Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2006 9:09:37 GMT -5
I don't buy the fact that Mal was chased out of the sms because a bunch of kids called her 'spaz girl'.
Wouldn't the Bsc have bulldozed the teasing instantly?
Afterall, 'spaz girl' was apparently started by Cokie Mason. There is no way the Bsc wouldn't have been able to handle this problem... Nor would they have let it get so out of hand. Nor would they allow the perpetrators get away with bullying Mal.
I haven't read the book (s) where Mal is getting bullied. (In london, we only got up to 'stacey and the maths whizz'.) I figured that as this is Bsc land, everything would work out fine in the end with no one being chased away.
|
|
macca
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,084
|
Post by macca on Apr 4, 2006 18:40:14 GMT -5
I never read any of the books dealing with Mal being bullied, although they sound very interesting... I always found it strange that no BSC book ever seriously dealt with such a major adolescent issue. Maybe Mal was ashamed or humiliated about the teasing she endured and therefore didn't feel comfortable sharing it with her friends? And Jessi would've been too busy scanning any mean comments for racism against herself to worry about how it was affecting Mallory Why was Mal called spaz girl, anyway?
|
|
|
Post by sotypical42483 on Apr 5, 2006 16:20:27 GMT -5
Wasn't she called Spaz Girl cause she was nervous when writing on the blackboard and broke her chalk? lol. Poor Mallory
|
|
macca
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,084
|
Post by macca on Apr 5, 2006 18:31:38 GMT -5
^ that's all? Mallory was driven out of SMS for that?! I don't condone bullying at ALL, but come on.
|
|
macca
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,084
|
Post by macca on Apr 5, 2006 19:13:19 GMT -5
If Mallory was the kind of kid that was likely to get bullied, sending her to boarding school, away from a close-knit, supportive family was probably a bad move.
|
|
|
Post by hitzpink on Apr 6, 2006 19:15:36 GMT -5
If Mallory was the kind of kid that was likely to get bullied, sending her to boarding school, away from a close-knit, supportive family was probably a bad move. I agree. Plus, she had a bunch of built-in friends with the BSC. And most of them were 2 years older than her! That's gotta help up the cool-quotient at school a little bit. Or at least make the bullying more bearable.
|
|
macca
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,084
|
Post by macca on Apr 6, 2006 21:19:29 GMT -5
^ Plus she also had her "sort of" boyfriend Ben Hobart!
|
|
Amalia
Sitting For The Braddocks
Her Original Point of View
Posts: 3,664
|
Post by Amalia on Apr 8, 2006 19:30:22 GMT -5
Why was Mal called spaz girl, anyway? I think it started in Kristy in Charge, where 8th graders got to be student-teachers for a day, and Mal became one for English. The 8th graders were mad that a 6th grader was their student-teacher, and so they were rowdy. She kept on messing up while teaching and they called her spaz-girl for that. Kristy and MA were in that class and couldn't stop the harassment. I think that's it, but I dunno.
|
|
ktag
Junior Sitter
Posts: 694
|
Post by ktag on Apr 8, 2006 19:42:08 GMT -5
Why was she teaching 8th grade? That's just asking for trouble. And was she really that far ahead of everyone that she could teach material 2 years ahead of her? Also, if it was only for a day, what's the big deal? It didn't seem like there was much interaction between the grades. Did they hunt her down in the halls and follow her around calling her spaz girl?
|
|
Amalia
Sitting For The Braddocks
Her Original Point of View
Posts: 3,664
|
Post by Amalia on Apr 8, 2006 20:01:34 GMT -5
^ I don't really know why she was picked to teach 8th grade but she was just as shocked and confused (her friends also) as we are. O oops, it was for like a week or something. In later books, they would send her notes, write on her locker, etc. I think they would pass her and say it or something. Anyways, I always thought that she and Jessi had some wit. I mean, in Summer Vacation, they handled those "racist" cabin-mates pretty well, dispensing the insults by ridiculing the logic and value of the insults.
|
|
|
Post by sotypical42483 on Apr 10, 2006 16:12:04 GMT -5
That is insane! I haven't read these later Mallory books, but I am looking forward to them. I can't believe the other kids would actually TORMENT her like that. And if Kristy was in the class Mallory was teaching, how on earth was she not able to stop the teasing? Did she try and fail? That is odd that they'd have Mal teaching an 8th grade class, wouldn't they be learning things she hasn't covered yet? lol. Weird!
|
|
jen
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,156
|
Post by jen on Apr 12, 2006 6:54:22 GMT -5
Yeah, the bullying started in "Kristy in Charge". For some absurd reason, the TOT co-ordinators gave her an 8th grade class, and even the all-mighty Kristy isn't enough to stop an entire class full of people who wanted to be mean to Mallory. In "Stacey McGill... Matchmaker?", you see a bit more of Mallory being bullied (there's abook between those two, which I don't have, where I assume the plot developed further). And then in "Mary Anne in the Middle", Mallory gets sick of it and decides to apply to boarding school. The books do try and show you how miserable Mallory is getting, and it really *was* miserable. But it did seem a bit strange that she couldn't find a way to get over it... Wouldn't the school get bored of calling her Spaz Girl?
|
|
|
Post by sotypical42483 on Apr 12, 2006 16:29:13 GMT -5
Ahh thanks for the info ^^^ I haven't gotten to any of the later books yet. I had no idea the issue spanned over more than one. I thought it all happened in one book. Thanks! I'm looking forward to reading those!
|
|
macca
Sitting For The Newtons
Posts: 2,084
|
Post by macca on Apr 12, 2006 17:09:08 GMT -5
Mallory gets sick of it and decides to apply to boarding school. The books do try and show you how miserable Mallory is getting, and it really *was* miserable. But it did seem a bit strange that she couldn't find a way to get over it... Wouldn't the school get bored of calling her Spaz Girl? I feel for Mallory, as bullying truly is horrendous IMO - and knowing kids of that age, they're often rotten little bastards sorely in need of lives and it's not too far-fetched that the Spaz-Girl thing would continue for months or that Mallory would continue to be bullied for any number of reasons. I believe Mallory's parents were right to take her out of SMS - if my daughter was being tormented and ridiculed on a daily basis and the teachers etc seemed to condone such behavior, as a parent I would feel irresponsible if I continued subjecting my child to that situation. But sending her to boarding school is not the answer. Unfortunately, some kids are just prone to being bullied and if that's the case with Mallory, she's not going to be any happier in a 24/7 school environment with not even family to support her.
|
|
jen
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,156
|
Post by jen on Apr 13, 2006 0:08:21 GMT -5
She wasn't prone to bullying, though. It was just that one incident that sparked it (The TOT program). You don't really see any bullying before that - Mallory loved school. After Spaz Girl started, she hated school and didn't do as well. As for boarding school, I think it was the right choice. I suppose it was a bit of agamble, because she might have hated it as much as SMS, but at least at a new school, she would've started with a clean slate and no Spaz Girl stigma. She did do quite a bit of research before deciding on the boarding school, and it wasn't just a "I hate SMS, so I'll just pack up and leave Stoneybrook forever" kind of thing. And Riverbend does seem suited to Mallory.
|
|