Today my husband went to school for half a morning with my son. That may not seem like a very unusual thing to many people, but we Home Educate. My sons have both been attending technology classes at a local school once a week for 2 terms this year. They have found it quite eye-opening.
The reason my husband went to observe today is that one child from another school that attends these classes has been intimidating most of the other kids.
I well remember during my own school days (from about the age of 11 on) being a butt of rude comments, exclusion and spitefulness from most of the "in-crowd". Some of us 'outsiders' hung out together and pretended it didn't matter, but to us it did. When on one occasion a new girl joined our class, I became one of those who verbally bullied her. In part perhaps it was the relief of no longer being bottom of the heap. A wise teacher pulled me aside and confronted me with what I was doing, and the new outcast soon became one of my friends.
One of the sad realities of life is that people trample on other people to elevate themselves, those that get trampled become participants in trampling others, if only it means they themselves will not be on the receiving end of more torture.
Bullies continue their bullying because there is greater payoff to bully than not. The bullied either avoid the bully, collude with the bully or oppose him or her. Avoidance is often impossible, the bully senses fear at 50 paces and always finds the bullied somehow, usually somewhere well out of sight of all legitimate authority. Colluding is easy and results in safety. Becoming one of the bullies gives some degree of reprieve (the code of silence descends and no one wants to be the first to break it and draw the bully's focused attention), it is a way out of the trap and gives the bullied person a taste of the drug that the bully enjoys. Opposition however is hard. It requires courage, determination and stamina. These characteristics are not natural to most of us and usually take years of discipline to instill. For any child to oppose bullying they need help, from teachers, or from parents. In an ideal world, all the bullied children would cooperate in opposing the bully, but as we all know we don't live in an ideal world and if you have been hurt or belittled, or seen others hurt or belittled with no recourse, taking the risk to oppose a predictable bully with unpredictable allies is not likely to be the choice of most.
As Edmund Burke may or may not have so aptly pointed out: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing".
No comments:
Post a Comment