we don't need no education

I'm sitting in the salle de professeurs yesterday, checking email etc, during break. All the teachers are there, talking and laughing together about something. I don't usually pay any attention.
Break ends and they all leave, and I hear the door slam shut. I turn around to see one of the English professors I work with, Michele; she's my favorite, young and friendly. We get along great. But right now she looks furious.
"Michele, ça va?" I ask her.
"Do you know what just happened here?!" she demands. All the professors were discussing a particular student, she explains. He's slow, and a little out of it. His behavior is often erratic and bizarre. The other kids bully him. Apparently his behavior today was stranger than usual, they were all laughing about it.
"They were making fun of him," she fumes. "Everybody knows his dad beats him, and they're laughing at him. I'm so sick of this place. They're all like a pack of dogs, hunting."
Florian must have got hit harder than normal today, he was so out of it. M. Lerouge, the principal, commented on how big his father's hands are. Florian lives all alone with his dad, and according to M. Lerouge, men just aren't as patient as women. But a little discipline never hurt anyone.
There's nothing Michele can do; she's not Florian's teacher, she doesn't see him everyday, she doesn't think Social Services would listen to her. She's tried talking to the assistant principal and got nowhere. M. Lerouge, obviously, is useless.
"There must be a hotline or something you could call for advice," I said.
Another teacher joins the conversation. There's nothing we can do, he says. We must wait.
"Wait? Wait for what?? Wait for his dad to kill him? He already has bruises!" Michele sputters.
But it's quarter-after now, she has an appointment, and I have to catch the bus.

I'm no longer surprised that the number one cause of death for European women is domestic violence.

This morning I set the homepages of all the computers at school to the helpline section of the Children's Rights webpage.

names not changed to protect the guilty.