The Bullying Panic
Kudos to Nick Gillespie and the Wall Street Journal for the balanced and helpful essay on the latest trend of combating bullying. Gillespie speaks as someone who survived a childhood filled with schoolyard taunts and who is raising two school-age boys he hopes will avoid the worst of bullying.
Gillespie also welcomes common sense strategies in the face of bullying: Talk to your friends, parents and teachers; recognize you're not the problem; don't be a silent witness to bullying, etc.
But he completely rejects the idea that America is in the midst of the bullying crisis we're told exists. He sees it as just the latest in a long line of hyperbolic alarms about childhood. Data doesn't support the idea that childhood is particularly brutal these days and the rising wave of laws and regulations are a mess, lumping together minor slights with major offenses.
Gillespie points out the silliness we discussed last week of banning words like "dinosaur" on tests in New York City and says it's not just city boys and girls who are being treated as delicate flowers but farm kids, too. Politicians are working on labor restrictions that would keep teenagers from working on farms. And all this while data suggest that kids are safer than they've been in decades:
But given today's rhetoric about bullying, you could be forgiven for thinking that kids today are not simply reading and watching grim, postapocalyptic fantasies like "The Hunger Games" but actually inhabiting such terrifying terrain, a world where "Lord of the Flies" meets "Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior," presided over by Voldemort.
Love it. Gillespie also looks at New Jersey's "Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights" law that was proposed in response to the suicide of 18-year-old gay Rutgers student Tyler Clementi. It's one in a long line of bills moved along with popular support to make people feel better, rather than actually solve a problem.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has called the Lautenberg-Holt proposal a threat to free speech because its "definition of harassment is vague, subjective and at odds with Supreme Court precedent." Should it become law, it might well empower colleges to stop some instances of bullying, but it would also cause many of them to be sued for repressing speech. In New Jersey, a school anti-bullying coordinator told the Star-Ledger that "The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights" has "added a layer of paperwork that actually inhibits us" in dealing with problems. In surveying the effects of the law, the Star-Ledger reports that while it is "widely used and has helped some kids," it has imposed costs of up to $80,000 per school district for training alone and uses about 200 hours per month of staff time in each district, with some educators saying that the additional effort is taking staff "away from things such as substance-abuse prevention and college and career counseling."
Whenever I talk to people about bullying, I begin by asking them how they would define it. You would be surprised how frequently people don't discuss the topic with a working definition in their head. So I'm not surprised that legislation would move forward without defining bullying in an objective or clear manner. Obviously poorly written laws will lead to little more than litigation against schools.
When I think of bullying, I think of what my brother had to go through, having skipped multiple grades and being many years younger than some of his schoolmates. In junior high school, he endured weeks of threats with no help from school administrators whatsoever. What ended up happening is that my dad (the pastor) and the school janitor (who was our neighbor) taught him how to fight. He promptly took on four or so of the bullies at once by himself, defeated them all, and he was suspended for it. (It was worth it.)
Is there some middle ground between overreach we're seeing people clamor for now and the complete worthlessness of many school administrators in the face of bullying? I would love to see it.
Unfortunately, overreach seems to be winning the day. Gillespie notes that the stopbullying.gov website of the Health and Human Services defines bullying as "teasing," "name-calling," "taunting," "leaving someone out on purpose," "telling other children not to be friends with someone," "spreading rumors about someone," "hitting/kicking/pinching," "spitting" and "making mean or rude hand gestures." The most common bullying include being made fun of and being the subject of rumors. Way down on the list are children actually being harmed or threatened with harm. These two categories are not the same thing and it does a disservice to confuse them.
Gillespie ends by noting that our problem isn't a world filled with bullies but a world where kids are convinced they're powerless victims. That has to cause much more harm in the long run.
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Oct '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
That's not a bad working definition of being a child. It's a terrible definition of 'bullying'.
And in a system where kids can't read or add there's an anti-bullying co-ordinator? There goes my week's stock of optimism...
Feb '12
Re: The Bullying Panic
Doesn't anyone remember, "Stick and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me"? Somehow I survived adolescence by refusing to give nasty kids any power over me.
