BY ERIC ZORN | E-mail | About | RSS

« Adjectives wanted: Name the porn shop | Main | Teen smokers should worry about fines »

Monday, June 30, 2008

Bully for the school!

At first blush there's something very what's-the-world-coming-to? about this Associated Press story today out of  Sweden:

A school has confiscated an 8-year-old boy's birthday party invitations after they were handed out during class because it said it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

The boy handed out invitations to classmates at his school in Lund, southern Sweden, but did not invite two boys because they were not his friends.

The school, 360 miles south of Stockholm, confiscated all the invitations, saying it objected because it had a duty to ensure against discrimination.

Confiscating kids' birthday party invitations? Administrative oversight of guest lists? Can anyone justify that?

Well, yeah.

The rule for school birthday party invitations, unwritten everywhere but, apparently, Sweden, is that if you're not going to invite everyone in the class, it's rude and insensitive to distribute invitations in school.

Yes, I know, feeling left out is part of life, but we all get enough of that as it is. And teaching children sensitivity in such matters is important.

The [boy's] father told the newspaper that the two classmates were not invited because one had bullied his son and the other had not invited his son to the classmate's birthday party.

Fair enough. Don't invite them. But don't rub their noses in it.

"My son has taken it very hard," the father told {a reporter in reference to] the school's decision. "It's like taking someone's mail."

The lad should consider it a small price to pay for a lesson in good manners.



I smell an Illinois law brewing! Where is John Fritchey when you need him? Time to put that unwritten law into writing and ride it to re-election.

I think confiscation of the invitations goes a bit far, but I would agree that the parents behaved badly in this situation. In my neighborhood, the norm is that the only time invitations are passed out at school is when the entire class is invited. Otherwise, we use the mail or drop off invitations at friends' houses. If the informal policy around here is formalized at the Swedish school, then I don't have any complaints. Besides, confiscating invitations isn't a big deal. No one was suspended, nothing goes on the "permanent record" and the school made a point that the policy is taken seriously.

ZORN REPLY -- I'd hope they returned the invitations at a later date. Maybe my bosses will send me to Sweden to find out.

What a ridiculous rule.

So the invitations can't be handed out at school.

Those two boys will find out they're not invited when the party happens and... they're not invited. Kids DO talk you know.

How long before all personal parties are banned unless the whole class is invited?

No one. No one has a right to complain. Parents have given their parental duties over to the school system. We teach social skills, sex education, and wide variety of additional skills children used to learn from their parents at home. You are working two jobs to pay for the big house, or you are working two jobs just to survive, depending on your circumstances. WE are taking care of your children, as you have asked us to do. No one has the right to complain. You gave it up to the schools.

Unfortunately, I see the events this way:
Week 1: Bully beats up (physically or with words) kid #2. Laughs about it all the time.
Week 2: Kid #2 hands out invitations, details all the cool things that will happen at the party.
Bully comes up and demands his invitation.
Kid #2 replies, your a bully, and not invited to my party.
Bully: Wah waah waah, Teacher, he is mean and not inviting me to the party.
Teacher confiscates all the invitations, and makes kid #2 look like the bad guy.

Score one for a bully who knows how to win even when he loses.

I'll admit to having the "what is the world coming to" reaction before I thought about it a little bit more. I'm against government intrusion in just about every area of life but I think that schools should have wide latitude to regulate the conduct of 8 year olds especially when the parents won't (I'm assuming this school is public but I think the latitude should be even wider in private schools). I would hope that in situations like this, the school would contact the boy's parents and let them confiscate (or somehow void) the invitations and give the boy an earful. That seems to me the proper balance between school and parental discipline in this case. If the parents won't do it, however, I don't think I have a problem with the school taking matters into its own hands. Children in school shouldn't have the same property rights as ordinary people especially when the property in question is potentially disruptive. So there you have it: a staunch conservative/libertarian supporting a school district's policy of regulating private invitations (in socialist Sweden of all places).

What if the two kids who didn't get invited were werewolves? Do you have a duty to not discriminate against werewolves, or is it a wise move to not invite them to your birthday party so you don't get eaten? I just hear southern Sweden has werewolf problems, and, you know, better safe than sorry.

ZORN REPLY -- You are correct that I have totally overlooked, disregarded and even obfuscated for my own sinister purposes the ever-present werewolf problem. And this changes everything.

Good for the school! Someone needs to teach children to behave like civilized people, and since the parents aren't doing it, the schools must. When would it ever be okay to invite all but two of any group, right in front of everyone? Never! The parents should be embarrassed.

I don't like this. Something tells me the wrong lesson was taught here, especially if there was a bully involved.

The parents are to blame here. I would have never been allowed to invite all but 2 classmates to a birthday party, my parents would have insisted the entire class was invited at that point. Doesn't Sweden have a postal system? Send the invites in the mail.

How is this rubbing their noses in it? This is a golden opportunity for the bully to learn and modify his behavior. As for the other child, he didn't invite the boy to his party and now knows how it feels.

