Jackson

For more than forty years I’ve papered over what happened to me in 7th and 8th grade at Jackson Middle School in South Bend, Indiana. I called it bullying, or said it was one of those unpleasant rites of passage that boys go through. That description wasn’t true. What happened at Jackson was something else: a school where violence against certain students was routine and the adults chose not to stop it. I was one of the students who paid the price for that failure. I’m not papering it over anymore. This is the story as I remember it. Before Jackson, I attended Monroe Elementary School. I administer the alumni Facebook group for Monroe, and what strikes me is that across generations we remember it much the same way: a remarkable place, full of teachers and staff who cared deeply about the children in their charge. James Monroe School It wasn’t perfect. No school is. One boy bullied me a little in the third grade. In sixth grade a few boys heading toward troubled lives took some of…