Many readers will be familiar with the viral video showing Tea Party Protestors, outside of the U.S. Capitol, showering abuse and invective at a man with Parkinson's Disease (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFOnG9a1Pzw; Health-reform rally heckler says he's sorry and scared | The Columbus Dispatch).
I suspected, even before reading an account of the bully's remorse, that he probably had not awakened that morning with the intention of humiliating a fellow American, who was stricken with a devastating, degenerative illness; chances are that he would provide succor to a friend or neighbor similarly afflicted, and might well join a community or employer-sponsored event to benefit others with the disease. After the rally, the man publicly apologized for his offense, but the ugly reality will never disappear.Chris Reichert fears for himself and his family, despite his repentance, while bloggers and commentators on-line have ranted against him. Others have assailed Robert Letcher for leaving "his side" of the protest lines, thereby inviting the attacks from opponents of health-care reform. The mob's toxic rancor proves more potent than any individual core of decency.
We Americans like our good and bad guys clearly, even cartoonishly, identified. We forget that the greatest, most cataclysmic evils have been perpetrated not by lone psychopaths, but by compliant mobs, comprising a lot of "nice guys." I sincerely believe that species homo sapiens has evolved through the ages, and that our collective yen for cruelty has diminished - we don't rejoice in burning witches, heretics, and Jews in our public squares anymore; we fail to eschew cruelty as much as we can or should, however. We all enjoy a measure of schadenfraude, while hoping to find safety in the bosom of the crowd. When the crowd grows ugly, some members will hasten to prove themselves the ugliest.
We like to identify bullies as anti-social misfits, but much more devastation is wrought by groups of "good kids," whose behavior goes unchecked as long as they select their targets wisely. A former Senate Majority Leader extolled his boyhood home in Mississippi for exemplifying community values of kindness and compassion, failing to note that those virtues were never practiced toward the descendants of African slaves living nearby. He, or any white, could manifest cruelty, barbarity, and perversity beyond imagination, provided they treated their own kind with respect and courtesy. Most war criminals do not conform to typical serial-killer profiles; they have been respectable citizens, loving husbands and fathers. Similarly, bullying persists despite avowed efforts to curtail it, simply because we fail to identify bullies and bullying accurately.
Absence of empathy is recognized as a symptom of psychopathy in individuals, but we have no comparable diagnostic category for groups or communities who lack an "empathic affect." Instead of attempting to identify and isolate the possible miscreants in a community, we should probably do more to celebrate the beneficent outliers. The infamous Milgram experiments at Yale (and similar projects at other universities) revealed an appalling willingness to inflict suffering on others, yet we forget that roughly one-third of the participants declined to "push the button." I was somewhat disappointed to learn recently that, contrary to some allegations, the Ronald Ridenhour who publicized reports of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam was not the same Ronald Ridenhour who had supposedly been among the unwilling in a Milgram-affiliated group at Princeton. I should, instead, embrace the notion of two Ron Ridenhours: one, who might have remained anonymous among the righteous minority had his namesake not waged a more public struggle for common decency.
Perhaps schools should nurture their students empathic skills as much as they do their athletic or academic ones. President Obama was widely derided for suggesting that empathy was a desirable trait for Supreme Court Justices; we've seen the alternative, unfortunately, in a Court increasingly prone to favor Goliath over David regardless of the wake of destruction he may leave.
I know a few people who have never exhibited any cruel instincts...to me; I imagine we all have too many carnivorous predators in our ancestry to lack atavistic urges to subdue or devour those we perceive as our inferiors. We expect civilization's institutions to, well.....civilize, rather than institute. There's no need to devalue competition and rigor, but there is a need to elevate the value placed on kindness and compassion. The kid who stands up for someone who has been unfairly accused should never be told to "stay out of it," regardless of how inconvenient he or she may be for teachers and parents. Parents should listen to their children, and never dismiss or trivialize their cries for help. We've heard too many horror stories, by now, to assume that the adult authority is necessarily more credible or responsible than the recalcitrant child. Above all, we should tirelessly remind our children, and ourselves, that real heroes stand up for what they know, in their hearts, is right, not what the prevailing voices in a particular place or time tell them is right. Standing up for what they know is right can sometimes mean standing up for themselves, regardless of the cost among their peers or elders. Schools love to talk about "character" - our district has even implemented a "character education" curriculum, but they define character more as respecting boundaries than questioning them. It is the families' responsibility to cultivate empathy and conscience in their members.
