Saturday 28 July 2012

‘Turning The Other Cheek’ Just Gets You Another Slap…

Kieran Heakin, 60, was grabbed around the throat after being confronted in his study by the father who had gone to the school to claim his son was being bullied by fellow pupils.
As another teacher tried to intervene, the father also tried to 'knee' and headbutt Mr Heakin, shouting: 'Now I am really going to hurt you'
Mr Heakin, headmaster of St John the Baptist Roman Catholic school in Burnley, Lancashire, was left sore and bruised after the distressing incident and the father, 45, was subsequently arrested.
The attacker, incredibly enough, can’t be named. To ‘protect his child’.
The dad was found guilty of two counts of assault at Burnley magistrates' court yesterday and was given 16 weeks in prison, suspended for a year, with 12 months' supervision and a 12-week 7pm to 7am curfew.
He was also ordered to pay £100 compensation and £200 costs.
You’d expect Mr Heakin to be at boiling point. You’d be wrong.
He said: 'We are just like NHS staff on a Saturday night where people come into a hospital accident and emergency department and do not have any respect for those people who are trying to help.
'Teaching today is very different to what it used to be like. You have to be really on top of your game and each day you just do not know what is going to happen that day and it could be that a trivial incident turns into a major incident.
'Parents are going through hard times to (sic)and there are a lot more broken families and children today can sometimes suffer and these days are brought up having their tea in front of the TV.
'I have forgiven this person but you do get the small minority of parents who have no respect for anybody.
I… What?

You’ve forgiven him? For assaulting you in your office?
'Other teachers and heads can get depressed about it and when speaking to fellow head teachers I have found that they can get very irate and not want to carry on with the profession.
'But I see it as a character building experience and life is full of experiences.'
You know….now I want to headbutt and punch him!

H/T: Macheath via email

12 comments:

DJ said...

Yep, sometimes that whole 'mugged by reality' thing takes more than one dose.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to decode the whole 'tea in front of the TV' thing. Is this the latest Guardianista code word for the unenlightened masses?

Dr Cromarty said...

Alas, muscular Christianity seems to be disappearing. I was taught by men who'd served in the army and would have kicked the living bejasus out of scum like this 'parent'

UK Fred said...

The head was right to forgive. That act by the head was necessary to stop hiim being burned up with anger and bitterness, In fact, failure to forgive may be why many are suffering from depression.

Forgiving does nt mean saying/thinking "The incident does not matter" It means saying and thinking "That was a serious incident, but I am not going to let it change me and pursue you for vengeance for the rest of my life"

What the head needs to do is ensure that he does not forget and takes the precautions necessary to ensure that it does not happen again.

Anonymous said...

This idiotic wimp is in this situation because he also forgave the kids that bullied the man's son and let them get on with it because beneath that caring veneer, zero fucks are given as long as the pension is accumulated.

Kudos to the father who sorted him out, if there were more caring parents like him, we'd see a lot less bullying in schools.

Greencoat said...

Anonymous, mate, you're missing the point.

The Head is a Roman Catholic. It's his duty to forgive those who wrong him, as Jesus Christ instructed.

The important point is that his forgiveness concerns suffering that he personally underwent.

He's not like the Lefties, who grandly forgive thugs for what they've done to other people.

Furor Teutonicus said...

"Forgive" my arse. Scum with that kind of attitude NEED a good kicking. And if that was this ball bags attitude to the one that had "bullied" his son, then I am surprised and dissapontaed that the Father let it off so lightly.

Anonymous said...

Greencoat, there is very little difference nowadays between the church and leftism, and most churches, no matter what the flavor is have been taken over by lefty priests.

Case as I see it is that the headmaster had a child under his care that was bullied serially, it kept happening due to him being ineffective in his job and he managed to antagonise the concerned parent of the tortured child into giving him a beating as a last resort.

It's nothing other than what this headmaster thought was a reasonable experience to inflict on the student who he kept letting down, so I don't see a problem with getting bullied into stopping the bullying by proxy, even if it only was a fraction of what bullied kids trivially suffer.

Anonymous said...

Laughed my head off to find out that MY OLD HISTORY TEACHER is now Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of OFSTED. "Things were worse in Peckham in the 1970s" he tells us. Yes like a punch in the face for not standing to attention quickly enough. Hard man with 11 year old boys huh Mikey?

Anonymous said...

"You’ve forgiven him?"

It's what we're supposed to do.

I remember from my time as a governor that we'd sometimes take on hard case or damaged kids that no other school would touch. I do think that you have to be careful that by doing that, you don't just end up damaging the decent kids instead. I remember one (rightly) furious mother, whose daughter (8?9?) had brought home an interesting new vocabulary and some new concepts, courtesy of such a child.

JuliaM said...

"Meanwhile, I'm trying to decode the whole 'tea in front of the TV' thing. Is this the latest Guardianista code word for the unenlightened masses?"

Gawd knows! I'm assuming it's referring to uncouth families not sitting around a dinner table together but.... *shrugs* ... who knows?

"Alas, muscular Christianity seems to be disappearing."

Well, quite! I don't think much of its replacement.

"The head was right to forgive. "

Maybe, maybe not. Could have done without the oblique snipe at all those lesser beings that don't measure up to his personal standard, though?

JuliaM said...

"..beneath that caring veneer, zero fucks are given as long as the pension is accumulated."

I suspect there's a fair bit of that, yes.

"He's not like the Lefties, who grandly forgive thugs for what they've done to other people."

But maybe anon has a point? Maybe its his similar forgiveness of the bullies that's helped here?

"..and he managed to antagonise the concerned parent of the tortured child into giving him a beating as a last resort."

Of course, if that's the case, one wonders why he didn't address the cause of his misery directly. Perhaps the bully's father is a tougher prospect?

Anonymous said...

Oh, right on queue to prove my point...:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2180317/Boy-11-Aspergers-spends-days-hospital-viciously-kicked-punched-gang-school-bullies.html