POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
I support the idea.
However,
the main problem with bullying has always been teachers and
administrators who do not pay attention to what's happening under their
noses and are reluctant to step in when they do see something.
Schools
are communities, and the authorities of the communities are the adults.
Children look to them for safety, but in so many cases today they look
in vain.
The anti-bully programs with slogans and videos and
t-shirts we have today are little more than a way for administrators to
cover their behinds. Window dressing.
Maybe the legislation will change the situation somewhat.
Of
course, there are more than a few teachers who themselves are bullies,
but you just try getting anything done about them. Impossible.
I do hope the generally spineless McGuinty sticks to this, but in view of past efforts, I'm not hopeful.
We
had zero-tolerance on violence - a good thing for the safety of the
entire school community - but as soon as one ethnic group found its
students in trouble more than others, the policy was dropped like a hot
potato.
Yelling prejudice about stats is a pretty sad way to destroy a good policy.
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"Bullies learn from their closest role models - their parents."
I don't think that is accurate.
First, every serious study ever done shows clearly children's closest role models are their playmates and peers.
Parents,
despite their many hopes and pretensions, have remarkably little
influence outside of supplying the necessities of life and a relatively
safe place.
I'm sure the parents play a role, but I'm convinced that role is largely through genetic endowment.
Time after time, we find the parents, or at least one parent, of bullies are themselves bullies.
That
fact has a lot to do with the school authorities being so reluctant and
irresponsible in taking a bully child on: the results will be a
confrontation with bully parents, and in our education system today,
parents who make lots of noise are paid attention to.
We must
remember that all the principals and superintendents and others
administering public education are themselves teachers - many of them
teachers who just wanted to get out of the classroom and all of them
people who never rocked the boat.
It is a perfectly closed system, guaranteed to produce the results we see.
So
while expectations of parents are important, expectations of the very
teachers who are in the schoolyards, halls, gyms, and classrooms have to
become a whole lot higher with regard to tolerating abuse.
Holding
parents legally responsible is just passing the buck, and almost
certainly leads to further abuse at home by bully parents - not a
solution helpful to society.
We must provide mechanisms to
support, and indeed demand, the removal of genuine bullies from the
regular schools. I say genuine bullies because just about all children
sometimes tease or call names, something which must be corrected by
authorities but equally something that does not identify a genuine
bully.
A real bully is someone who enjoys inflicting discomfort on
others - doing so is a basic part of his or her personality. It likely
is a mild form of sadism or psychopathy, or, in some cases, not so mild.
When
such people are identified, they really need to be removed from the
general school population, and we must provide special, tougher
disciplined schools suitable for them.
None of this removes the
basic responsibility from teachers and administrators. They must correct
all the children just indulging in the taunts and teasing most children
engage in at some stage, and they must identify the genuine hard cases
which need to be removed from the general population.
Anything
less solves nothing. McGuinty's ridiculous 1-800 number to report
bullying is a costly administrative nightmare, useful to no one. It is
just a way to cover his behind. If the authorities inside a school are
already ignoring their responsibilities, what is the use of a report
form from an anonymous telephone call center in Bangalore India, or
indeed anywhere else?
Absolutely nothing. It's just busy-work to defuse a problem.
So
unless you are prepared to support genuine reform, holding school
authorities responsible for what happens under their noses and giving
them the authority to act, this problem will continue forever, only
becoming larger with a growing population.
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"I
am a teacher and unfortunately, many of the teachers that I have worked
with throughout my career have been bullies. We need to address
bullying from the very top down--including administration, as many of
them are bullies, too..."
Indeed.
We've all known them, bully teachers, but what is anyone to do about them?
A teacher pretty well has to be caught stealing or committing sexual abuse to be dismissed.
I
can still remember the names of a couple of genuine bully teachers more
than fifty years after experiencing them - a good measure of their bad
effect.
Virtually all other inappropriate behavior, as well as
downright incompetence, is tolerated and protected in our public schools
much as pedophile priests have been protected by the Catholic Church
for ages.
The teachers' union protects the day-to-day creeps who
do not reach such excesses as theft and sexual abuse, but still make
many children miserable through their careers and teach them little
worth teaching.
This issue of bullying is very interesting, opening as it does, the whole set of issues confronting public education.
Serious reform is one of our greatest needs in society.
