If you were a teacher and were brutally beaten to the point of unconsciousness by one of your students who has mental issues, would you forgive them and ensure they don’t serve a long prison stint? Or would you want the book thrown at the student? This is the choice that faced a teacher at Florida’s Matanzas High School this year.
In February, Joan Naydich told then-17-year-old Brendan Depa to put his Nintendo Switch away in class. When he refused, she confiscated the device. In turn, Depa, a 270-pound autistic student, followed her out of class in a full sprint, threw her to the ground, violently attacked her, knocked her unconscious, and brutally beat her to a pulp. The security camera footage shows that even after she is unconscious, he continues savagely punching her, hitting her head and neck, while three women attempt to pull this gigantic student off Naydich with no progress. A male then assists all the while Depa continues kicking Naydich in the head. Ultimately, five people have to work to pull this student off her. Incredibly, she survived this horrific attack and the student is now facing charges.
When I first saw this news story, I couldn’t believe it. What’s more, I couldn’t believe the comments I was reading — comments that qualified the student’s actions by continually mentioning that the student is autistic. These comments were basically saying, “Well, it’s not his fault that he is 270 pounds and brutally beat his teacher to a pulp. He has autism, and everyone knows that if you have autism, it means you really need your Nintendo in school and if a teacher takes it from you, you have to beat that teacher up.”
Any excuses for this student are absolutely absurd. Grown adults could not pull this student off Naydich. Watching the security camera footage of the beating, I legitimately believe that he would have beaten her to death. I believe that’s what he was intending to do and why he didn’t stop. Yet from what the commentary surrounding this incident implied, we are supposed to believe this is just a symptom of autism. However, I know several people who are autistic, two of which are in my family, and I have never — never — seen this side of autism at all. But people will always look for a way to appeal to emotions, no matter the circumstance. “Try to understand what the student is going through,” they will say. “This person came from a broken home, and his whole life is ahead of him.” They will make excuses for anything.
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I’m happy to report this teacher is allowing the book to be thrown at this student. She probably decided this after watching her own beating, seeing as she couldn’t possibly have remembered it since she was knocked out almost instantly. Depa is facing 30 years in prison, and she is refusing to dial back the charges. This is good for a number of reasons, the first of which being that this combats a society that keeps saying we need to simply allow people to commit these sorts of crimes. These days, society doesn’t just stop at allowing crimes, but it also tells us to feel bad for the people who are committing them. I don’t understand this mentality in the least. It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, I say, good for this teacher — because students are apparently acting like inmates. This is the sort of story you would expect in a prison yard full of a bunch of inmates. In prison, you expect fights like this to break out. But in a school?
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It is unfathomable to picture this happening in America 30 years ago, whereas now we see these sorts of instances every day across the country on college campuses and in the public school system. Not surprisingly, this particular school happens to have a history of violence. In fact, the school has been reported as beset with violence in recent years. Just this month, 11 students were arrested after a fight broke out in a crowded hallway. Reports say the fight started around 1:00 and utter chaos ensued. Deputies, staff, students, teachers — everyone was involved. Just a normal, average day of trying to get an education.
The chaos doesn’t end there. In another violent outbreak, a 16-year-old student was arrested for biting a teacher who had tried to stop her from fighting another girl. Bit her. Bit a teacher. So, if you are considering becoming a teacher and wondering what the job entails or if you have already started heading in the direction of that career path, you see what you have to look forward to. While you might think you will just tell a student to go to the principal’s office, you apparently have another thing coming. You probably didn’t think you would have to defend yourself so you aren’t beaten by a 270-pound student or bitten by a girl who just wants to fight, but this is what you’ll be in for. Again, this is what you expect to hear about happening in prisons, but now, it’s happening all across America.
These are serious issues — students beating teachers, vicious fights in classrooms, arrests at schools — but they are starting way before high school. They’re bigger than high school. These are societal problems. Obviously, this cannot all be fixed with one simple solution; however, we as Americans must start somewhere because when you realize you have moved further from where you want to be, you must recalibrate. You must turn around to get back on the right road. We want to right the ship; we need to right the ship. We have to return to instilling values in our society, the values that society seems to continually be waging war against. We see it in our entertainment industry, all the way down to our children’s entertainment industry. There is an even greater need, now more than ever, to protect wholesome, family values. We have let these values go, and the public school system is evidence of what that looks like when a society does not instill traditional values in children.
That is why The Daily Wire provided a solution and launched Bentkey, a streaming platform for kids content, which my son has been watching — and we have all been watching “Chip Chilla” as a family already. The app is full of high-quality content for kids, and the whole endeavor is one of the things that makes me so proud to work with The Daily Wire. We are trying to change culture, not just complain about it. That’s why we all talk about these issues — issues like the ones plaguing America’s public school system.
We bring attention to the lack of good values and how American principles continue to plummet, but our ultimate goal is to initiate and provide solutions to these issues. And we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.