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Strange how little attention is given to the perspective of Trevor: 1) he was intense, smarter than his peers (probably a lot), and also physicially superior t
by candiodari 5y ago
Strange how little attention is given to the perspective of Trevor:
1) he was intense, smarter than his peers (probably a lot), and also physicially superior to them. You might think this is good, but think about it for 5 seconds: it's extremely isolating.
2) he got rejected ... and rejected ... and rejected. First, by his classmates and schoolmates ... then
3) the schools responded to this, not by figuring out both sides of the story, but by dumping schools him, despite Trevor obviously putting in extra effort to satisfy everything demanded of him
4) Trevor's skiing is striking: clearly, 99.9% of the time, Trevor was using willpower to satisfy whatever he thought others wanted of him. He must have done this a lot since even in situations where it was beyond obvious nobody suspected this is what he was doing.
5) it is mentioned that both of his parents had similar habits. Both parents were driven, and kind, really trying to help people.
This paints an entirely different picture, doesn't it?
In short confrontations with others, Trevor was irresistibly nice. In longer confrontations (willpower will falter occasionally), nobody likes him (because he is superior to the other children. Not even because he actually is, but because he is intense: he will put real effort into learning a lot of things, from English to skiing, dating to "politics").
And of course, the problem these parents and children have with the suicide ... is how it affects them. That, perhaps, they ... how to put it ... "weren't letting Trevor be Trevor", does not register to anyone at all. That they put him through hell, probably asking more and more of him, until he lost control, then punished him, and then dumped him ... not a second's thought is wasted on that. Everyone is just protecting themselves, and most are simply protecting themselves. He needed to be acknowledged and rewarded for the effort he put in. But these days (not that it was much better before, but it was better), we demand any such effort be hidden and buried deeply (a lot of schools don't even give grades, at all, anymore).
For reasons that I cannot fathom we seem to think this will make people "more equal", when in reality, of course, it rewards being born in a powerful position in society, and focusing on ability rewards putting in effort. Certainly with the current availability of learning materials.
Trevor wasn't depressed at all, I'd bet. I bet he was working on 5 side projects the week he killed himself.
What would have helped? NOT rejecting him. Certainly not throwing him out of school. Instead, provide him with a real challenge. But for the same reason these people can't see what happened (they're completely caught up in their own feelings), they couldn't allow Trevor to, for instance, move up a grade (or two). That, obviously, would have hurt many feelings.
Trevor killed himself because he was rejected by everyone around him because he performed better than them, and because probably his parents and everyone else kept repeating to him that this happened because he still wasn't good enough. Reality is that he cared deeply about people who couldn't give a rat's ass about him, thought his life worth less than satisfying their immediate feeling on the spot, and after the x-thousandth dumping he got blamed for for reasons he couldn't understand, he ended it. He died because he was not average, trying to be better, in a sea of people who cannot deal with even a fleeting moment of impression that someone might be better than them, or that they might need to put in some work to catch up to him.
- pmoriarty 5y ago"nobody likes him (because he is superior to the other children)." No. They didn't like him because he attacked other children. From the article: "He could be charming, generous, and humane. But he could also turn suddenly violent. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. He was shrewd in his manipulations. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors." "He pushed one child down some stairs; the mother asked the school to insure physical distance between the boys in the stairwell. Playing paintball, Trevor sneaked up behind a boy and fired close-range into his helmet; the child developed blurry vision. Another boy came home from school with red marks on his neck; the school told his mother that Trevor had choked him."
- candiodari 5y agoThis means he was always using willpower to be nice to other children. Call it acting. He was good at it, so good people wouldn't realise he was acting for weeks or months. He was not "suddenly violent", he was pestered for days/weeks/maybe even months and eventually lost control. Nobody turns suddenly violent without reason, you've just missed something. This long list of one-sided remarks with no explanation is typical of schools where teacher supervision is totally lacking. Of course they still see the explosion, no matter how bad the supervision. What they miss is the reason. They see how it ends, not the buildup towards it. And, of course, the buildup is the problem, not that a kid eventually loses control. Every kid and adult will eventually lose control, given enough stress. That the kid was able to do so much damage is also an indication that oversight totally failed. Was there no warning sign before that helmet shot? really? Yes, of course there were. Many of them. They just totally missed everything. It isn't that nothing was happening in the class, it's just that shooting another kid in the face is the minimum threshold for getting to a teacher's attention that maybe some supervision is necessary. Then, of course, the teacher demands some extreme punishment and declares "everything went so fast". Everything went "so fast" while this teacher was looking at these kids for hours ... Either their ability to predict social interactions is worse than a dog's (unlikely), or the teacher was playing angry birds for hours at that point. The second factor also explains why the teacher demands extreme punishment: to hide that they're not supervising the kids.