POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Well, as with all simplistic poll questions, you get a
meaningless response, but why does the Globe editorial proceed to treat the
meaningless with the irrelevant?
Normal teasing and even the odd insult are not bullying, not
by any sensible measure, and I'm sure that overwhelmingly that is the kind of
activity showing up in the poll's responses.
Physical abuse, mugging, and relentless abuse of a victim,
however, are genuine bullying.
These have no more place in our society than assault and
robbery and stalking on our streets.
We hire at great cost police and a vast justice system to
help protect us from such treatment on the streets.
No one, except perhaps Rob Ford, thinks you dial 9-1-1
because someone teases or briefly insults you.
But in a school community, children and parents expect that
it will be safe from the same acts we do not tolerate on our streets.
Sadly, this is often not the case.
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.
What is required are teachers and administrators who look
out for and respond to such unacceptable behavior, but too often they are not
paying any attention and even actively avoiding intervening to avoid the
troubles of difficult children and difficult parents. In a word, their behavior
often is just cowardly.
That is unacceptable, because they are the eyes and
authorities of the school community.
Of course, there are more than a few teachers who themselves
are bullies, but you just try getting anything done about them. Impossible.
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.
