Esteem undone

It’s hard to remember a time when boosting the self-esteem of students wasn’t a priority of educators. Committees have been formed, reports written, programs launched, grants obtained. This is important work, made all the more crucial by the myriad bad influences foisted upon kids today.

No doubt the educators at Bonny Eagle Middle School in Buxton have joined in this effort. Sadly, recent events suggest it’s been not so much earnest endeavor as empty drill.

A seventh-grade dance is planned. Four sixth-grade girls, special-education students being “mainstreamed” into regular seventh-grade classes and activities, are told by teachers they, naturally, are invited.

They buy the prettiest dresses their families can afford. They do their hair, they scrub their faces, they do all the other primping and preening young girls do in preparation for a night of enchantment. They arrive at the school and promptly are told by an administrator they are not welcome — it is a violation of school policy for sixth-graders to attend seventh-grade functions. In full view of the “regular” students, they are marched down to the office, made to call their parents and sent home, humiliated and sobbing.

That was last week. This week, the parents of these girls went before the school board, looking for an explanation, an apology, a way to mend their daughters’ broken hearts. Instead, policy is recited. Not just the policy that permits four innocent girls to be crushed in front of their classmates, but also the policy that shields the responsible adults from having to explain themselves.

For those educators who are sincere about helping kids develop the confidence, the sense of worth, needed to face the future, this pathetic episode sends a chilling message: All the conferences, programs and action plans in the world don’t have a chance against a single thoughtless act. Nowhere is it more true than in dealing with fragile children that little things mean a lot.

For the educators at Bonny Eagle Middle School, it’s decision time . They can make this right — holding another dance and making these four girls the guests of honor would be a good place to start. Or they can admit that, for them, building self-esteem isn’t important work; it’s just busy work.