While perhaps an extreme reaction to challenging circumstances, it's no stretch to assume that many families in our country are facing similar if not identical challenges. Certainly many of them have also considered all means possible to alleviate the burden.
Too many schools are set up to process children through the assembly line. In that regard, young Ben is too often just a folder on a desk. Then on another desk. Then on another desk. Then a "family that has to be met with." The bureaucratic pressures to move kids along, quantify their growth, or cut them loose are enormous.
Marginalization or bullying exists where those in power accept it as part of the status quo. Was the system serving Ben or just hosting him:
"He used to say, 'Mom and Dad, I don't want to go to school. I don't want to deal with those people. They're mean to me and they hurt me,'" recalled Jamie Barnhard, Ben's father and Jensvold's ex-husband. "It broke both of our hearts."Here, now, young Ben, marginalized by his peers at age 13, has his life extinguished.
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