A crowd of about 60 gathered at the DeKalb home of Jaheem Herrera to remember the fifth-grader who committed suicide. The 11-year-old boy hanged himself at his home after — according to his family — relentless bullying at Dunaire Elementary School.

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Two years previous to this incident, DeKalb public schools adopted an anti-bullying program called “No Place for Hate." The program, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, helps train faculty and students on accepting differences, promoting diversity and inclusion.

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But of course Dekalb is studying how to make their bad policy even worse. That is what media and politics dictate schools do.

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When I was in the 1st grade and I was riding the school bus I had some older kid constantly trying to pick a fight with me and I was going home crying like a wimp. My mom made clear that if I did not take care of business with the creep she was going to give me a spanking like I've never had. So the next day, though the kid was much older than me, watching bar fight westerns paid off for me. I brought the bigger kid down down and stomped him. But best of all the kids he was trying to impress laughed at him for getting beat up by a younger kid. You know, sometime "bullying" serves a purpose.

Now how my mom handled that might not suit liberal minded people very well, but from then on I never let people walk over me and I had a confidence I would not have had other wise. I would be in other fights and luckily I knew how to fight. I always made sure the fight ended with a handshake and the other kid knew it was over.

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The school systems are subjecting kids to all sorts of stress and creating an enviroment where kids can't handle that stress like we did as kids. All that politically correct shit is prevently kids from learning how to fight and preventing them from being taught how to fight with honor and how to bring a conflict to an end. It is okay if people don't like me. It is okay if I don't like other people. It is not okay if I allow other people to hurt me or to stop me from liking myself. It is not okay if I cross the line and hurt anyone else. But conflict is part of life.

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Before the 1970's, in the 1950's, schools had a problem with suicide. And there again, it was because schools were too intrusive in people's lives just as they are today. The Eisenhower Society of 1950's was way too intrusive and rigid. It created enviroments where people felt hopeless. And then came the rebellion of the 1960's and the permissive society of the 1970's. Though the education system of the 1970's was totally permissive in many areas of our nation, that system worked a hell of lot better to turn out happy, normal, smart people than the current bullshit is producing. Underachievers in our current system are being put through hell and no one in media or government seems to give a damn!!!

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And I don't mean that to offend teachers. I realize it is tough in the trenches and I know most teachers very much give a damn. They are stuck in a system that politics has totally f'ed over and continues to f over.

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Suicide is tragic. It is seldom because of one event, person(s), or even group of events. It is generally because of depression and feeling hopeless in pain to the point of just wanting to give up. In schools, suicides have been known to happen in clusters. Dekalb's main concern should not be playing the blame game with a focus on bullying but taking the stress off the other kids and fighting any general depression that may be happening in that community due to economic and other social hardships.