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First, let me say, I believe this is one of the most important articles I have read on bullying.
As a professional who has been involved with more than one antibullying program, as the author of a University Press book on bullying as well as an elementary school intervention, and as a speaker and a consultant on school action plans, I have had occasion to witness, first hand, the implementation of a variety of methods, protocols, workshops, "activities," and behavioral codes.
And much of what Kalman reports is absolutely correct—the emperor has no new clothes.
Consider zero-tolerance policies. They were never capable of addressing the real threatening behavior—the public humiliations—but were instead focused on keeping schools safe from physical violence and rampages. After much expense and some very public gaffes, many quietly faded away. Other programs implemented new behavioral codes that students responded to as if they were new Xbox challenges, finding creative ways to circumvent—if not subvert—their intent. And last, a number of tuition-driven schools have a conflict of interest when it comes to policing the children of individuals who sign their paychecks. Egregious infractions are made an example of, but it is ‘business as usual’ under the radar, where cruelties continue to mushroom and flourish.
That having been said, we must take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Juxtaposing the emergence of bullying as a contemporary social problem against the emergence of spousal abuse as a social problem during the 60's and 70's turns up some instructive parallels.
During the heyday of civil rights, domestic violence was elevated to the status of “social problem,” though wife battering and spousal abuse was hardly new.
Various state courts had been adjudicating issues of domestic violence for over 150 years.
What was new was awareness, reportage, and the social championing of the abused.
As more and more issues came to light, as support groups formed, petitions were signed, policies changed, and data collected.
But what did that data reflect?
An increase in spousal battering (bullying)—or an increase in outcry and reportage?
And, for the record, what exactly constituted domestic abuse (bullying)?
Given the challenges that these two simple questions put to the facts and figures, we can only surmise that during the ‘60s it would have been a mistake to take the numbers suggested by the data as an accurate measure of whether outcry against domestic violence was (in)effectual.
I suggest we move forward with equal caution when interpreting the data on antibullying initiatives.
More than anything, raising awareness is causing new norms to sink into the cultural consciousness, something that will not happen, however, overnight.
In the meantime, these expensive, less-than-optimal interventions must, themselves, be seen as the advance guard—action plans that failed under fire, but must be reconfigured in order for us to continue moving forward and paving the way for change to both consciousness and the status quo. In order to shift cultural norms by a fraction of an inch, these programs do overreach.
Only time will shake out the overreaching and teach us how to curtail social aggressiveness when all other manner of competition is endorsed by our culture. We need to learn the following:
How to shore up tolerance in our students when child-centered parenting may be incubating narcissistic tendencies
How to negotiate rejection when our brains may be hard-wired with “belongingness needs”
How to process the pain of humiliation in a culture that itself denies and turns away from shame.