More to come...
adt
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
Bully for Us - School Edition
In reading and hearing accounts of persistent bullying, and its sometime tragic consequences, I'm struck by the narrative similarities - not among the victims, but among the communities and settings. Violent criminals, and urban street gangs, have their own, discrete, pathology, and cannot be viewed under the same lens as small-town, or middle-class, bullying.
Phoebe Prince was pretty and bright; others driven to suicide have been academically gifted or learning-disabled; longtime residents or newcomers; affluent or disadvantaged; from closeknit, intact families, or from fractured ones. They all were bullied systematically and unrelentingly, in front of adult authorities; when tragedy struck, those same authorities initially feigned ignorance, then, when confronted with evidence, claim to have taken appropriate measures. The South Hadley High School officials suspended one girl - for now, we'll accept as a mere coincidence that she was the daughter of Hispanic immigrants, unlike the other tormentors - the football captain, and his girlfriend, were certainly exempt from punishment. The greater community has subsequently demonized individuals, but won't consider the harsh reality - the demonization, itself, is the cause. To tolerate, is to condone, is to allow, and the school tolerated quotidian mistreatment of some students by others; as long as school operations were unimpeded, authorities had no cause for concern. Sharon Velasquez was penalized after disrupting a class, compelling a teacher to complain. Complaints from Phoebe Prince, her parents, and others, went unheeded.
American culture apotheosizes two competing myths: the small town and the frontier; when one disappoints, the other beckons. In earlier centuries, families could accept that one or two members might need to escape from their stultifying environs. Nowadays, families are somewhat smaller, while horizons are infinitely larger. Parents realize, with great trepidation, that they might seldom see their children (and, eventually, grandchildren and beyond), and so they want their communities to offer as many opportunities as possible. I believe parents should teach their children that a vast, glorious world exists beyond their terraces, full of natural and man-made wonders. Our public schools were built according to a factory model, and are, by definition and intent, stultifying. Their focus will always be on quantifiable, aggregate results; they will always demand that students remain "on task," and "within the rubric." These schools do a remarkably good job, overall, but cannot be asked to function as agents of change.
I'm as contemptuous of New Age encomiums as the next hussy, but I've struggled unsuccessfully (thus far) to replace the one about being the change you want to see; we really can't effect cultural shifts overnight, and probably can't within our own lifetimes, but we can start with ourselves. Always allow your children to define their own tastes and interests, and accept them regardless of how tawdry, tacky, or tedious you may consider them. You may impose dress codes, where occasions or situations demand them, but don't try to impose your own taste or preferences, or impose conformity, unless it's truly necessary. If your daughter prefers billowy skirts and multi-colored high-tops to skinny jeans and Uggs, don't try to discourage this...or, worse, try to force her into pastel polo shirts and khakis. Youth is a time for experimentation, and parents should be eternally grateful if the only experimentation is sartorial. Kids are only capable of perceiving their lives in the immediate present; they do not understand that things will not always remain as they are. Suicide is a reasonable solution, when the airless, joyless, heartless, soulless confines of a school are all a child can see.
I believe that parents can and should keep their children home, when the situation at school becomes intolerable; I have, and I make no apologies for doing so. Our state mandates anti-bullying statutes for its school districts; had a legal showdown occurred, I believe we could have won, but it would have been a hollow victory, at best. These battles are long and costly, and my children would have already moved on. Parents should always know their state and local laws, and certainly invoke them when dealing with schools. Information technology has also allowed parents to maintain paper trails, yet somehow school authorities still persist in stating that the umpteenth e-mail is "the first I've heard about this." Parents cannot expect satisfaction or success from their efforts, but they shouldn't give up, either. If nothing else, they set an example of speaking truth to power for their children. In one of many missives to the Middle School Dean of Students, I flatly stated that I'd learned not to expect any response, much less action, from him, but I thought my son needed to know that I cared enough about him to try anyway. My parents are both long-departed, but I still harbor certain resentments toward them that will occasionally reduce me to tears - I have never forgiven them for declining to stand up for me, even in private, when I was treated cruelly or unfairly. I have been determined to let my own kids know that I will be there for them, even if nobody else is.