Oct '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
Just sent this to our daughter in New York. She is caught up in the anti-bullying crusade. My own view when she first brought it up a month or so ago? Any crusade led by Lady GaGa can only be thought of as highly suspect.
Apr '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
To me it seems much of the complaint may come from teachers failing to live up to their duty to enforce strict discipline in their schools. It seems that far too often you hear stories of teachers standing by while children engage in bullying right before them. A lot can be accomplished by having the adults take an active step in stopping and correcting bad behavior in kids when they see it.
May '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
In the movie The Bells of St. Mary's (RKO 1945), Sister Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, teaches a boy who is constantly being bullied how to box and defend himself. When the time comes for him to follow through and teach the bully a lesson both she and Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby) turn a blind eye and let the "victim" put the bully on his rear end.
Now we feminize our boys.
Clip here.
Mar '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
It is all part of the same liberal agenda reducto ad absurdum: if feelings are the only thing that matters, then "bullying" is anything that makes a child feel bad.
And voila! If anyone feels bad, it is someone else's fault.
Congress ought to do something!
Mar '12
Re: The Bullying Panic
I've mentioned before on Ricochet that I was bullied quite a lot in grade school, and that I'm skeptical of these anti-bullying programs. I've been concerned about the rise in public concern about bullying. Here are some of my recent thoughts on the subject:
1. We know that suicide is a socially "contagious" idea within groups. (See: Malcom Gladwell) Therefore, if one gay kid has a high profile suicide death, all things being equal, more gay kids will consider suicide. I suspect that is the cause of the recent spate of young suicides, not an increase in bullying. That aside, I don't know if youth suicide rates have actually risen, even.
2. I think that if you look, you will find nearly every teenager has both bullied and been bullied (though usually not in equal measure) at some point in their school careers. If you are looking to construct a narrative about bullying, you will find it everywhere you look. Children are generally uncivilized beings.
3. I think the institutional nature of schools, of putting children in large groups with same age peers with relatively few adults, facilitates bullying. School administrators can't be everywhere.
Aug '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
Naturally, actual bullying is going to get lost in the noise and things will get worse for the bullied. AND there will be a whole lot of friendly fire casualties. But at least they'r'e doing something!
BTW, some kids just aren't built/prepared to refuse to give the bullies verbal power over them (speaking as one who went through both the normal kid nonsense and a higher level of true bullying in middle school). It was hard for schools to tell the difference 25 years ago, but then again when I finally decided to do something and complained to the administration, back then they recognized that there was a problem and handled it. I'm not sure it'll be possible with all the likely false positives on bullying now.
Jul '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
genferei
That's not a bad working definition of being a child.
Heck, there's a fair number of adults that would fall into that description.
-E
Jun '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
If you encourage kids to identify themselves primarily as a group member, and not as an individual, then what the group thinks about you becomes very important. But it shouldn't be. If you're an individual first, then it's easier to just decide that you're okay--it's the group that sucks.
Apr '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
This really makes me wish there were no Ricochet CoC. Yes, some bully's will stick to words and some use fists. Yes, teachers need to stomp on it when they see either happening. But for persistent problems, esp. physical altercations: teach your kid to fight. All of this can be done without ridiculous laws drawn up in a hysterical PTA meeting.
May '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
The anti-bullying craze seems to me more about promoting a leftist agenda than preventing bullying. At bottom it's about
1) Normalizing the aberrant
2) Criminalizing religious and moral convictions
3) Substituting personal responsibility and judgment with laws and regulations
4) Centralizing power
5) Enforcing social conformity
Feb '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
As a teacher who is looking for employment and having just finished my "training" - some thoughts:
1. Fear of lawsuits - this is an endemic problem, and is spread by administrators, many of whom simply take their orders from the state dept. of ed., any thing else is seen as posturing and dangerous boat rocking.
This is one reason administrators and teachers will avoid direct interaction, it's deplorable, but true. A fist fight that turned into a general melee on the playground resulted in my having to wade in and toss children off a squirming, wriggling pile of flying fists and feet, luckily they were between 5 to 8 years of age. The other four faculty on the playground just stood by and would have done nothing. Might lead to paper work or a law suit don't ya know.
