EDITORIAL DESK
NO ONE LIKES TO HEAR CRITICISM. Whether it be for the way you drive or, in my case, the way I write. As a journalist, it is something
that I have gotten much better at accepting and learning from. Tere was a time when any com- ment made on an article or story I wrote was wrong — the person making it just didn’t understand where I was coming from. But, now that I have more than a decade’s worth of experience in the publishing world, I understand that what seems right to me might not always come off that way to others. But there are many different levels of being critiqued, hence the title of this month’s column.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
By Stephane Babcock
Some are positive and give you a feeling that you are doing what you should in this world. Te editors at STN have received compliments in the past that have convinced us that the job we are doing is reaching the people we wish to reach and giving them insight into an industry they love. We usually transform these comments, whether from actual letters to the editor or from online comments on some recently posted news item, into fodder for our monthly “Mailbag” section of the magazine. But sometimes, it comes in the form of a simple “good job” uttered over the phone or at an industry conference, and we take those in and relish them as well. Ten there are the criticisms that are based on cold, hard facts. It could be correcting a misspelled
name or misquoted figure, something that slipped by unnoticed. Tese are the hardest for me, be- cause I always think to myself, “Why didn’t I catch that?” But we are all flawed in some way, and we all make mistakes. But, when I misspell a last name, the local news team doesn’t show up on my doorstep and ask for
a quote for the five o’clock news. Tose of your who spend your days at ground zero have either expe- rienced this yourselves or read numerous reports online or in your morning newspaper. Ten there is the type of criticism that comes from hate and ignorance — an ugly place, indeed.
People make bitter, unnecessary comments about something they know little or nothing about and take the opportunity to highlight this to the rest of the world. I’m sure almost all of us have been on the receiving end of this type of harassment. Too often this can also happen at the bus stop, during the ride to school and can continue through the school hallways and onto the play- grounds. Bullying can and has led to many young lives being lost; the most recent was a young girl who moved from Ireland in the fall of 2009 to South Hadley, Mass. Phoebe Prince went home after an entire day of being bullied by her peers and hanged herself. Her body was later discovered by her 12-year-old sister. Now, thanks to advancements in technology, bullying and teenage torment can be taken to
a whole new plane, one created and fostered by social networking sites and the wizardry of cell phones. Students now face cyber-hazing, which eventually led another girl to commit suicide af- ter the mother of one of her classmates decided to trick her by corresponding with her through MySpace as if she was a teenage boy. After the “boy” sent Megan Meier a final message abruptly ending their online friendship because he had heard she was cruel, the 13-year-old girl killed herself. Tis is the ugly side, the side that few want to talk about, but many have experienced. It involves
unnecessary critiques on every aspect of a person, and in many cases it exists at the middle and high school levels. As a parent, I have heard too many stories from my children about kids saying something that hurt their feelings. More recently, I learned that a parent of one the school’s known bullies had joined in on the activity, targeting my son and one of his friends. Tanks to the quick response from the school, that parent has been systematically “suspended” from the campus. Words can have many different effects. In certain instances, they can lift someone’s spirit on a
particularly tough day, while other times, they can kick a person when they are already down. No need to explain which one should be mimicked on a daily basis. n
58 School Transportation News Magazine June 2010
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