There, now...I've gotten that out of the way....
adt
Phoebe Prince was pretty and bright; others driven to suicide have been academically gifted or learning-disabled; longtime residents or newcomers; affluent or disadvantaged; from closeknit, intact families, or from fractured ones. They all were bullied systematically and unrelentingly, in front of adult authorities; when tragedy struck, those same authorities initially feigned ignorance, then, when confronted with evidence, claim to have taken appropriate measures. The South Hadley High School officials suspended one girl - for now, we'll accept as a mere coincidence that she was the daughter of Hispanic immigrants, unlike the other tormentors - the football captain, and his girlfriend, were certainly exempt from punishment. The greater community has subsequently demonized individuals, but won't consider the harsh reality - the demonization, itself, is the cause. To tolerate, is to condone, is to allow, and the school tolerated quotidian mistreatment of some students by others; as long as school operations were unimpeded, authorities had no cause for concern. Sharon Velasquez was penalized after disrupting a class, compelling a teacher to complain. Complaints from Phoebe Prince, her parents, and others, went unheeded.
American culture apotheosizes two competing myths: the small town and the frontier; when one disappoints, the other beckons. In earlier centuries, families could accept that one or two members might need to escape from their stultifying environs. Nowadays, families are somewhat smaller, while horizons are infinitely larger. Parents realize, with great trepidation, that they might seldom see their children (and, eventually, grandchildren and beyond), and so they want their communities to offer as many opportunities as possible. I believe parents should teach their children that a vast, glorious world exists beyond their terraces, full of natural and man-made wonders. Our public schools were built according to a factory model, and are, by definition and intent, stultifying. Their focus will always be on quantifiable, aggregate results; they will always demand that students remain "on task," and "within the rubric." These schools do a remarkably good job, overall, but cannot be asked to function as agents of change.
I'm as contemptuous of New Age encomiums as the next hussy, but I've struggled unsuccessfully (thus far) to replace the one about being the change you want to see; we really can't effect cultural shifts overnight, and probably can't within our own lifetimes, but we can start with ourselves. Always allow your children to define their own tastes and interests, and accept them regardless of how tawdry, tacky, or tedious you may consider them. You may impose dress codes, where occasions or situations demand them, but don't try to impose your own taste or preferences, or impose conformity, unless it's truly necessary. If your daughter prefers billowy skirts and multi-colored high-tops to skinny jeans and Uggs, don't try to discourage this...or, worse, try to force her into pastel polo shirts and khakis. Youth is a time for experimentation, and parents should be eternally grateful if the only experimentation is sartorial. Kids are only capable of perceiving their lives in the immediate present; they do not understand that things will not always remain as they are. Suicide is a reasonable solution, when the airless, joyless, heartless, soulless confines of a school are all a child can see.
I believe that parents can and should keep their children home, when the situation at school becomes intolerable; I have, and I make no apologies for doing so. Our state mandates anti-bullying statutes for its school districts; had a legal showdown occurred, I believe we could have won, but it would have been a hollow victory, at best. These battles are long and costly, and my children would have already moved on. Parents should always know their state and local laws, and certainly invoke them when dealing with schools. Information technology has also allowed parents to maintain paper trails, yet somehow school authorities still persist in stating that the umpteenth e-mail is "the first I've heard about this." Parents cannot expect satisfaction or success from their efforts, but they shouldn't give up, either. If nothing else, they set an example of speaking truth to power for their children. In one of many missives to the Middle School Dean of Students, I flatly stated that I'd learned not to expect any response, much less action, from him, but I thought my son needed to know that I cared enough about him to try anyway. My parents are both long-departed, but I still harbor certain resentments toward them that will occasionally reduce me to tears - I have never forgiven them for declining to stand up for me, even in private, when I was treated cruelly or unfairly. I have been determined to let my own kids know that I will be there for them, even if nobody else is.
