October is National Bullying Awareness Month. I don’t know why it wasn’t pushed up to September, when school starts, but it’s good to have a month each year devoted to a perpetual and misunderstood problem.
I have noticed a trend among televised anti-bullying media. The articles start with a profile of how much bullying is going on in schools (estimates are that 15-25% of students are bullied), then a parent of a victim (living or dead by suicide) speaks up about stopping the madness, then the piece closes with a blurb about a forum or other event trying to target local bullying.
It’s a step in the right direction. Back in pre-segregation times, or in some current religious cultures, nobody has held a forum to stop racial violence or stood up against religious-based spousal abuse with the same degree of dedication. Nobody seems to look at film footage of crowds being pummelled by spray from fire hoses and call it bullying, but it was. And it was perpetrated by adults, openly, while other adults watched. In many cultures open forum bullying isn’t even blinked at. Maybe that’s why we can’t stop it in schools: we expect our children to grow into the adult culture we insist upon.
Deep inside us, there is an iota of brain matter that says it is okay to forcibly discomfort other people mentally or physically to align them with our own ideals. It starts in school when all students–regardless of problems such as income, family values or learning roadblocks like dyslexia or ADD–are held to a conformity that dictates every aspect of life. For instance, most schools claim they have no dress code, yet bullying targets visual perceptions of fashion conformity (just try talking your did into not buying those overpriced jeans). When lesson time comes, teachers who rely on lecture-based lessons may lose the attention of students who process visual aids more effectively.
Maybe instead of charter schools concentrating solely on subject specific learning goals, they should concentrate on the education of a population based on their ability to learn. A school that allows visual aid based learning for students who don’t process lectures well might help. Schools might also consider a dress code that may not require uniforms, but would focus on specific clothing items which could be afforded by all students and would not cause distractions like the student who comes to class in big-money fashion while another wears more cost-conscious garb.
We should also continue the trend toward tolerance. Once we have united our human race, we can start dealing with other problems more effectively without concentrating on differences that really don’t matter, such as religion, color, choice of pizza toppings or what cell phone upgrade you’re using.
And no, this topic is not exhausted yet.
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