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A heartrending saga of youth suicides has been unfolding in the Jefferson County Public School District in Kentucky. Ten-year-old Seven Bridges, who was frequently made fun of for his colostomy bag, was the 8th child to take his life this year, and the 11th in two years, as reported in the Louisville Patch. Bullying was the driving factor in this case and probably in most of the others as well. As the article informs us: “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a 2017 report that bullying and suicide are closely related.”
The article relates that not only suicide but violence among students have also been increasing in Jefferson County in recent years.
Three years ago, six families who sued the district in federal court said school officials hadn't protected their children from bullying so severe it put the kids in fear for their lives… and that they were battered until they were bloody....Gordon, the families' lawyer, called the school "a den of anarchy."
Seven’s parents are now following in those parents’ footsteps and suing Jefferson County.
The heightened tension and violence in the county call to mind the Netflix megahit series, 13 Reasons Why, a fictionalized portrayal of the devastation wreaked upon on a community by a school bullying lawsuit in the aftermath of a student suicide.
Jefferson County’s experience is not unique. Suicides rates among students have been skyrocketing throughout the nation in the past fifteen years, and so have lawsuits against schools for failing to prevent bullying. And as typically occurs when bullying is noted to be an escalating problem in a locality, Jefferson County is facing demands for intensified anti-bullying policies.
Are anti-bullying laws really the way to make schools safer? It seems that intensification of anti-bullying laws is followed by an intensification of the bullying problem and its attendant violence and suicide. Isn’t it about time people – especially social scientists – began questioning whether the solution isn’t actually part of the problem?
What if a medication made people sicker?
Let’s say your physician prescribes you a “gold standard” medication for a common medical condition. Once you begin taking it, your symptoms get worse. The doctor then ups the dosage. Your symptoms get even worse. The doctor again increases the dosage, and the symptoms become so bad that you consider taking your life to end your misery. Would either you or the doctor suggest raising the dosage another time? You would both conclude that the medication is exacerbating your condition and should be discontinued.
And let’s say that doctors all over the world were noticing that this highly touted medication rarely helps and often causes patients to get worse and even to commit violence or suicide? How long would it take before the medical establishment called for an investigation of the medication?
And if the investigations revealed that the researchers who produced and recommended the medication routinely put positive spins on the results of their studies and had roles with conflicting interests, how long would it take till class action lawsuits were filed against them?
The same thing is happening with bullying
This is precisely the situation regarding the treatment of bullying. A myriad of studies have shown that the most highly revered bullying prevention programs and the “best” state anti-bullying laws rarely produce more than a minor reduction in bullying and often result in an increase. Moreover, the researchers never tell us whether the programs or policies had any negative side effects or increased mortality. Many of the researchers also have personal stakes in the results of their research and sit on the government advisory boards on bullying. Yet after 20 years of failing policies, everyone, from the parents of suffering children to the leading experts in bullying, continues to call for intensification of failing anti-bullying policies!
Countless news articles have appeared over the years about parents suing schools for supposedly doing nothing to stop their children from being bullied. The schools, on their end, insist that they have zero-tolerance for bullying and are following mandated policies for dealing with it. Yet not one reporter has considered the possibility that the mandated policies are actually what’s making the bullying problem worse and even contributing to violence and suicide.
And rather than filing lawsuits against the anti-bullying industry that has foisted its largely ineffective (or worse) policies on the public, lawyers sue the schools that are required by law to implement their ineffectual mandated policies.
Why anti-bullying policies are counterproductive
It doesn’t require a genius to figure out that anti-bullying policies can be counterproductive. The writers of 13 Reasons Why demonstrated it, though they may be unaware of their accomplishment.
The reasons anti-bullying policies are making matters worse are too numerous to relate here, but the following are the two major ones.
One: Informing the school population how terribly harmful bullying is—and most bullying is verbal. The traditional “sticks and stones” slogan has been rejected and replaced with the conclusion, “but words can scar me forever/kill me/cause me permanent psychological damage.” Thus, kids have been encouraged to be hypersensitive to insults, so when they are insulted, they are more likely to get upset and angry. But getting upset and angry is what feeds bullying, so bullying continues and intensifies, often leading to physical aggression. Most fights begin with anger over insults.
Two: Instructing children and their parents that they must inform the school authorities when bullying occurs because the schools are responsible for making it stop. But when the school proceeds to follow mandated policies requiring them to conduct investigations, interrogations, trials and punishments, the situation immediately begins escalating. No one thinks they are the bad guy. So the accused bullies almost always deny wrongdoing and often blame their accuser of lying or of initiating the situation. They want revenge and are likely to do something even worse to the accuser. They may spread the word that the accuser is a snitch, which can be a social death sentence.
Is it any wonder that kids in Jefferson County were bloodied? As they say in prison, “Snitches get stitches.”
But the schools must also involve the parents. Each set of parents is likely to take their own child’s side against the other, so a feud between families often ensues. Furthermore, since the parents have been informed that the school has the power to make the bullying stop, but the bullying is getting worse, they naturally assume that the school is “doing nothing” to stop the bullying. They may go to the local news media or Facebook and publicly blame the school for the problem. The sympathetic news media and Facebook readers join in the condemnation of the school, and if the bullying still doesn’t get better, the parents may sue the school. Meanwhile, the school insists that it has a zero-tolerance policy for bullying and has been addressing the complaints. But no one believes the school because the bullying researchers have convinced us, in contraindication of their own research, that the schools have the power to end bullying.
Encouraging parents to sue
To make matters worse, some of the parents that sued Jefferson School District were awarded hefty monetary settlements.
The families reached confidential settlements late last year and the school district paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to television station WDRB, which retrieved the information from other court documents.
Knowledge of these payments confirm parents’ belief that schools are, indeed, responsible for stopping their children from being bullied, and increases their motivation to file complaints against the school. If the school fails to stop the bullying, at least the parents will get a nice financial compensation.
The district also made it easier to file bullying complaints:
Jefferson County Public Schools' new initiatives expand on an anti-bullying tip line started in the 2015-2016 school year that gave students and their parents a way to make toll-free calls to file a report online with the district's bullying prevention office.
So the District made it both easier and more profitable for parents to file bullying complaints against its schools, which they are required by law to immediately investigate. And when schools get involved investigating a bullying complaint – you guessed it – hostilities immediately intensify.
And we wonder why schools are becoming more dangerous.
Is there nothing to be done?
Does this mean that there is nothing that can be done to effectively reduce bullying and the resulting suicides and violence? Not at all. But what we need is a good psychological approach, not the failing law-enforcement approach that has been promoted by psychological researchers.
Life is replete with social challenges, including the ones we call bullying. In fact, there is more bullying going on in the workplace and within the family. Treating these challenges as crimes is counterproductive. Just as children go to school to learn to handle the academic challenges of life, they deserve to be taught how to handle the social challenges as well.
