[Nehkara]

No heroes allowed: Calgary student, 13, reprimanded for defending his classmate against a knife-wielding bully

Briar MacLean was sitting in class during a study period Tuesday, the teacher was on the other side of the room and, as Grade 7 bullies are wont to do, one kid started harassing another.

“I was in between two desks and he was poking and prodding the guy,” Briar, 13, said at the kitchen table of his Calgary home Friday.

“He put him in a headlock, and I saw that.”

He added he didn’t see the knife, but “I heard the flick, and I heard them say there was a knife.”

The rest was just instinct. Briar stepped up to defend his classmate, pushing the knife-wielding bully away.

Ms. O’Donnell [Briar's Mother] was politely informed the school did not “condone heroics,” she said. Instead, Briar should have found a teacher to handle the situation.

“I asked: ‘In the time it would have taken him to go get a teacher, could that kid’s throat have been slit?’ She said yes, but that’s beside the point. That we ‘don’t condone heroics in this school.’ ”

I am a former student of SJAM and I am rather concerned that this is the stance they would take.


This is the letter the school distributed to parents afterwards.