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Thursday, 20 November 2014

Bullying

I've seen a lot of this image being circulated on Facebook and can I say that it really bugs me that kids have to resort to social media because bullies/parents/teachers/schools/whatever just don't want to listen or step in?


I mean, this is 2014. We really should have evolved beyond bulling, sexism, racism, homophobia... all these hateful things. Then I think, this is the generation that is going to be so technologically integrated that they won't know what to do with a pencil and here they are growing up in a world where trolls seemingly have so much power.

Going back to my days at primary school - I got teased. I'd just moved here from England and admittedly, I had a pretty squeaky voice that was hard to understand with my thick accent. So I learnt to be quiet unless spoken to.



A major bullying incident at our school was someone in my grade who had just moved here from Ireland. His accent wasn't too bad but he had a stereotypical Irish name, lots of freckles and a mini afro. I was never really in his social circle so I had no idea how bad it got but one day we all came in to class and they staged this syrupy sweet Kumbaya sort of thing.

The real kicker was that it focused on how HE hadn't fit in here but WE were opening our arms to him. Like, HE was the problem and we were graciously solving it. I think the intervention of sorts only came about because the bullying became physical and he had finally struck back in the same way. Also, all of his bullies played major roles in this reconciliation. Literally, all the people who had bullied this kid, were the ones playing this out.

I remember watching him and thinking that he looked like a rabbit who'd been put into a den of starving dogs. Those eyes that just didn't know whether to believe what was happening or if it was all part of a deeper, crueler, elaborate trick - haunted me.

He turned out alright as far as I know. He became one of the popular/loud kids.

To this day, I don't know whether the kids felt genuinely sorry or if the teachers stepped in and made them hold that session. The next one was when one of our classmates was diagnosed with Leukaemia and subsequently had to have chemotherapy. Back in those days, we still had Sisters at our school, only about two or three but still. One of them, initially scared me because she could get angry fast but as I grew up I realised that there was a method to her anger and it was all reasonable.

She was the one who took us all aside and spoke to us about it.
She said:  'Don't you dare make fun of him for how he looks. He's still the same boy you all know and you will treat him the same or I will hear about it.'
It wasn't an outright threat as such, but it was just there - a fact - don't pick on this kid.

I don't believe any of us did. He looked extremely different when he returned - it wasn't just that he had no hair - but he had a loyal group of friends that backed him up and he had kept in contact with us via letters while he was in the hospital so we had an idea of what was happening, it wasn't as if he just showed up one day with a bald head and a strange eye.

I think the way the Sister handled this was excellent. This is what more teachers need to be able to do - and they need to be backed up by their school. No one wants to get involved with bullying - these days there's so much that can go wrong like being sued, defamed on line etc. But the problem is that these things are all things that mainly happen AFTER the kid's already been bullied.

These days this can include anything like shoving, taunting, on line teasing, outright defaming on line, and so on. If people can actually step in before things get too bad - AND be  backed up by the school - then maybe things wouldn't get so bad. I know that's very optimistic but it's true. Businesses and schools all have procedures they need to follow to get things done - if bullying procedures were followed instead of just preached we'd have a much better school system.

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