On School Bullying

School bullying is a huge problem around the world; and I say this as someone who went to an excellent school and was a star student. I have the testimony of any number of former students who say that they have been bullied or made to feel like trash. To my shock, this also included a football star. If this problem can be that bad at the kind of school that I attended, then how much worse it is everywhere else?

My stepdaughter was bullied at her school; and from what happened to her I could see the dynamics. Someone starts picking on someone else and gets away with it; then others join in and it becomes the thing to do. Malice on the part of one individual spreads through the whole system, and all sorts of children take part in the bullying even if they would not have done so otherwise - because it has become the thing to do.

My stepdaughter's school did nothing about this problem until she began fighting back; at which point the school decided that she was the problem. We had to homeschool her for the remaining of her school year and then sent her to a different school. She is a sweet kid, and it's wrong that she was treated this way. For that matter, it's wrong that children get treated this way, period.

For this reason I am advocating a rational approach to dealing with school bullying, and that is: Tackle the problem at the seed. Identify the person who starts the bullying and punish that person. This will attack the problem in two ways. One is to punish the initiator of the wrongdoing and deter them and others from further wrongdoing. And the second is to reduce the credibility of the initiator of the wrongdoing so that other kids are less likely to join in the initiator's nonsense.

The problem of school bullying is being more acknowledged now than at many times in the past, and that is for the better. The school should not be a place of torment. It should be a safe learning environment in which children learn the knowledge and the skills that they require, not the place in which they get traumatized.

Another function of school is to teach good character. With the school bullying, some turn into bullies or followers of bullies and others become victims. In all cases the character forged on the part of all parties is the worst that it can be. Being a bully is bad character; being a follower of a bully is bad character. As for the people at the receiving end of the bullying, they frequently get scarred for life; and that is just as bad for the country as it is for them. It causes brain drain. It causes rebellion and alienation. It causes mental illness. It weakens the country.

School bullying is a major social problem - one that is not limited to a country or a social milieu. It happens everywhere, whether the parents are rich or poor, and regardless of race and geography. As such it must be taken on at the societal level; but it should also be taken on on the part of individual schools.

This requires a paradigm shift in how this problem is handled. The person who's being bullied is not responsible for the bullying; the person doing the bullying is. Responsibility means confronting the people doing the bullying, not attacking the person who's being bullied, who is suffering enough as is. If more than one person takes part in the bullying, the most likely reason is the dynamic of which I spoke with regard to my stepdaughter: Namely that someone started it and got away with it, and it became the thing to do. For the record, my stepdaughter is being treated well at the school that she attends now; which proves even further that she was not the one who was at fault.

And to those who claim that the world is harsh and that bullying prepares kids for the real world: The real world is what people make of it. If you create a heartless arrangement, then it is you that are in the wrong. People should be better than that, and the real world should be better than that. And if one is actually a loving parent or a good pedagogue, then working toward that state of affairs will be the direction of his activities.