This unofficial rule has been around as long as I can remember. It seems to me to be the most relevant in the lower grades, i.e.; kindergarten through 3rd grade, after that it becomes kind of silly, as kids by then have pretty much become inured to non-inclusion by their non-friends. The saddest part about it all is that we have devolved to the point where any issue, no matter how small and non-newsworthy, is politicized and blown way out of proportion in our wonderful 24x7 sensationalistic "news" culture.

In general, I agree with the invite everyone or don't pass out invitations at school rule, but in this case I see an exception. The two who were excluded were excluded for specific reasons that had to do with how they treated the boy with the invitations. It's not like they were excluded because they were ugly or unpopular or something. I think this would have been a good lesson for them on the impact of their behavior on others and the consequences for themselves.

Is the rule actually "unwritten" most places?
Heck, I remember the no-invites-at-school rule explicitly written in the school policies and enforced when I was a kid, and I'm in my 30s.

Question: How big is this school?
When I think of my school days as an 8 year old, I would have had to invite over 300 kids in the third grade over dere by Vis on Peoria Street. I don't think Mom would have stood for that.
If the class is ten kids or so, he should have invited everybody and maybe mended some fences, made new friends out of enemies, created a grand learning experience and all would be well with the world.
Or no?
I wonder what Max von Sydow thinks of this. He's from Lund. Why don't you call him, perfesser?

I'm shocked that this wasn't all handled via text messaging. These kids today!

EZ -

My daughter was a 2nd grader at a school in which there were very few girls (18 out of 60 in the 2nd grade), and the girls who were in her class were very cliquey. (My daughter was not in the clique.) At the end of school one day, a mother and her friend pulled up into the school pick-up line in decorated SUVs announcing the birthday of a girl who had not invited my daughter. All but 3 of the 18 second grade girls were then whisked away - amid a loud hullaballoo - for an afternoon party at a mall at which the girls were "tarted up" (make-up, temporary hair extensions, etc.) as aprt of a "princess" party. Most - if not all - of the girls who attended the party arrived at school the next day still adorned in their resplendent glory.

Can you imagine the way my 7 yr old daughter and her 2 uninvited compatriots felt about being so publicly excluded in this way? The cruelty (intentional or otherwise) of the mother/girl who excluded my daughter was wholly unnecessary.

By the way, my daughter is so far from being a bully as can be imagined - she was not excluded for anything that she had done to the birthday girl.

Additionally, what really takes the cake is that this occurred at a Catholic school. Go figure.

Perhaps you do not remember an incident when your sister and one other girl in her fourth grade class were not invited to a birthday party when all other girls in the class were invited. The Birthday Girl approached the two girls who were not invited and apologized that they could only invite a given number (I forget how many were in the class) and there just wasn't enough room for the two who were not invited. Well, your favorite 4th grade teacher who became a good friend of mine, took the matter into her own hands and contacted the mother of the Birthday Girl, pointing out that such invitations should not be distributed at school and furthermore, the family could afford the postage to mail said invitations. In the future there would be no invitations to parties distributed at school. To her credit, there were no more invitations distributed at school.
As always, Veltajean Olson was aware of what was going on in class and during recess. She handled any problems that arose with the well being of all her students in mind. She was always fair and intelligent in her interactions with students and parents. As you noted in one of your columns several years ago, "And Mrs. Olson was never wrong." P.S. I visited her last week at the retirement center. She is still an amazing woman. As always, she sends her best regards.
Your Mother.

ZORN REPLY -- Thanks, Mom. I'd forgotten that totally. But I'll never forget Mrs. Olson.

I have mixed feelings about this. In my mind, it would depend on where he distributed the invitations. If it was in the classroom, it was inappropriate. If it was in the lunchroom or hallway, it's another matter. Was it done before or during class? If it was done outside of classtime, then I think the school is wrong. I know of numerous cases where parents/children have had slumber parties and only invited part of the class. The invitations were passed out on the playground before school or after school.
The other side of it is that I know of classrooms where students passed out Valentine Day cards and some students didn't get any. It was especially bad when a student who was disabled or just a nerd didn't get any because he wasn't popular (remember Charlie Brown). In this case, it appears to be founded on facts (bullying and previous exclusion).
Often parents can not get addresses of classmates of their children so without passing invitations out at school, they have no way of inviting the friends.
In addition, as a previous writer said, the boys are going to find out anyway. The school could use it as a chance to give both sides a chance to explore feelings.

Assuming the invites were given back after class or after school, I basically support this move. On some level, from the school's perspective, it's the corrective measure that's relevant: they get to send the message that life may not be fair, and not everyone is going to like you or be your friend, but *this classroom* is a refuge from that sort of thing. Which is a rather positive message, and pretty much the right thing to be saying. Sure the kids'll go play in the alley and find out who is and isn't invited, and they'll gossip, and do all that not-always-very-nice stuff; but at least when you're in class (and maybe on the playground too, though that's harder to ensure) you're in a safe zone.

That the 1 of the excluded children was a bully and the other had excluded the boy featured in the article is irrelevant. They are separate issues that should be handled with all the children involved and their parents not by this boy (and parents if they condoned his actions) and his invitations. If this is the schools policy it should be the policy whether the the excluded child is a bully, poorly mannered, socially awkward, considered unattractive or any other reason that children find to ostracize each other. The policy seems to be as much about inclusion and good manners as it is teaching children to not be petty and vengeful, all of which should be taught by parents.

