MidlandToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article about the cancellation of a school play, published Jan. 26.
I wanted to thank Peter Fry for his recent letter about the cancelling of Beauty and the Beast at Georgian Bay District Secondary School.
While I am long out of school, I remember that the administration (principal, vice-principal, etc.) seemed unable to understand and appropriately address issues with bullying and harassment at the school. I had family members who were targeted for such behaviour because we were ‘different’ in a lot ways (though not in terms of colour or LGBTQSIA+).
This sounds very much like this has not changed in the 40 years since I was in high school. It seems to me like there is a ‘lack of adult supervision’ at school and high school, and that this has been the case for far too long.
I think it’s worse now, in that it seems teachers are afraid to oppose administration or say much of anything without leave by administration. Administration does not seem to be up to the task assigned to them, and up the chain it goes.
It seems especially that administration at the school level (principal, vice-principal) and even school counsellors need to be better trained in psychology, youth development, and conflict resolution, and to apply those skills more often.
How to effect that change, I unfortunately do not know. I hope that educators and administration can recognize there is a problem and work toward fixing it, because as an outsider, I can’t.
Daniel Dickinson
Midland
