Bullies

 Every time there's a school shooting, or to some extent, shootings in similar settings, I think about bullies.  In the school shootings, there has almost always been the element bullying that went too far and the bullied kids finally fight back.  As those bullied kids are just kids, they are not adults, and not equipped to adequately deal with those feelings, or having to deal with being bullied.

In one mass shooting, the shooter was a person that felt humiliated, isolated, and unfairly treated in the work place.  As an adult, he should've been able to deal with this, but that's not always the case.  I suspect that there are a lot more cases of people being mistreated at work, than most of us realize.  We assume they are isolated cases, but from my own experience (and observation), I feel that it goes on a lot more and in most companies.

I don't feel that the schools adequately protect kids from bullying.  They pay lip service to the subject, and have "anti-bullying" campaigns, but the truth is, the teachers and school administrators hold bullying out at arms length and avoid it when it's real and not just words; not just a campaign; not just a slogan.

I remember my own step son was bullied when he was school.  Despite the fact that he was bigger than most of the other kids, they learned that he was mild mannered and would avoid confrontation.  He would back down, and in some cases, run to get away from them.  This just emboldened the bullies and he became one of their favorite targets at the school.  And despite his pleas to teachers and the school principal, they did nothing about it.  They claimed they couldn't do anything unless they caught them in the act.  So they wouldn't address it.

In one case, my wife and I bought him a new coat, because it was winter and he needed a new coat.  Within a day or two of him having the coat, the bullies had taken his coat, and drenched it in a toilet.

Again, the teachers did nothing.  The principal did nothing.

As I was a new step dad, and trying to let my wife handle this, as it was her son, it became clear to me that the female perspective wasn't working.  She had been telling him that violence doesn't solve conflict.

I sat down with him and told him that in most cases, if you have a conflict with someone at school. violence is not the first answer.  You try to resolve conflict in other ways.  But I told him that the world was full of bullies, even in the adult world, and bullies don't stop with just words.  They keep victimizing because they are cowards, and so to make themselves feel powerful, they need a victim.  and they search for a victim, until they find one that wont fight back.  This makes them feel powerful, and it makes them feel safe because the victim wont fight back.

So I told him to get a stick or something, and the next time they bully him, to use the stick as a weapon.  I told him that he wasn't to just go crazy on them, but that once he hurt them, and they back off, that should be enough.

The next day, he did just as I said, and we got a call from the school.  They were going to punish our son and suspend him for hurting the bullies.  I stood up for him in front of the principal.  I confronted him for not doing anything when he was the victim, but now all the sudden he's ready to suspend our son for defending himself.

I said, now all the sudden you're ready to take their word for it, that our son hurt them, but you weren't willing to take his word for it on repeated occasions when he was the victim.

I said that if they suspended our son, I would sue the school, the city, and each of the teachers and the principal individually.

Needless to say, he wasn't suspended after all.  But also, he wasn't bullied by those kids anymore either.

It just gets me that this stuff goes on, and the kids get no help from the adults, but once the victim strikes back, all the sudden the teachers want to step in.  It just doesn't sit right with me, but I saw it first hand when I was in school.

 I remember when I was in high school, racial tension was a thing.  I tried to stay out of all that stuff.  I treated everyone the same, and although I wasn't a popular kid, I managed to treat everyone right and equal, as best I could.  So I was taken aback when at one point between classes, I was on the 3rd or forth floor of my school building (I don't remember which floor), and close to when the bell would ring and we were all supposed to get to our next class, I was attacked by two black kids.  Both were smaller guys like myself, and just wanted to feel big by attacking someone that was small and they figured couldn't fight back.  They tried to push me down the stairs at some point, but I was strong enough and was able to fight back.  I think I was tougher than they expected.

In the end, the two ran when the bell rang, and I was gathering my books and trying to fix my shirt that had been torn in the altercation.  Despite the yelling and noise that went on during the fight, no teacher came out to help.  However, while I was picking up books and papers, suddenly, three teachers opened their classroom doors and walked out in the hall and acted like they had no idea what had just happened.

What a joke.  Those cowards waited until the noise was over and they knew it was safe.  That's the truth of the matter.  I saw how it was then, and I see how it is now, years later.  And I'm reminded of this every time there's a school shooting, and the teachers say when being interviewed "I had no idea that bullying was going on in our school".

Jeez.  What do you mean you didn't know bullying was going on in your school?  What school did you go to when you were growing up?  Because everyone that I know that went to a public school, knew that bullying was going on.  There's no way that these adults escaped that experience.  Even if they weren't personally bullied themselves when they were kids, they had to have witnessed it.  They had to know someone that was bullied.  No one escapes it completely.

My personal feeling is that when educators are in college working on a degree in education, there should be some attention paid to conflict resolution.  There needs to at least be an attempt to educate them on how to minimize this behavior.  I know that not all bullying will be stopped, but it would help reduce it, and certainly help reduce the worst cases of it.

I'm saddened sometimes, when I hear of bullying, but I'm also frustrated at hearing some of the pat answers for it, such as "violence doesn't solve disagreements".  I beg to differ.  In the case of a bully that has low self esteem and needs a victim to feel powerful, violence does help.  In fact, it's often the only thing that will get the bully (a coward) to stop.

I think I could go on further on this subject, as I went through a lot of bullying over the years.  I was a small kid in comparison to others my age.  I only started growing to be a little shorter than average, when I was in high school.  So it had reduced due to my size.  The bullies, in most cases, wanted someone a little smaller than me, for their own safety.

One thing that got me is that when I was in college, I thought the bullying would stop.  It didn't.  I was able to stop the physical bullying with violence.  The bullies just didn't want to risk further injuries after what I did to them the first time.  But other bullies were a little more sophisticated and used words and rumor and social outcasting as a form of bullying.  And I saw that kind of bullying the rest of my life.