Pink Shirt Day is a great strategy for highlighting the troubling issue of bullying, but, as Peak reporter David Brindle pointed out in last week’s Peak Weekender, pink shirts will not fix the problem.
Bullying has been a problem for more than 100 years. Charles Dickens described the pain it caused little Oliver in Oliver Twist. School boards, schools, teachers and parents have been trying to stop it for just as long.
More recently, “observers” have been solicited and instructed to “tell the teacher.” Still, the bullying persists.
So, do we do more of the same? Find the bully and punish him or her, teach the victim to be assertive, give Sunday school-style lessons on empathy and moral behaviour? Do we continue to make war against the behaviour of bullying (the symptom), or are we going to search for the source of the problem with due diligence?
In my workshops, I ask adults if they have ever been bullied. About 60 per cent say yes. I ask them if they have ever bullied someone, and about 50 per cent admit to having been the bully.
Victims sometimes retaliate and become bullies themselves. A United States Secret Service study of major high school shootings revealed that perpetrators had been longtime victims of bullying before deciding to put an end to it with violence, including the Columbine High School case. These are not all bad people.
Recent research contradicts our idea that the bully is an anti-social misfit, perhaps suffering from family problems. Rather, they have found that the bully is often a high-profile member of the cool in-group.
A bully may actually be a role, a behaviour, and not an individual at all.
We often imagine the victim as a powerless misfit who needs to be more assertive, but a closer examination of chronic bullying situations reveals victims to be no such losers.
Inclusion Powell River probably has a better solution to the bullying problem than all of our efforts at identifying and punishing bullies: “Fostering a safe, inclusive community where everyone belongs.” I would like to add “where difference is respected.”
If we truly want to stop bullying, we need to have a clearer idea of how and why it happens. I suspect that bullying is not a case of bad guys against good guys. Bullying is complex behaviour and teachers and parents need to find more effective ways of managing it.
Carol Battaglio is a retired school counsellor and anti-bullying workshop presenter.
