Bullies & Bullying, Part One

Many of the kids I see in my private practice are boys, and a healthy percentage of those are middle school students in grades six, seven and eight. More than a few of them are tormented by bullies, and do little or nothing to "invite" bullying. The kids I see are simply trying to keep their heads above water academically while negotiating the perils of puberty. Most are short in stature, or overweight, or both. Most are neither athletic nor troublemakers. Many -- but by no means all -- have poor self-esteem made worse by bullying. All of them are suffering.

The school districts they attend have zero tolerance rules in place, meaning that the administrators have developed unthinkingly even-handed-- and sometimes harsh -- ways of dealing with student fights and aggression. In literally all districts, unless the instigator of a fight can be identified, all students involved in a fight are given identical discipline, usually (but not always) in-school or out-of-school suspension (ISS or OSS). All students are advised to report aggressive peers to teachers or administrators before matters get out of hand or a fight erupts. This would be a sensible policy if it worked, but the kids I see say to a person that it does not work, and most have lost faith in the policy and the adults who are empowered to enforce it.

All of the boys who have been the victims of bullies tell me they have informed responsible adults they are being targeted, but that the adults so informed do little or nothing to prevent bullying from happening again. Only today, one boy told me he told the Assistant Principal in his school several times he was being pushed and hit by another student, and that the Assistant Principal spoke to the offending student, then let him go . . . to push and hit the targeted student yet again. Another boy told me that when he reported a bully, the administrator told him that he "must have done something" to provoke the other child. Yet another boy was effectively abandoned by his district with the recommendation he enroll in a private school, which he then did. Blaming the victim allows some school personnel use to avoid the problem of bullying altogether, presumably relying upon kids to determine the pecking order or reasoning "boys will be boys."

Now, it is certainly possible that the boys I have seen are lying to me, and that in fact, they are doing something to provoke the bullies involved . . . but I sincerely doubt that. It may also be true that in some respects the boys I see act or look like "victims," but even if so the abuse they suffer lacks justification. In my mind, to say that some kids deserve to be bullied -- because they look or act a certain way -- upholds a standard of brutality that we should not tolerate in our society, much less in our schools. It is roughly analogous to the warped belief that because a women dresses provocatively, or acts flirtatiously, she deserves to be sexually harassed or assaulted.

Please do not think me naive: Having been a teacher and a school administrator, I am well aware of the difficulties posed by monitoring student behavior. But, it is also true that many teachers and administrators ignore the problem of bullying, or assume bullying programs and character education will win the day. Adults must step up to the plate and intervene swiftly to stop bullies from acting aggressively. It is also true that application of zero tolerance rules misses the point, for the bully and the bullied are given similar discipline for dissimilar behaviors. Fairness goes out the window in the quest for equal treatment of students . . . more on that later!