So I've noticed that this blog has somewhat departed from its original purpose of self-discovery, though that is not necessarily a bad thing, and in a way, it really hasn't. It has helped me to find a voice that I never really had before. And now I am bringing it full circle and writing somewhat of an extension of my very first post.
If you recall (and if you don't, feel free to look back), my first post was about how being bullied caused me to retreat inwards and lose my individuality. But I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to find a way through it with the help of loved ones and a good creative outlet. I too frequently see news stories about bullying, and the stories are getting worse. No longer is it simply a kid being pushed into a locker or having their books stolen. Now we have worse things like cyberbullying or the kid that had his hair set on fire a few months ago.
As the brutal treatment escalates, so does the response from the victims. Over the last few months, there have been what seems like dozens of reports of victims taking their own lives. Two girls committed suicide at a sleepover a couple of weeks ago. A young man took his life after classmates posted a video of him having sex with another man online. Even adults partake in bullying, such as the case of the mother who cyberbullied a classmate of her daughter until she too committed suicide. Even one such report is too much, but there are so many now who resort to such actions.
I have already spoken and written to great lengths about looking for the signs of bullying and doing what we can to help the victims; while I will never tire of it, I would like to switch viewpoints for a moment. This month, I'd like to examine the flip side of that coin because we need to help the perpetrators as much as we do the victims.
Bullying is born almost universally from two sources: insecurity and ignorance. Now frankly, everyone is insecure about something or other and we all have different ways of coping with that. Some people hide these perceived vulnerabilities by not only picking on someone else , but by also projecting their own insecurity onto their victim. In fact, most victims actually have the same vulnerability as their abuser; take, for example, homophobes. Homophobic people relentlessly pick on homosexual people usually because they themselves are gay and don't know how to deal with it (thus ignorance enters the picture, but I'll get to that in a minute). This applies to virtually all acts of bullying.
While the bully tries to hide their insecurity by picking on someone else, they in fact tend to make it painfully obvious that they too feel vulnerable. I know this is vastly oversimplifying it, but instead of letting yourself be the victim, help them. They will likely recoil and abuse you even more at first but if you keep pushing and trying to help them. It always gets worse before it gets better, but it will get better. You just have to break through the second source of their behavior, ignorance.
In this instance, ignorance and insecurity are thoroughly intertwined, with one constantly amplifying the other. But ignorance is not something we are born with. Look at a young child. They are innately filled with curiosity and their minds could not be more open. They feel no ill will or malice towards something that is different from them; rather they accept it. But at some point, that behavior slows down and in some cases even stops. Somewhere along the way, they learn to close their minds. They become ignorant and mock any viewpoint contrary to their own.
There's no possible way to narrow down any one spot that such behavior is learned; rather, it is learned through exposure to different kinds of stimuli that come from everywhere. Some of it comes from parents. A good deal of it comes from television, movies and music. Some of it comes from books. Another good sized portion of it comes from school. I could go on and on with this list, suffice to say that this behavior is the result of societal viewpoints and expectations that we as members of society are almost constantly exposed to and feel obligated to follow.
At this point, I could easily turn this into some huge dissertation about how our society and culture control virtually everything we think, feel and believe, but I won't. I just want to make a point about it because bullying is but one of the many effects of such control, and this applies to every culture on the planet. This, however, is not a rationalization for ignorance or bullying; in fact, it is our ignorance that leads us to continue blindly following what society tells us. But don't get me wrong; I'm not saying society is always wrong either. We simply need to step back and look at things objectively from time to time.
This is where education comes in, and I'm not necessarily talking about booksmarts here. Yes, those are useful, but what I'm getting at is being educated to open your mind. By teaching bullies to open their minds, we can begin to lift their blinders, allowing them to grow and change. Most bullies stop tormenting other people in time, but I'm hesitant to say that they really got rid of their ignorance because, let's face it, as a whole, we're stupid.
This leads into somewhat of a paradox. We are more educated than ever before, as schools, libraries and other forms and repositories of knowledge are more accessible than ever, yet in some ways we seem to be gettign dumber. We're still just as arrogant and thickheaded as we've ever been. True, our minds seem to slowly be opening, but we still view the world through blinders.
There is no easy solution for this, but I would suggest we start in the schools. I'm not going to go off on schools here nor am I going to throw all the blame on them, but I have not been impressed with the way schools handle bullying. Most, if not all, have a “zero tolerance policy” towards such behavior but it is not enforced. The perpetrator is given a detention or made to write an essay/lines on the subject; both of these are akin to a slap on the hand. I knew many people who got detention in high school and they remained unfazed by it. Suspending them is not the answer either because that's essentially saying “hey, take a couple of days off school.” Sounds more like a reward than a punishment to me.
No, somehow, schools need to find a good method of disciplining these kids. But just disciplining them won't solve it either; if you keep yelling at them, they'll just rebel further. In addition to discipline (and arguably more important) they need to learn, to feel the weight of their actions and the repercussions they have. I don't have the magic answer here, but I know that at least some schools have found a way to implent this and it needs to be more widespread. I understand that in these tough economic times many schools are forced to lay off staff thereby heightening the risk of a student being bullied but they have to find a way to help them nonetheless. It is, after all, their job to ensure the safety of the students
I am not a child psychologist or teacher nor do I have kids of my own, so it is naturally a bit difficult for me to propose a way of dealing with this due to my lack of a frame of reference, but I would like to put forth a proposal nonetheless. There are, as I have pointed out, two sides to this coin. The discipline side of this is easy; I suggest a strict three strikes rule: first offense is a warning, second is detention/suspension and third is expulsion. I'm sure this seems ridiculously harsh, but we can't keep slapping them on the hand either.
The education side of this is the more difficult one. Schools already do a great deal in the classroom, but it is still not getting the message across, and I think I know why. People don't generally learn as well by listening to a lecture as they do by a hands on activity. We need to find a way to get the kids involved in the learning process instead of just telling them about it. Due to my lack of teaching experience, I don't really know a good way of doing this, but I do have one thought: require all students to see the school counselor once a month or so. I realize that the counselors are busy, but this could have a profound effect on bullying. I mean, think about it: all most kids really want to do is to talk about themselves and to have some attention; why don't we make this serve a constructive purpose? We could kill two birds with one stone, helping victims and educating bullies. This could even prevent a lot of aberrant behavior before it starts.
I've spoken with a few people who work in schools and they tell me that many schools already have strong anti-bullying programs such as these in place and that they have indeed led to a dramatic decline in bullying. Unfortunately, there are still few schools with such programs, largely due to the budget cutbacks most schools are enduring in the face of our economic woes. I certainly understand that we all need to tighten our belts in these tough times, but we can't do it at the expense of our children's safety and education. I won't get into that argument here, seeing as that is a post in itself; suffice to say we need to find a middle ground where we can trim the budget without taking away from the kids.
There is and will never be an easy solution to bullying. There will likely never be a universal solution either; what works in some schools will probably not work in others. But we can't just keep shuffling our feet and mumbling about these problems. We have to face them head on because otherwise they will only get worse. I urge parents to pay attention to their children for the signs of being a victim or a bully and to educate their child either way and I urge schools to stop waiting to deal with this until some tragedy occurs and they cannot possibly ignore it any more. We must educate and read the signs. All the answers are already there, we just have to find them.
I want to end this with a brief message to the victims of bullying: you are not alone. I speak from a lifetime of experience in that it does get better. I know this is what everyone says to you, but we wouldn't be saying it if it weren't the truth. I implore you, don't end your life. Endure the torment and you WILL come out on top. You will one day discover that this hell has made a stronger person than you can possibly imagine.
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