Last week, I wrote this diary on bullying. It made the Rec List, and most of the commenters were supportive and shared their own stories of dealing with bullying. There were threads that left me a tad uncomfortable, and I waited a week before responding because I needed to think about my response, and also because I was in Dental Hell again and was fighting with allergies (this is a terrible allergy season down here in GA).
The first thread I want to deal with is the one that began with stating that getting the school involved (there were others who agreed) was a bad idea and 0the kid should just fight back—but that wasn’t what made me feel queasy. This did.
This isn't going to be a popular statement, but kids and society can be cruel. Unfortunately there is a price to be paid for being "too different". Is it fair? No it's not, and I admit that. But kids who choose to wear really weird clothes, dress in black, have really long bizarre hair, or who have strange nose piercings are setting themselves up to to bullied.
I guess I should be grateful that the person who wrote this admits that it’s not right to treat people who are different badly. My problem is the acceptance that because this goes on, kids should conform or accept the price—that somehow they nerd to learn that there is a price. What bothers me is the idea that if everyone just conformed, there’d be no bullying—which, from my own experience, is horse hockey.
The bullying I suffered was at a Catholic school where we all wore the same damned uniform. My crime was being new and having a slight (VERY slight) Southern accent. My real offense was getting slightly better grades than the class leader Mean Girl. I wasn’t arrogant. I didn’t brag. But when honor roll grades were pointed and I beat her by something like.2 of a point, that’s when it began.
I will agree that society isn’t fair when it comes to difference. But that doesn’t make it right, and that doesn’t make it something we should accept—and neither should the school. We are a diverse society, and, theoretically, schools are supposed to teach tolerance and respect for others, including those who don’t conform. Their difference—whether in dress or interests or sexual preference or gender identity—is not an excuse for bullying, and teachers and administrators should make the damned clear to the students. Unfortunately, many teachers share the prejudice of the students, and look the other way—and sometimes students kill themselves over it.
I wrote about Tempest Smith in this diary. She was a Wiccan Goth who was bullied to death by her charming fellow students who used to encircle her and sing Christian hymns at her. Teachers claimed they had no clue what was going on—but I strongly suspect they lied through their teeth. I was a teacher at a junior high, and I am pretty damned sure I would have noticed that kind of behavior, hymn singing not being a normal activity of 7th graders in most places. After months of this crap, including multiple visits by her mother complaining about it, she hanged herself.
And it is NOT acceptable for students to behave like this nor for teachers and staff to ignore it because of their own ill ease with someone who isn’t a cookie cutter kid. Each student is valuable and unique. You would think teachers would value that uniqueness and encourage it, but that isn’t always the case. Teachers are reflections of society, and they mirror its prejudices. When I was taking a class in Gifted an Talented Education, I learned that many of my fellow teachers in that course were training to be Special Ed teachers, and actually resented or disliked gifted kids. They regarded questions from these kids as challenges to their authority and said the kids were "rude". I pointed out that maybe the kid just wanted to know the answer, and that maybe a better approach than calling the kid a smartass would have been to suggest he kid do some extra credit research on the topic and present it to the class. I got jumped on hard by them.
And please somebody tell me how a kid who wears all black or a pentacle or even heavy eye make-up is disrupting the class ? It’s not like the "cool kids" don’t wear make-up. As a Seriously Elder Goth, I know a lot of Goths, most of whom find a way to incorporate their Gothness into their work attire without violating dress codes. They tone down the make-up for work, and choose darker colors for their business attire. There are actually websites which advise people on how to do Corporate Goth. Most admit that the company they work for (and which issues their paycheck) has something to say about how they dress, and live with it. If they can’t make the adjustment, they find work in some place that doesn’t have a dress code. But school is not the same as working for a company. School attendance is required by law, and you are not getting paid for it, and it is not a choice.
And, lest we forget, not getting hired by a corporation for not meeting their image is not the same as being bullied at school, where students should be safe from harassment. In fact,t he school has a fiduciary duty to protect those students from harm—and often fails to meet it . SO, no, I don’t buy this "blame the victim" idea that if we’d all just dress the same way, no one would ever get bullied. Because bullies look for reasons to shore up their power, and they can always find one. What we should be doing is teaching kids that differences are to be cherished because they reveal our uniqueness. Settling for the status quo is NOT acceptable.
The other thread that I and others disagreed with is summed up here:
The way you deal with a bully is to stand up to the fucker and kick his/her ass if he/she refuses upon verbal instruction to cease and desist.
You know its true. YOU KNOW IT....
My research is my experience.
It wasn't 4th grade, either.
You beat down a bully and it's a solved problem.
Maybe. If you are big enough to beat the shit out of that bully, it might work. Or the bully might escalate and jump you with a bunch of friends off school grounds. Or the teacher might blame both of you equally, and you end up suspended. In many cases, as that diary showed, the bully is bigger and stronger and deliberately picks victims he knows he can take. Not to mention it sends the wrong message to the bully: the biggest asshole wins. It also doesn’t address relational bullying, something girls, especially older girls, indulge in: shutting out someone and declaring them an outsider. Walking up to the head Mean Girl and punching her runnin’ lights out will only get you in trouble, not her.
There’s another problem with this. Fighting back gets the bully off that kid’s back—but the bully is still a bully. I want to stop the bully in his tracks and teach him a better way—and not just because I sympathize with the victim. Bullying is a behavior we have to nip in the bud because it is bad for the bully long-term. That last diary I wrote talked about how many bullies—whether bully/victims who were also bullied themselves (often at thome) or pure bullies whoa e the Draco Malfoys and Heathers who rule their schools—end up as soci0paths and criminals at a a much higher rate than others.
bullying can be a gateway behavior, teaching the perpetrator that threats and aggression are acceptable even in adulthood. In one study by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, nearly 60 percent of boys whom researchers classified as bullies in grades six to nine were convicted of at least one crime by the age of 24, while 40 percent had three or more convictions.
http://www.ncpc.org/...
The way to stop bullying isn’t beating the shit out of the bully, no matter how good that might feel. What works according to the experts, as I described in this diary is immediate intervention by teachers. The parties involved should be interviewed separately. Parents should be called immediately, and they need to come in and discuss this. There must be real consequences for the bully, not just a slap on the wrist. Detention, community service, suspension ar real consequences. Sending the 5th grader to a study hall for thirty minutes, as one of my neighbors who is a local teacher told me was the rule in his school (he disagreed with it vehemently and wanted stronger rules) is not a real consequence. Parents must be involved because staff need their support. Unfortunately, the bully often learns his behavior at home, whether from outright abusive parents (the bully/victims) or those who pass on their feeling of entitlement to their kids.
Why does it matter? Maybe it’s just me, but I think nipping sociopathy in the bud and preventing kids from becoming criminals (oddly pure bullies were the ones most likely to commit violent crimes) is a good thing. Bullying also played a role in school shootings.
In three fourths of the cases studied for the "Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools" (www.ed.gov/offices/oese/sdfs), student shooters reacted violently to being bullied by fellow students, researchers found.
http://www.stateline.org/...
Preventing another Columbine strikes me as a good idea.
We have to care about the bullies as much as the victims because they take a toll on society. They need to learn that there are real consequences for harming others—and learn it young enough that they don’t wind up in jail.