I am lucky to live in one of the few cities that released the documentary Bully a month ago and I rushed to see it. This film could not portray an environment more different from my teaching experiences if it tried. It follows several young men and women in small cities and smaller communities in the Midwest and the South as they struggled with bullying. They were bullied because they are different; they looked different, they acted differently, or their sexual orientation was different. But my teaching life has been in inner city schools, and bullying -- from what I had seen -- looked very different from the bullying in the film.
One conflict that was repeated in the documentary Bully was the lack of reaction from school administrators and the local police because the situation never escalated into one of violence. There was minor pushing and punching, but no blood. There was name calling and taunting, but no full-blown fight. Because there was no violence, there was no response.
Violence was not a stranger to my school. Three years ago we became a scanning school with our own full-time metal detector due to the number of police incidents in the building. With the scanning machine we received one armed policeman in addition to the dozen security guards who already patrolled the halls. Part of my research examined the social groups in my school. The students reported that our school didn't have cliques like those "suburban, white schools" (one student's words) but that we had cliques based on race, gangs, and neighborhood allegiance. These cliques had fierce lines, and if they were crossed there was often a fight. Additionally, it was not uncommon to get into a physical altercation for small transgressions such as bumping someone in the hall, stepping on someone's shoe, or looking wrongly at another person. Add social networking (the nemesis of a peaceful school), and the halls in our building were downright combustible.
After seeing the documentary, I felt there was a strange connection between those schools and my school, but what was it? They seemed so fundamentally different that all I could see was those differences stretching in front of me like lists of contrasting qualities. Where did they overlap?
But then I remembered Gabriel (not his real name), and I suddenly saw what I hadn't seen for years. Gabriel was put into my senior elective English class his junior year because he getting harassed from the kids in his grade due to his silence, the slight stutter he had when he did talk, and his intelligence. Gabriel was an attractive, tall, smart young man whom I knew would grow up to be amazing, but he was suffering in the social hell that high school can be for those who are different. He stayed in that senior elective with me for the entire year, and while he did come out of his shell a little bit, he continued to struggle, suffer, and hope for a better life after high school. I loved that kid.
Of course, being super quiet, he didn't say much of this to me, but he did write it.
I kept his end-of-year essay, and I remembered it upon musing over Bully. It was an assignment for seniors, asking them to reflect on their four years of high school before their graduation. Gabriel's essay reads as follows:
When I first began high school I was very nervous. The thing is that I was looking forward to the interesting experience. I went into school ready to be the best in educational terms, and be recognized. I was always treated like a nobody, or invisible entity whose only purpose was to amuse people, but they only amused themselves because I hated it. For example I would be made fun out of, tripped, had personal belongings stolen, like school textbooks. I had hope for a better future.
The friends thing was interesting because I had barely any. When engaging in the process of making friends, the experience can be agonizing. The kids didn't work with me in a group because they said I was weird, a psycho, retarded, funny looking, annoying and so much more...My 10th grade year in terms of friends was an improvement over 9th grade. My grades were the same, but the courses changed. My personal life was also the same as it was before according to experiences; I am a funny looking, creepy, weird, psycho. My biggest worry is that would not be able to handle the challenges of life. My biggest fear is that I would end up hating the world completely, and things would remain the same or get worse.
I have five pages of this combination of hurt, frustration, and hope.
And I realized that for years I didn't see the plain old bullying that was right in front of me. In the movie Bully, nothing could be done because there was no violence, but in my school, there was so much violence that issues like Gabriel's seemed so pedestrian compared to the fights and they went ignored. I couldn't see the bullying because I saw too much violence. Without the violence, bullying couldn't get addressed, but because of the violence, bullying didn't get addressed. What a no win situation.
Now I see both, and it is very overwhelming.
E.I. can help children gain skills such as self-control, empathy, compassion, self-confidence, resiliency. These qualities can help help equip children so that they better understand and communicate with each other in tense situations. Some schools are teaching these social skills at a very early age alongside the abcs and other traditional academic curriculum, like Beginnings School in Weston, MA. This is the most effective way to change society fundamentally and prevent bullying before it even starts.
So then what? Violence. What is a person at school, or work for that matter to do? These wounds are wounds and imposed without invitation. Teachers look the other way, diminish and ignore. Employers look the other way, diminish, ignore and then retaliate against the target. Everyone will choose to look the other way, and go on with Business As Usual. Leaving a mess of emotional traumas and diminishing children's and adult's views and outlooks on life entirely.
Experiencing this evokes PTSD, as if you'd been in a war zone. You don't feel like there are basic rules or adequate protections in life.
Earlier this week a friend's daughter and her friend were accosted by a big fully grown woman sized bully that had been harassing the two girls all school year. As my friend witnessed the ending remnants of the altercation, she yelled "what's going on" and was cursed royally by the bully child. My friend left her car to intervene right then and there and the kid took refuge on the parked bus. My friend went to the stairs of the bus and told the bully that she saw what had happened and new of the ongoing harassment. She told the child not to curse at an adult and to have her parents up there immediately. The bus driver did not get an official and left the school with the child with no intervention. The next day my friend was right there at the school and the other mother called to report the bullying and physical threat. While in front of the principal the father of the bully said that his daughter was a professional boxer and that my friend's daughter would not "stand a chance". Ultimately the two girls were told that they could face trouble if they defended themselves during a physical attack. The bully and her accomplice faced no consequences of cursing out my friend-a parent nor the accosting and harassment of the two girls.
I watch for this constantly...with two autistic children, both high functioning...who have a significantly higher chance of being bullied than "normal" children. And I tell my friends "Document, document, document". Put all complaints to the school in writing. Take photographs and include them in complaints. Make a paper trail so solid that you can be comfortable involving the police, if the school refuses to act appropriately.
It's that angry, fearful, dog-eat-dog mind set that has to change. It is pervasive in society. I'd love to see the younger generation rebel by rejecting this mind set from their elders as every generation rebels about something.
Good luck to you. :)