The Bullying Issue
The world runs on authority, on force. The army, the police, schools, corporate
hierarchies, parenting, parenting, parenting. Family structure. Punishment and
discipline is a system by where we control unwanted behaviour by force, and
punishment, which, punishment is defined as dishing out unpleasantness to the
misbehavers in order to motivate them to change their ways.
This
is pretty much a definition of bullying. The bully punishes the victim. The
bully justifies this punishment by listing the victims’ misbehaviours, or the
victims' family's, or race's, or faith's misbehaviours.
This
is punishing behaviour, this is bullies doing what their parents did, doing
what the police do, I mean the bully’s behavior is VERY CLOSE to that, closer
than any of us would like to think. I'm saying the bully feels he is doing what
he sees around him, that in the parlance of some schools of psychology, the
bully is getting his power back, after some authority figure has taken his
power from him.
So,
parents, schools going to the bully kids and telling them to stop is a joke to
these kids. They see it as just more 'do as I say, not as I do.' So do I, for
that matter. I, for one, would love to see someone ask the kids if I’m right
about that. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the kids.
Parents
don’t think they are bullying. We have a consensus about what is acceptable
punishing behavior, and we really cannot seem to draw parallels with our
legitimate punishments and other similar behaviours. If we can’t, if we won’t
see how bullying is an extension, an extrapolation of our punishing ways, then
there is very little hope that any of our conversation about bullying, any of
our attempts to combat it will get any traction, very little hope of our ever
solving a problem if we refuse to understand it in the first place. Surely,
someone has noticed that speeches that don’t acknowledge this difficult truth
have not had any dramatic effect on the bullying phenomenon? I think any
approach that doesn’t include this idea would be considered empty and hopeless,
at least to any group that lives under threat or reality of punishment – like our
kids.
Long and short, if we don't stop ‘bullying’
our kids at home, we will never stop their bullying, that should be obvious. I
don’t know why it isn’t.
Many
nations have outlawed corporal punishment, in Canada, we are in the process of
outlawing it, and I can see the next step, that we will someday realize that
the damage caused by punishing behaviours generally outweigh any benefit, and
when we all stop anything like bullying, so will our kids. Until then, we will
fight this bullying thing in vain, fighting it in the schools, and causing it
at home.
So
now, there are programs, task forces, plans and research, all government money
spent to figure out this embarrassing problem, and if we don't try to stop
people from the use of punishment – corporal and otherwise - on our kids at
home, we are wasting all those resources. And that is a sad, cruel joke, one
that the parents don’t understand, and only our kids are laughing about. Not in
a good way.
