Kitty Genovese and the kid in the classroom next door

False correlation, you will say, and you will be right. But my mind is nothing but a random connector of things, so here I am...

"For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law‐abiding cit­izens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.

Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned ‐ the po­lice during the assault; one wit­ness called after the woman was dead." - The New York Times, March 27, 1964

On a Saturday morning - I'll admit a Saturday morning at the end of a frustrated, angry week, I began to throw out challenges to educators on Twitter: 

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

What will you do this year about the teacher in the room next door who's doing a lousy job? #edchat #satchat

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

What will you do this year about the teacher in the room next door who's punishing kids for nonsense? #edchat #satchat

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

What will you do this year about the teacher in the room next door who's boring kids to death? #edchat #satchat

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

What will you do this year about the teacher in the room next door who's blocking kids from using contemporary tools? #edchat #satchat

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

It's time to stop being part of a wall of silence and fight for kids in every room in every school. #edchat #satchat

Ira Socol ‏@irasocol 9h9 hours ago

I've been a cop and an educator - and cops are more likely to turn in bad cops than teachers are to do the same #edchat #satchat 

And as I threw these out, and got a flood of responses...

Amanda Palmer ‏@AmandaPalmer131 9h9 hours ago

@irasocol Hubby's a cop... That insight is so interesting and true. Sad considering both can destroy people. #satchat

The New York Paywall Times chimed in with the story of a new film being made called "37" - about the legendary 1964 Kitty Genovese murder case in Queens, New York.

As a former New York City Cop, as a native New Yorker,, the name "Kitty Genovese" can begin a world of conversation and argument. Few stories seem more depressing about how people come to see others as statistics, simply because this story seems to have been - at least in legend - the beginning of something awful.

"The socio-psychological phenomena that were studied after the killing — notably the “bystander effect,” by which individuals pass the buck to other witnesses when present at an act of violence — are universal and ongoing..." - John Anderson in The New York Times

And with these two streams connecting, I went back to my Tweet: "I've been a cop and an educator - and cops are more likely to turn in bad cops than teachers are to do the same."

Austin Street, Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, in 1964

When I first went to work in a high school I thought two things, or maybe it was three. First I thought - I even said it to people - "I think lighthouse keepers have more peer-to-peer interaction than teachers." Exaggeration certainly, but teachers seemed stunningly isolated to me. They locked themselves in their classrooms, never watched each other "practice their craft," rarely discussed what worked and didn't work. I'd worked in many fields on my way to education and I was shocked.

Second I thought, "I know who the great teachers are and I know who the terrible teachers are." And I knew that within a couple of weeks of hearing kids talk and walking the corridors looking into classrooms. Then I realized that pretty much everybody even slightly observant in the building knew the same. And then I said, "Forget that 'blue wall of silence' crap. Cops are more likely to turn in bad cops than teachers are to turn in bad teachers."

Drop a dime... the anonymous call

Cops do turn in bad cops you know. In the NYPD the phrase was (perhaps still is) "drop a dime" on someone (though phone calls had long, long before ceased to be a dime in my day - please). To turn them in anonymously to Internal Affairs. It happened, it does happen, quite a bit. There's something about working day to day with bad cops - people who hurt people - people who ignore people's rights - that gets good cops (in good departments) to break through that blue wall.

Cops are more likely to turn in bad cops than teachers are to turn in bad teachers

Why? Is it because the stakes seem lower?

The fourth thing I realized - back in that first school - was that bad teaching professionals do more damage every day than bad cops and bad doctors. Really.  

"Now I know what you are saying, no school would ever do something like this. I mean, we now know that emotional abuse is bad, and we know that isolation, rejection, and public shaming is emotionally abusive, and we would never allow our teachers to engage in it. Shockingly however, emotional abuse is a problem in school. As a parent I have had to go to bat for my kids several times. For example, my son’s teacher put his name on a board and publicly humiliated him for not doing his work properly. When I told her that her public humiliation was making him feel bad, all she could say was that if he wanted to avoid the bad feelings, he’d have to perform to her expectations." - The Emotional Abuse of Our Children - 2013

I know that teachers know teachers who do things like take away lunch periods from kids who haven't gotten work done. Teachers who reduce grades for kids who 'move too much' in class. Who take away outside play time because of minor non-compliance. Who yell and humiliate, or who just humiliate. Who strip adolescents of their evenings because they think homework is a great thing. Who will keep children uncomfortable for hours on end - day after day (wasn't that a CIA torture technique?). I know teachers who know teachers who are bullies every day - but we hide behind the ideas that they are simply "tough" and "old-fashioned."

I know something else - maybe many kids will survive those teachers, but in every school there are kids in the classroom next door who will be permanently damaged - whose allostatic load will be pushed into the breaking realm - by teachers like that. These children are usually our most vulnerable from the start, and they will be most damaged - for life. And I know that those kids are calling for help, just as Kitty Genovese was, and what are we doing?

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the characteristics that create education's Bystander Effect. These offences, these psychological assaults are:

• Rationalized by offenders.
• Normalized by students.
• Minimized or ignored by colleagues who remain silent.
• Enabled by inaction of school systems.
• Undetected by outsiders.

Undetected by outsiders because, as on that night 51 years ago in Kew Gardens, nobody picks up the phone, nobody makes the call. "Colleagues may know about the behavior through rumors or persistent complaints, but think there is nothing they can do. School officials may have reason to believe it is occurring, yet fail to act. Almost without exception, offending teachers mask their mistreatment of students as part of a legitimate role function, using the rhetoric of “motivation” or “discipline” to justify their actions."

Extreme, but... how many teachers in this school knew about this? C'mon...

Bystander Effect is Bystander Effect. Whether its a dark night on an urban street or in the bright lights of a middle school. And crime is crime. Is a pursesnatching ok enough that we don't call 9-1-1? Is simply abusing children over homework ok enough that we don't go to our principal? We either step up and hear calls for help or we choose to not do that. Stepping up has risks in every case, even calling 9-1-1 can lead to real issues down the road. "Dropping a dime" on a colleague seems as risky an employee behavior as possible. But do we have room in our schools who will not step up for children?

The cops in 1964 New York City were horrified by the Kitty Genovese case. So horrified that they could hardly not talk about it, if the account I read in the book Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World's Fair And The Transformation Of America is anything close to true. It represented such of break in the social fabric - the social fabric that cops know is the only thing that makes their job possible (see Baltimore today for what happens when that dissolves) .

So no teacher in this school knew what this child was talking about? 

Or only the kids?

That social fabric is what wraps our children and let's them grow into healthy, safe adults. It is really just that, and we cannot let that fabric fray. The SPLC notes that, "There is typically a high degree of agreement among students (and colleagues) on which teachers engage in bullying behavior," and that, "Teachers are perceived to bully with impunity; they are seldom held accountable for their conduct."

How do we finally begin to change that? What will you do?

- Ira Socol