There, now...I've gotten that out of the way....
adt
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Bully For Us, cont. - a few choice vignettes
Picture, if you will, a few snapshots....I've tried to select some where my own children were not targets, but they (and, in some instances, their mother) were able to bear extremely credible witness. These are several episodes that dramatize the ways in which adults aid and abet cruelty among schoolchildren.
3. When: 2005-2006 (sometime during school year); Where: Middle-School Cafeteria; Who: Fifth and Sixth-Grade Boys, plus some Teachers - "J----" is a fifth-grade boy, known for impulsive behavior, and often described as "annoying." Classmates have been known to slam him against the wall with impunity, in full view of teachers. On one occasion, two sixth graders, "D--" and "T---," invited him to sit with them, in order to escape the barrage of verbal harassment underway at his own, fifth-grade, table. A veteran teacher (whom, for disclosure's sake, I profess to admiring, in most instances) immediately ordered J. to sit back down. When T. & D. protested that J. was being bullied, all three boys were sent to the office; the teacher claimed to have seen "no signs of bullying." When T. reported this to his mother, she had to ask which planet a table-full of chuckling boys, next to one sobbing boy, was not a "sign of bullying" on.
Please pardon the format malfunctions, dear reader. I have not yet wrestled with the finer points of blogging for an actual readership. I hope to improve my products in the days to come.
I will address some wherefores and what-nows presently...
adt
- When: Springtime, 2004; Where: Schoolyard, during recess; Who: Assorted Fourth-Grade Boys - as is customary in these settings, play grew a little rough, and the trash-talk escalated between two boys, whom I will call "T----" and "B----." T. was renowned locally as a gifted polymath - an accomplished, versatile athlete , who also played several musical instruments, sang well, performed in local amateur theatrical productions, and earned excellent grades; B., on the other hand,lived with his divorced father, had repeated first grade, and was classified as a "special-needs" student. All the boys in immediate proximity to the dust-up alleged that T. threw the first punch; when they protested the teacher's response, which consisted of lovingly sending T. to the nurse's office, while marching B. to the Principal's, they were admonished to "stay out of it.
3. When: 2005-2006 (sometime during school year); Where: Middle-School Cafeteria; Who: Fifth and Sixth-Grade Boys, plus some Teachers - "J----" is a fifth-grade boy, known for impulsive behavior, and often described as "annoying." Classmates have been known to slam him against the wall with impunity, in full view of teachers. On one occasion, two sixth graders, "D--" and "T---," invited him to sit with them, in order to escape the barrage of verbal harassment underway at his own, fifth-grade, table. A veteran teacher (whom, for disclosure's sake, I profess to admiring, in most instances) immediately ordered J. to sit back down. When T. & D. protested that J. was being bullied, all three boys were sent to the office; the teacher claimed to have seen "no signs of bullying." When T. reported this to his mother, she had to ask which planet a table-full of chuckling boys, next to one sobbing boy, was not a "sign of bullying" on.
Please pardon the format malfunctions, dear reader. I have not yet wrestled with the finer points of blogging for an actual readership. I hope to improve my products in the days to come.
I will address some wherefores and what-nows presently...
adt
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Bully For Us!
I'm a post-menopausal (albeit barely), middle-aged, suburban mother of boys, and I've become morbidly preoccupied with the numbingly sad tale of Phoebe Prince. She is everygirl, and her story has seized the public imagination as others before it have failed to. I will not be the only parent to extemporize or fulminate about this, but the blogosphere exists so that every frustrated bloviator can release the vile and pestilent vapors that are congregating within. Bullying, and its entire range of intensity and toxicity, is not exclusive to small towns like my own (or like South Hadley, Massachusetts, where Phoebe ended her short life). The Japanese culture of shame has bred a lethal tradition of, literally, bullying children to death - with the full knowledge, and tacit complicity, of parents and adults. Parents are so humiliated when their children become the "nails that must be hammered down," that they sorrowfully accept the shame rather than battling the community assault. The Japanese example is extreme, but it reveals strains that persist within our own society. I believe that homogeneous, insular communities are especially susceptible to this pathology; Japan is a densely-populated, island nation, where conformity and adherence to norms are enshrined as essential to peace, prosperity, and even survival.