Typical politically correct feel-good nonsense. The sooner children learn that popularity is a very fickle and superficial commodity the better off they'll be. Unfortunately, schools like to enforce their own concept of the proper social pecking order - and it isn't as egalitarian as this article makes out. Yes, it hurts to be in the "out" group, but you're never going to be able to do away with cliques or mandate popularity. Believe me, the temptation to force the "clique" members to associate with the mere mortals is oh so tempting - yes, by all means mandate that every cheerleader and pompon girl HAS to go out on dates with nonathletic nerds and goths in order to fulfill a "social service" requirement. Don't you see the slippery slope here?

Speaking as an "outie" (chubby non-athletic asthmatic kid with thick glass with big black frames - how many negative strikes is that) - yes it hurts - bu it also serves as a marvelous inspiration to resolve to do something with your life. It's been a half century since those days - and every school reunion establishes that so many of those "popular" types never amounted to a hill of beans - while us "outies" and socially awkward types ended up as the doctors, lawyers, professors, engineers, entrepreneurs - you know, the people who did something with their lives. What goes around comes around - it sometimes takes a little longer than we like but it does happen.

It IS a written rule in many schools. No handing out invitations AT SCHOOL unless you invite everyone.

Government is not controlling who kids invite, just saying don't do it in our place unless you abide by our rules.

Even taking the invites away is okay in my book so long as the rule was known up front.

It's simple enough to mail or deliver outside of school.Why did this kid think he had a "right" to bring the invitations to school?

Since when is basic respect and good manners "feel good nonsense"?? The sooner people can learn to treat each other well despite differences (political views, religions, and school bullies), the sooner we can solve many huge issues.

This would have been a great opportunity for that kid to "be the bigger person" and invite those kids...perhaps avoiding future bullying. Short of that--I can understand why that would be hard--at least don't propagate bad behavior.

Why defend it?

In 2nd grade many years ago I was allowed to pass out party invitations to all the GIRLS in my class. (Back in those days kids' birthday parties were strictly same-sex affairs.) Also, the rule at my grade school was that every student was to give every classmate (and the homeroom teacher) a card on Valentine's Day. Don't know if those practices are still in effect.

ZORN REPLY -- A single-gender all-inclusive invitation seems in bounds to me....readers?

I agree--absolutely acceptable to pass out invites if all of a gender is invited, as frequently happens in lower grades.

I believe most schools practice the Valentine to every student rule, carrying it one step farther--no names on the envelopes so each kid has the same chance of receiving any given card. Yay for manners!!!

Oh yes, inviting every boy OR every girl is deemed accpetable and not rude to the other gender. That's because no one is hurt when they know "Oh he only the invited the boys" or vice versa. No one feels a personal slight.

And I agree with the poster who said that although social slights are part of the "real world" there is no reason why school can't be a place that is "officially" free from these slights.

OK, all. Mel and several others have it right.

Let's be honest - kids face enough negatives in this world and I expect even more in the future. What's so wrong about teaching a kid to be considerate and mindful of others IN PUBLIC?

If the father (I really think he's driving here) needed to single out certain other children, it should have been done privately and not in a public forum.

Mail invitations personally through a postal service.

What's wrong with manners?

I don't think the Soviet Union even went this far. When you start legislating for manners you are in real trouble. Children will get their feelings hurt when growing up, and with good parenting will learn how to deal with it. That is how one matures.
If you have to walk over a field of nettles you don't cover the field in leather, you put on a pair of shoes.

You mean passing out party invitations isn't what that mandatory minute of silence was for?

I agree with the school's policy. If everyone in the class isn't invited, then party invitations should not be handed out at school. As a children's author, I do a lot of school visits and the students and I frequently end up talking about issues such as this where students' feelings are hurt unintentionally (or intentionally as the case may be) and such experiences can leave lasting psychological scars.

The comments to this entry are closed.

More about Eric Zorn


•  The Tweet of the Week 2015 Compendium
•  Transition time
•  Open Thread: The Weeks In Review
•  Fine lines final four
•  Two takes on medical tokes
•  Missed it by that much
•  16 is the new 21
•  Fine lines


• `The Office'
• American Idol
• Anthony Porter Case
• Blago trial
• Books
• Chicken!
• Commenters
• Common Sense Caucus
• Current Affairs
• Film
• Fine Expressions
• Fine Shots
• Food and Drink
• Friday Night Lights
• Grey's Anatomy
• How Long Does it Take?
• Jessica Reynolds
• Mad Men
• Megan Crepeau
• Month in Review
• Obama
• Peterson case
• Predictions
• Prickly Pair Podcasts
• Race to the Slop
• Religion
• Rhubarb Patch
• Rules for commenting
• Somebody Nobody Asked
• Speaking of Sports
• Spit takes
• Sports
• Television
• The Killing
• This I No Longer Believe
• Trayvon Martin case
• Video Commentaries
• Webliographies
• Weeks in Review
• YaGotta

December 2015 posts
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Browse archives

Chicago Tribune Media Group