On Bullying (PoAC)
May. 4th, 2007 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageThere are many types of bullies, and many types of victims of bullying. I'm going to break down a few of the types with which I am most familiar, through seven years of teaching and far too long as the victim, all through school. I do not intend to cater to political correctness, so if you firmly believe that no victim ever does anything to bring bullying down on themselves, and you are not willing to be budged in that opinion by a voice of experience, you may want to skip this one. I've also used masculine pronouns throughout for simplicity's sake.
The first type of victim is the innocent victim of systemic bullying. This is the visible (or maybe not, but known) minority in a place where everyone sees the majority as, not only the majority, but also the way things should be. The teachers either don't see anything wrong with what's happening, making them bystanders at best, or they know that the fight they're considering is so huge, it will probably result in a ton of publicity and may cost them their jobs, so they don't do it.
The type of bully involved with this victim can be almost anybody, but most of the bullies will be people who are not seen as a stereotypical bully - that is, they're not gathering gangs of weaker, nasty kids around them, they're not after anyone's lunch money, and they aren't doing much that's really illegal. The usual method of bullying in this situation is a combination of social and verbal bullying, where the victim is made to feel horrible in many small ways that make him look like a whiner if he complains about them. This is what's happening when Jewish families are forced out of a majority Christian neighbourhood when they complain about prayers at graduation ceremonies, for example. The bullies generally feel self-righteous - they do not see themselves as bullies, even when they're engaging in patently illegal intimidation and harassment. I think this type of bullying is getting rarer than it used to be, but it still happens and it needs to be addressed both on a case-by-case basis and systemically.
The second type of victim is very similar but different in one or two key areas: it's the kid whose peculiarities really bug the other kids, and sometimes the teachers. The other kids don't see it as bullying, and to be fair, often it doesn't meet the definition of bullying because there is no clear power imbalance between the bully and the victim. Much of what the victim sees as him being picked on, is actually kids who are annoyed enough to lash out somehow just to get the bugging to stop. Teachers tend to deal with this on an incident-by-incident basis, for several reasons. First, the kids involved have a legitimate gripe. It's a pain in the neck to be constantly talked at, or poked, or even to have your visual or aural space disturbed constantly while trying to work. Second, the kids who are doing the bugging have limited skills for stopping it. The goal is to teach everyone how to recognize when they're being annoying, control the annoyances they're making, and control their own behaviour that responds to the annoyances of others. If, however, there's a stereotypical bully around, this kid is more likely to come in for more than their fair share of the bullying from him, too, because they have a ready-made excuse: he bugged me. I don't accept that excuse. The only behaviour you are able to control is your own, and nobody forced you to do/say that nasty thing, so you are responsible for your actions. I'll do my best to get the annoyance to stop, or move it out of your vicinity - but it's not an excuse.
The third type of victim is similar to the second type. The difference is actually really subtle: this is the kid who knows he is being annoying, and sets out to be annoying, and then cries foul when other kids react in ways that hurt him. Often, there's a reason for the kid to be annoying, but the kid is exaggerating his bad behaviour instead of attempting to control it, because he likes causing trouble. In a word, he's a shit-disturber. This kid is balancing delicately on the fence between bully and victim. He can be either at different times, and he can simply be causing, or the brunt of trouble, without the power imbalance that denotes true bullying. The best way to stop this is to let the kid know that you're on to him, watch him like a hawk, and minimize his opportunities to get at his preferred victims. Then you stroke his ego every chance you get, and point out how much nicer you are to deal with when they aren't raising the roof. I have a lot of experience with the shit-disturber. This is the kind of kid I was talking about yesterday. (Sorry, folks, that post is locked for a good reason.) The single worst thing you can do for this kind of kid is let him get away with it on the grounds that "he doesn't understand what he's doing." Sorry - that's not going to wash with me. These kids are smart. They avoid detection often for years before anyone figures out what's up or manages to consistently catch them at it. And if you confront them with a description of their behaviour, you'll get a little smirk of recognition: they know exactly what's going on. There will be the occasional real indignation, usually because someone has decided not to take any more stings, and chose to swat at the fly before he could do anything to them. But if you let them off the hook for it, they'll do what gets them the most gratification: keep stinging, because watching the mess unfold is fun, and the chances of any real consequences coming their way are slim. When I put the word "bullying" into quotation marks, I'm probably talking about this type, because it's often hard to distinguish situations he personally and purposefully instigated from ones that he didn't.