2. The feminization of boys - the war on boys continues in most elementary schools, any "boy" like behavior is condemned, and there is no healthy outlet for them, even at rural schools this rot has become standard.
3. The elevation of victimhood, children are taught to be victims who must turn to centralized power for redress, never take a stand.
Jul '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
Another log on the fire of cultural suicide.
May '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
iWc: It is all part of the same liberal agendareducto ad absurdum: if feelings are the only thing that matters, then "bullying" is anything that makes a child feel bad.
And voila! If anyone feels bad, it is someone else's fault.
Congress ought to do something!
Exactly. This isn't just a problem for kids and schools. They are training kids to expect officials to solve their own problems and address every injustice. They are training kids for totalitarian rule, knowingly or not.
Feb '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
BINGO! Aaron, the whole idea is to lay the ground work for a "better" society, it is taught by every education department, and spouted off by the pencil pushers in the state capitals.
One of my last teacher training segments was a "presentation" by a local principal who is an advocate for and helped prepare my state for a special brand of educational reform that would, these were her exact words:
"have every third grader doing the exact same lesson, on the exact same day, in the exact same way. Now wouldn't that be wonderful?"
I may or may not have called out "But that's nothing but bolshevism!" without thinking.
The posts I could write from 2 years of "teacher training" are legion and would make your hair stand on end. One of the biggest problems is most people, teachers, parents, and the general public are blind to the extent of the damage.
Aaron Miller
They are training kids for totalitarian rule, knowingly or not. ยท 26 minutes ago
May '10
Re: The Bullying Panic
There have always been jerks in every generation. My older brother and I got teased, abused, beat up, etc. all the way through school, as weirdo devout evangelical Christians in a neighborhood full of inattentive ethnic Cath0lics (it was about their families, not their church). He was assaulted by three hoods on the front steps of the high school for no reason whatever in 1965. In 7th grade, I was pushed, shoved, stepped on, punched, etc., by a kid much larger and two years older than I was. Neither of us was utterly traumatized by the experiences, though had we had any kind of fair chance in the fight, we'd have gladly have walloped our nemeses.
I actually did the rational thing, since I was smaller and had no gang for support. I told the assistant principal that I simply wanted the jerk to stay away from me. Kid wasn't happy when the school leaders suggested he do just that or face "serious consequences", but that was the end of it.
These things have been around as long as there have been schools, and need intelligent case-by-case consideration of each particular situation. Not a national campaign.
Re: The Bullying Panic
When my daughter was still a youngster, she told me that some kids were picking on her and hitting her. She was a tough customer, but she didn't want to get in trouble. I told her to try and find a teacher next time, but if that didn't work, she had my blessing to fight back. The next week she said, "Daddy, I did what you said." "What's that?" I asked. "Well," she answered, "those kids were picking on me again, so I beat them up and then told the teacher." She got things a bit out of order,...but she solved the problem once and for all.
Same thing happened with my son, and he cured the bullies. I don't believe in raising victims.
Feb '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
That's not entirely satisfactory either. Can't this attitude contribute to other ills that we conservatives complain about (e.g. relativism, self-centeredness, sense of entitlement, normalizing the aberrant, etc.)? Obviously we want our kids to be independent and strong-willed, but don't we also want them to be solid citizens and socially competent team players?
Feb '11
Re: The Bullying Panic
Dave Carter: ..... "Well," she answered, "those kids were picking on me again, so I beat them up and then told the teacher." She got things a bit out of order,...but she solved the problem once and for all.
Same thing happened with my son, and he cured the bullies. I don't believe in raising victims.
Sure, this is a solution for some kids. In my experience, though, few kids capable of "curing" bullies on their own were actually the recipients of bullying behavior. For some kids this just isn't an option, and in our skepticism of anti-bullying programs we should be careful not to trivialize actual bullying or suggest that any formal authoritative response is overreach. I'm not accusing you of this, Dave; only making a statement about a common variety of thought on bullying. I actually agree with Duane that bullying should be considered on a case by case basis - but the cases should actually be considered by people in positions of authority and not ignored as just part of growing up.