Case study: Jasmine

Jasmine Jones is fourteen years old and has recently moved with her family to a new town. This means that she has had to start a new school which has been difficult. She and her parents have always lived in the UK, her grandparents came to England in the 1960s from Jamaica, and within the school she has just started there are very few children from minority ethnic groups. Jasmine has therefore been subjected to bullying because she is seen as different and this has caused her a great deal of stress. What the other children didn’t know until today is that she also has epilepsy and that although her seizures are generally well controlled stress can trigger them. This lunchtime other girls were calling her names and it got too much for her: she had a tonic-clonic seizure. When she came round from the seizure she could hear other pupils making fun of her and shouting loudly that she had wet herself. She recovered well and then was taken home where she said to her parents that she didn’t want to go back to school ever again. This led to a row as her parents place a high value on education and tell her that she has to go if she is ever going to make anything of herself. They say that they were also teased at school because of their ethnicity and that the only thing to do is to stand up to the bullies. They do, however, concede that her epilepsy is a concern and say that they will talk to the teachers to see if she can be watched during break times in case she has another seizure. They stress that she must tell other people so that they can help her.

• What might be the advantages and disadvantages for Jasmine of telling other pupils about her epilepsy?
• If one of the aims of education is to socialise children and young people into acceptable ways of behaving what might the school’s responsibilities be in relation to bullying?
• What does Jasmine’s story tell us about how society responds to some differences?