Rebecca Goldstein's novel, The Mind-Body Problem, presents the concept of "mattering zones," and how individuals are united or separated, ultimately, by "what matters" to them. I believe that communities will tend to marginalize outliers from their mattering zones, unless they proactively decide not to. I should have been bully-bait as a child - I was overweight, unathletic, and bookish, but my only protracted problems with bullies occurred during the summer in the superficially idyllic beachfront community where my family was fortunate enough to own a rambling, weathered, shingled house - the stuff most dreams are made of. In my working-class school district, most girls were not active in sports, and, despite my immersion in Nancy Drew and Little Women, I was as interested in clothes, boys, rock music, popular TV series, and the Boston Bruins, as the next chick. I could never summon up great enthusiasm for sailing or, more specifically, beetle-cat racing, which defined my world in July and August. I was a pariah, and could do nothing to change it.
Parents rarely help; my own family would simply admonish me to lose weight, if I complained that other kids called me fat (most summers, I was plump, but within life-insurers' "healthy-weight" guidelines). I would hear exhortations to try harder in the races I dreaded, although I sailed better than some girls who were accepted. I also couldn't understand why I should try to ingratiate myself with people whom I didn't like, and who didn't like me. My parents and older sisters heaped scorn on the one local woman who was actually colorful and eccentric - a transplant from mitteleuropa; if I dressed or disported as I liked, I was told I looked like "A----- F------," whose scarves and long skirts, and terpsichorean impulses were perceived as the source of the Alzheimer's disease she succumbed to in later years. I wholeheartedly preferred her comportment to the compact, joyless, women in their Peter-Pan-collared blouses and unflattering Bermuda shorts, who peopled our particular isle. She, unlike them, presented evidence of a heart an soul.
Once a child is labeled a loser, in tightly-knit enclaves like this, there is no escape. If I tried to fit in, I was ridiculed even more loudly for "trying to look cool." Conversely, some children are pronounced "cool" early - very early - usually, for social or athletic confidence; they may be losers in other settings, but will always have loyal fans. They will gravitate back to their summer communities, or hometowns, clinging to the status that the larger world denies them. Everybody encounters these local legends outside of their "mattering zones;" adulatory fanfare precedes the introduction, which is an inevitable letdown - he, or she, is an utterly unremarkable person, whose childhood associates still consider glamorous, hilarious, and preternaturally cool.
Everybody wants to matter somehow, somewhere, to someone. Children will always matter, beyond all reason and definition, to their parents; parents need to help their children identify, and occupy, their own "mattering zones." If a school (and its community at large) values team sports disproportionately, an unathletic child should not be pressured into conforming, especially when the standards are unrealizable. Parents should try to offer other lifelines to their children; it would be lovely to see schools offer a wider assortment of extracurricular activities, and for small towns to nurture community events apart from competitive sports, but most families cannot effect these changes single-handedly. In times of austerity, it's very difficult for many families to justify the expenses of music, dance, or art lessons, much less private schooling; unfortunately, these are the very avenues that allow a non-conforming child to "matter."
In the blue-collar public schools I attended, through eighth grade, I occasionally experienced minor harassment, or bullying of the traditional, Hollywood variety. There were some tough girls - they smoked, wore heavy make-up, cussed, carved their boyfriends' names into their arms with razorblades - I longed to be more like them, but they undoubtedly understood, better than I, what our power relationship was. I, and most of my friends, belonged to our gloomy city's elite, and any actual confrontation was bound to hurt the tough kids more than us. They could see the houses we lived in, and the resources that the school system lavished on its more promising and privileged students. My encounters with the "bad girls" were more comical than menacing, and provided fodder for mimicry among my peers ("ya think ya can take me?!?!ya flip bastahd!!"). No adult I knew would ever, implicitly or explicitly, take their side; their own parents would probably take straps to them, if the episodes were reported. Needless to say, my own parents never encouraged me to ingratiate myself with this particular cohort, nor did teachers exalt them as shining examples for others.
