Our kids are in trouble

This is doubly horrific because its my old college and because the principal is a good friend's uncle. Lynfield girls' brawl on YouTube but there is something else going on here

Mt Roskill Grammar School yesterday suspended five of its students after an attack on a 14-year-old boy at Lynfield on Monday.

The students who, with three others are being dealt with by police, entered the school while the victim was in class and allegedly started beating him in front of his classmates and teacher.

The five were to appear before the school's board of trustees next week, said principal Greg Watson.

He said the board would decide if the boys would be excluded or allowed back to school under certain conditions. Police have said the group will not face criminal charges.

Lynfield on Wednesday suspended one of its own students, who led the group to their target.

The incident was one of three attacks at secondary schools this week.

Police are investigating an incident in Porirua in which about 20 boys, believed to be from Mana College, went to Bishop Viard College and threatened students on the rugby field. They were believed to be armed with a baseball bat.

And a Thai home stay student was beaten up on a bus in Christchurch by fellow Avonside Girls High School students.

Our kids are in trouble everywhere. The other day a boy was kicked to death in a NSW school, a couple of British kids have been stopped from a Columbine massacre plan of their own, there is regular, low level violence being perpetrated in schools everywhere, all the time and its breaking out into a higher level of public violence.

The kids are the canaries, this is systemic. They are filling up on their families' anxiety, fear and frustration, increasingly expressed in violence, intenralising it and then acting it out in their own environment.

Until we start dealing honestly and effectively with the catastrophes that adults are rolling out, expect more of this.