In addition to the shit-disturber and the casual systemic bully, there's the stereotypical lunch-stealing, gang-forming bully that you see so much of in children's literature and media. The fact is, this kind of bully is much rarer than the other types. He's also the hardest to deal with, because while he's the bully, he has a fabulous life. He gets to lord it over everyone, and no consequence we can use really touches him. If we suspend him, he gets some vacation time. In-school suspension? We have no one to supervise him. We can aim to get him into a special program for troubled kids, we can get him involved with the police or CAS, but in the meantime, he's terrorizing the class and there's not a whole lot we can do, other than watch him and nab him when it happens. This is complicated by the way he offers to let potential victims act as his enforcers, in exchange for his protection. Often, this kind of bully has been raised to see violence as the only way of expressing power, which means he sees teachers as inherently weak. He will pick on anyone who is obviously weaker than him, up to and including teachers. Sometimes, this kind of bully has social skills and makes conscious decisions when to use them and when not to. I think this kind of bully is usually sociopathic to some degree.
The last kind of victim can be anyone, and this kind is the most common. It's the kind I was, and the kind who most often, eventually, talks to a teacher - at least, they do now, when they've been educated about bullying and know that that's the right thing to do. It's a person who has a weakness, sometimes an obvious one and sometimes not, that makes them vulnerable to social and verbal bullying that teachers would try to stop if they knew it was happening. Most verbal sexual bullying falls under this heading, because pretty much all teens and preteens are confused about sex, so it's a weakness for most of them. A lot of racial bullying falls under this category, too, as does a lot of bullying about appearance or personality quirks of the non-annoying type. These victims are generally innocent of anything that set someone off - they're the victims of people who are out for power.
That's the run-down, from my perspective. I know many of you have experience with the nastier side of bullying. I'm sure some of you can find yourself, or the child you were, in the descriptions. Please don't assume that everyone's experience is the same, though.
The first type of victim is the innocent victim of systemic bullying. This is the visible (or maybe not, but known) minority in a place where everyone sees the majority as, not only the majority, but also the way things should be. The teachers either don't see anything wrong with what's happening, making them bystanders at best, or they know that the fight they're considering is so huge, it will probably result in a ton of publicity and may cost them their jobs, so they don't do it.
The type of bully involved with this victim can be almost anybody, but most of the bullies will be people who are not seen as a stereotypical bully - that is, they're not gathering gangs of weaker, nasty kids around them, they're not after anyone's lunch money, and they aren't doing much that's really illegal. The usual method of bullying in this situation is a combination of social and verbal bullying, where the victim is made to feel horrible in many small ways that make him look like a whiner if he complains about them. This is what's happening when Jewish families are forced out of a majority Christian neighbourhood when they complain about prayers at graduation ceremonies, for example. The bullies generally feel self-righteous - they do not see themselves as bullies, even when they're engaging in patently illegal intimidation and harassment. I think this type of bullying is getting rarer than it used to be, but it still happens and it needs to be addressed both on a case-by-case basis and systemically.
The second type of victim is very similar but different in one or two key areas: it's the kid whose peculiarities really bug the other kids, and sometimes the teachers. The other kids don't see it as bullying, and to be fair, often it doesn't meet the definition of bullying because there is no clear power imbalance between the bully and the victim. Much of what the victim sees as him being picked on, is actually kids who are annoyed enough to lash out somehow just to get the bugging to stop. Teachers tend to deal with this on an incident-by-incident basis, for several reasons. First, the kids involved have a legitimate gripe. It's a pain in the neck to be constantly talked at, or poked, or even to have your visual or aural space disturbed constantly while trying to work. Second, the kids who are doing the bugging have limited skills for stopping it. The goal is to teach everyone how to recognize when they're being annoying, control the annoyances they're making, and control their own behaviour that responds to the annoyances of others. If, however, there's a stereotypical bully around, this kid is more likely to come in for more than their fair share of the bullying from him, too, because they have a ready-made excuse: he bugged me. I don't accept that excuse. The only behaviour you are able to control is your own, and nobody forced you to do/say that nasty thing, so you are responsible for your actions. I'll do my best to get the annoyance to stop, or move it out of your vicinity - but it's not an excuse.