My own children spent their elementary and middle-school years in a radically different community. The odd working-class family was usually marginalized, and their kids were the only ones ever labeled as bullies; they were as likely to be prey as they were predators. Bullying is an abuse of power: to degrade and humiliate others simply to show that one can. We call it tyranny or despotism in political leaders; imperialism and colonialism in nations. The most insidious, lethal bullying is rarely physical in white, suburban America; it is the systematic, relentless marginalization, even dehumanization, of the young people who don't conform to prevailing expectations or requirements. My neighbors would never overtly ostracize newcomers for racial or ethnic reasons, but they would if they maintained their lawns or houses differently, or played exotic-sounding music loudly, or if their kids smelled funny. A kid who'd prefer listening to classical music or practicing Tai Ch'i to watching American Idol or playing Grand Theft Auto insults the tribe, and should expect to be eschewed. Imagine shunning football in West Texas, or hockey in Canada; this is iconoclasm, bordering on heresy - the errant child has repudiated the tribe's most cherished rituals and totems. Studious, techno-geeks learn to provide wide berth to jocks, and to accept their caste status. Some of the most talented athletes in my older son's class were distance runners, but their accomplishments outside the classroom were always ignored (they had been pronounced nerds in elementary school, of course), while the most mediocre team athletes (on consistently dreadful squads) were celebrated, and strutted triumphantly through the hallways, sporting their uniforms. The newcomer actually, at times, has a better chance at breaking social barriers than the kid who was labeled an outlier in early childhood. No external modifications (e.g. weight loss, wardrobe or hairstyle modifications, academic or extracurricular achievements, etc.) will alter the immutable caste assignment. One of my older son's few friends in town is a girl who qualified, as a sophomore, for the high school's varsity competition cheerleading squad, and is, by most unbiased standards, among its more attractive members, yet she has never been fully accepted by the "Alpha Girls" in town; she was proclaimed a misfit in elementary school, and remains one today.
I will have more to say on all of this, but especially about the inadequacies of our current public education establishment, and the fanciful expectations parents have regarding their schools' willingness or competence to confront the problem of bullying. Until then, love your children, and remind them that they have and deserve the undying, unconditional love of their parents and, if believers, of their Supreme Creator.
Rebecca Goldstein's novel, The Mind-Body Problem, presents the concept of "mattering zones," and how individuals are united or separated, ultimately, by "what matters" to them. I believe that communities will tend to marginalize outliers from their mattering zones, unless they proactively decide not to. I should have been bully-bait as a child - I was overweight, unathletic, and bookish, but my only protracted problems with bullies occurred during the summer in the superficially idyllic beachfront community where my family was fortunate enough to own a rambling, weathered, shingled house - the stuff most dreams are made of. In my working-class school district, most girls were not active in sports, and, despite my immersion in Nancy Drew and Little Women, I was as interested in clothes, boys, rock music, popular TV series, and the Boston Bruins, as the next chick. I could never summon up great enthusiasm for sailing or, more specifically, beetle-cat racing, which defined my world in July and August. I was a pariah, and could do nothing to change it.
Parents rarely help; my own family would simply admonish me to lose weight, if I complained that other kids called me fat (most summers, I was plump, but within life-insurers' "healthy-weight" guidelines). I would hear exhortations to try harder in the races I dreaded, although I sailed better than some girls who were accepted. I also couldn't understand why I should try to ingratiate myself with people whom I didn't like, and who didn't like me. My parents and older sisters heaped scorn on the one local woman who was actually colorful and eccentric - a transplant from mitteleuropa; if I dressed or disported as I liked, I was told I looked like "A----- F------," whose scarves and long skirts, and terpsichorean impulses were perceived as the source of the Alzheimer's disease she succumbed to in later years. I wholeheartedly preferred her comportment to the compact, joyless, women in their Peter-Pan-collared blouses and unflattering Bermuda shorts, who peopled our particular isle. She, unlike them, presented evidence of a heart an soul.
