Teen Suicide

The talk-show story of the year: Nine arrests after a teen’s suicide .

This strikes me as a dangerous precedent. The psychology of a suicide often includes a feeling of “I’ll make them all pay.” The thought that you could have your persecutors arrested by killing yourself—wouldn’t that encourage you to do it?

Bullying in school is a bad thing, and the failure of these teachers and parents to be involved is jaw-dropping. But if ever there were a case for manners and morals, rather than law, this is surely it. And is the criminal-justice system the only device we have left for manners and morals?

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

The Classroom Heals the Wounds of Generations

Peter J. Leithart

“Hope,” wrote the German-American polymath Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “is the deity of youth.” Wholly dependent on adults, children…

Still Life, Still Sacred

Andreas Lombard

Renaissance painters would use life-sized wooden dolls called manichini to study how drapery folds on the human…

Letters

I am writing not to address any particular article, but rather to register my concern about the…