all day and how they suddenly appreciated teachers a whole lot more. “Ok. I see it clearly now. It wasn’t the teacher after all,” said one.

Hundreds of articles, if not thousands of news items, describe children, youth and young adults behaving as monsters. The pandemic has made a difficult and complicated situation worse.

“At the end of our first day of my kids being out of school and our attempts at homeschooling, my conclusion: teachers are superheroes. The end,” said another. 
And “Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a year … or a week.” 
Remember that.

Indeed - remember that

  1. parents can and do enable children's bad behaviour when they fail to responsibly discipline their children, to school them in virtue;
  2. despite good parental formation, there will be kids who choose to align themselves with a cadre of badly behaving peers, to the pain and suffering of their parents.
Our various social systems must be transformed to mitigate tolerance for bad actors, to protect teachers, staff and students from bullies who willingly exploit situations to grow their power and control over others.

Teaching professionals, administrators and politicians, if they care about forming good citizens, must contribute to a solution or solutions that are grounded in an authentic anthropology and psychology, not some woke ideology that robs people of their human dignity and turns people into conniving and vindictive predators.

The Soviet Union never ended. It reformed itself as the Woke West, a totalitarian liberal, rather than communist, nightmare. Big Brother became Non-Binary Elder Sibling. - David Sinclair

Out of the vacuum created by exiling Christianity from the public sphere has poured a poison contaminating our social institutions, families and places of work. Ideologies that see human beings as mere animals, instinctual beings incapable of exercising discipline and therefore subject to the whims of the enlightened state and the control of neo-puritanical tribunals, have driven entire societies to the brink of chaos. How long will it take to restore sobriety and common sense, and put an end to the persecutions?

People of faith who have access to the wisdom of the ages - through encounters with Jesus in the sacred Liturgy - are the leaven necessary to restore sanity. The quiet revolution to restore civility is already underway. The march forward will be long and difficult; landmines are buried everywhere.

Saint Matthew 10:28

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Therefore they ought to inculcate constantly the knowledge of God, and the profound secret of evangelic doctrine, to be revealed by the light of preaching; having no fear of those who have power only over the body, but cannot reach the soul; Fear not those that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

And remember... .

Psalm 2

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

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