The third type of victim is similar to the second type. The difference is actually really subtle: this is the kid who knows he is being annoying, and sets out to be annoying, and then cries foul when other kids react in ways that hurt him. Often, there's a reason for the kid to be annoying, but the kid is exaggerating his bad behaviour instead of attempting to control it, because he likes causing trouble. In a word, he's a shit-disturber. This kid is balancing delicately on the fence between bully and victim. He can be either at different times, and he can simply be causing, or the brunt of trouble, without the power imbalance that denotes true bullying. The best way to stop this is to let the kid know that you're on to him, watch him like a hawk, and minimize his opportunities to get at his preferred victims. Then you stroke his ego every chance you get, and point out how much nicer you are to deal with when they aren't raising the roof. I have a lot of experience with the shit-disturber. This is the kind of kid I was talking about yesterday. (Sorry, folks, that post is locked for a good reason.) The single worst thing you can do for this kind of kid is let him get away with it on the grounds that "he doesn't understand what he's doing." Sorry - that's not going to wash with me. These kids are smart. They avoid detection often for years before anyone figures out what's up or manages to consistently catch them at it. And if you confront them with a description of their behaviour, you'll get a little smirk of recognition: they know exactly what's going on. There will be the occasional real indignation, usually because someone has decided not to take any more stings, and chose to swat at the fly before he could do anything to them. But if you let them off the hook for it, they'll do what gets them the most gratification: keep stinging, because watching the mess unfold is fun, and the chances of any real consequences coming their way are slim. When I put the word "bullying" into quotation marks, I'm probably talking about this type, because it's often hard to distinguish situations he personally and purposefully instigated from ones that he didn't.
In addition to the shit-disturber and the casual systemic bully, there's the stereotypical lunch-stealing, gang-forming bully that you see so much of in children's literature and media. The fact is, this kind of bully is much rarer than the other types. He's also the hardest to deal with, because while he's the bully, he has a fabulous life. He gets to lord it over everyone, and no consequence we can use really touches him. If we suspend him, he gets some vacation time. In-school suspension? We have no one to supervise him. We can aim to get him into a special program for troubled kids, we can get him involved with the police or CAS, but in the meantime, he's terrorizing the class and there's not a whole lot we can do, other than watch him and nab him when it happens. This is complicated by the way he offers to let potential victims act as his enforcers, in exchange for his protection. Often, this kind of bully has been raised to see violence as the only way of expressing power, which means he sees teachers as inherently weak. He will pick on anyone who is obviously weaker than him, up to and including teachers. Sometimes, this kind of bully has social skills and makes conscious decisions when to use them and when not to. I think this kind of bully is usually sociopathic to some degree.
The last kind of victim can be anyone, and this kind is the most common. It's the kind I was, and the kind who most often, eventually, talks to a teacher - at least, they do now, when they've been educated about bullying and know that that's the right thing to do. It's a person who has a weakness, sometimes an obvious one and sometimes not, that makes them vulnerable to social and verbal bullying that teachers would try to stop if they knew it was happening. Most verbal sexual bullying falls under this heading, because pretty much all teens and preteens are confused about sex, so it's a weakness for most of them. A lot of racial bullying falls under this category, too, as does a lot of bullying about appearance or personality quirks of the non-annoying type. These victims are generally innocent of anything that set someone off - they're the victims of people who are out for power.
That's the run-down, from my perspective. I know many of you have experience with the nastier side of bullying. I'm sure some of you can find yourself, or the child you were, in the descriptions. Please don't assume that everyone's experience is the same, though.