Once a child is labeled a loser, in tightly-knit enclaves like this, there is no escape. If I tried to fit in, I was ridiculed even more loudly for "trying to look cool." Conversely, some children are pronounced "cool" early - very early - usually, for social or athletic confidence; they may be losers in other settings, but will always have loyal fans. They will gravitate back to their summer communities, or hometowns, clinging to the status that the larger world denies them. Everybody encounters these local legends outside of their "mattering zones;" adulatory fanfare precedes the introduction, which is an inevitable letdown - he, or she, is an utterly unremarkable person, whose childhood associates still consider glamorous, hilarious, and preternaturally cool.
Everybody wants to matter somehow, somewhere, to someone. Children will always matter, beyond all reason and definition, to their parents; parents need to help their children identify, and occupy, their own "mattering zones." If a school (and its community at large) values team sports disproportionately, an unathletic child should not be pressured into conforming, especially when the standards are unrealizable. Parents should try to offer other lifelines to their children; it would be lovely to see schools offer a wider assortment of extracurricular activities, and for small towns to nurture community events apart from competitive sports, but most families cannot effect these changes single-handedly. In times of austerity, it's very difficult for many families to justify the expenses of music, dance, or art lessons, much less private schooling; unfortunately, these are the very avenues that allow a non-conforming child to "matter."
In the blue-collar public schools I attended, through eighth grade, I occasionally experienced minor harassment, or bullying of the traditional, Hollywood variety. There were some tough girls - they smoked, wore heavy make-up, cussed, carved their boyfriends' names into their arms with razorblades - I longed to be more like them, but they undoubtedly understood, better than I, what our power relationship was. I, and most of my friends, belonged to our gloomy city's elite, and any actual confrontation was bound to hurt the tough kids more than us. They could see the houses we lived in, and the resources that the school system lavished on its more promising and privileged students. My encounters with the "bad girls" were more comical than menacing, and provided fodder for mimicry among my peers ("ya think ya can take me?!?!ya flip bastahd!!"). No adult I knew would ever, implicitly or explicitly, take their side; their own parents would probably take straps to them, if the episodes were reported. Needless to say, my own parents never encouraged me to ingratiate myself with this particular cohort, nor did teachers exalt them as shining examples for others.
My own children spent their elementary and middle-school years in a radically different community. The odd working-class family was usually marginalized, and their kids were the only ones ever labeled as bullies; they were as likely to be prey as they were predators. Bullying is an abuse of power: to degrade and humiliate others simply to show that one can. We call it tyranny or despotism in political leaders; imperialism and colonialism in nations. The most insidious, lethal bullying is rarely physical in white, suburban America; it is the systematic, relentless marginalization, even dehumanization, of the young people who don't conform to prevailing expectations or requirements. My neighbors would never overtly ostracize newcomers for racial or ethnic reasons, but they would if they maintained their lawns or houses differently, or played exotic-sounding music loudly, or if their kids smelled funny. A kid who'd prefer listening to classical music or practicing Tai Ch'i to watching American Idol or playing Grand Theft Auto insults the tribe, and should expect to be eschewed. Imagine shunning football in West Texas, or hockey in Canada; this is iconoclasm, bordering on heresy - the errant child has repudiated the tribe's most cherished rituals and totems. Studious, techno-geeks learn to provide wide berth to jocks, and to accept their caste status. Some of the most talented athletes in my older son's class were distance runners, but their accomplishments outside the classroom were always ignored (they had been pronounced nerds in elementary school, of course), while the most mediocre team athletes (on consistently dreadful squads) were celebrated, and strutted triumphantly through the hallways, sporting their uniforms. The newcomer actually, at times, has a better chance at breaking social barriers than the kid who was labeled an outlier in early childhood. No external modifications (e.g. weight loss, wardrobe or hairstyle modifications, academic or extracurricular achievements, etc.) will alter the immutable caste assignment. One of my older son's few friends in town is a girl who qualified, as a sophomore, for the high school's varsity competition cheerleading squad, and is, by most unbiased standards, among its more attractive members, yet she has never been fully accepted by the "Alpha Girls" in town; she was proclaimed a misfit in elementary school, and remains one today.
I will have more to say on all of this, but especially about the inadequacies of our current public education establishment, and the fanciful expectations parents have regarding their schools' willingness or competence to confront the problem of bullying. Until then, love your children, and remind them that they have and deserve the undying, unconditional love of their parents and, if believers, of their Supreme Creator.
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