Bullying

The gay and lesbian community is in an uproar because three young homosexual teens have committed suicide in the last three weeks because they were being bullied. (One in Indiana.) Even Ellen Degeneres was near tears on her TV show over it. Ever since the Columbine massacre, the focus has been on bullying and zero tolerance for aggressive behaviors, and the target has been schools because that is the microcosm of society where kids are located for a large part of their day. That puts the monkey on the backs of the teachers and administrators. We are supposed to be able to fix it. (I say "we" in the sense that I was a teacher in recent years.)

I feel bad that kids decide it is better to be dead than endure the emotional abuse that comes at the hands of their peers, but it's not a school problem. It's a maturity problem. Children are not equipped to deal with things that deny them acceptability. To be denied acceptance means they are worthless, in their eyes. And bullying is not limited to those on the fringe by way of sexuality. Look at the comments posted at the end of news articles...by adults talking to other adults. Racism is rampant. The anonymity of the Internet allows people to say thing they would never think of saying to a person's face!

I'm sorry to have to say this, but no amount of sensitivity training or talking to kids about sticking up for the underdog is going to work. They aren't mature enough to get it. Bullying is as old as the hills, and then some. It won't change. IT WON'T CHANGE. In all of life, there is a pecking order. It isn't until one gets old (like me) that the pecking order levels out.

When she was in third grade, my daughter tried to sit with a really odd youngster at lunch. He was special ed...probably with a mental illness that would now be labeled as autistic or worse. She felt sorry for him. I applauded her for trying to befriend him, but she said, "Mom, he talks to his banana at lunch." The young man was killed on the first day of summer vacation that year when he rode his bicycle behind a garbage truck that was backing up. He had been warned not to, but didn't heed the warning.

In my years of teaching, I've had a lot of sad cases. One young man who had an odor, was tormented by his classmates, but he fought back and made thing worse. At one point, I called a youngster to the hall because he had been baiting the fellow in order to make more fun of him. "You are putting me in an impossible situation," I told him. "I am forced to defend a boy who is guilty of creating his own circumstances!" (The tormentor later ended up in jail for drug/alcohol offenses, including a car accident that seriously injured another person.)

Another student who was identified as autistic, with other problems including a huge speech impediment, was a bright boy...but I had to stay on top of him in the classroom. The other kids loved to egg him on because, when he got aggravated, his eyes would go crazy just before he was ready to blow up. At one point, he was voicing (in front of other students) how he understood people who would bring in weapons and kill people. I pulled him out to the hall and talked to him, explaining about how people who pick on other people do so because they are insecure and like to see other people suffer so they will feel better about themselves. His response was, "If they feel that way, they must understand how it feels to be me." I wept for him, in front of him. When he left my 8th grade classroom and entered into high school, he was soon expelled because of a reaction to being bullied yet again.

I had one victory in all of this: one student who was pushed to the brink of explosion by another who had been bullied. I watched as he clenched his fists and was totally capable of cleaning the other kid's clock...but he turned around and walked away with steam coming out of his ears. I wrote his parents a note about it, praising him for his mature reaction to a bad situation. (His parents kept the note. They read it to me years later when I was dealing with another of their kids.)

I was bullied in junior high school. I was a new kid. The school was putting on an Americana program. The music teacher discovered that I had a good singing voice, which kind of displaced the student who was previously considered the best singer of the class. We were both awarded verses in singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot". She and one of her cronies hated me for that and whispered threats every time I walked by them. I was scared. My mother went to the principal. The principal called all of the girls into an assembly and told everyone that it had to stop (without mentioning names). And, interestingly, it DID stop. Also interestingly, the young lady in question was never a musical competitor in high school.

Bullying will always be with us.
Gay or straight; male or female; handicapped or normal; old, young, etc. It ain't gonna stop!