Special Comment: "Bullies: A New Season Of War"
Good early Monday morning from northern Texas. I hope everyone is doing well. This is another Special Comment column that is posted both at my LiveJournal page and at the JustUsBoys Gay Community Forum Boards. Your thoughts are welcome at both sites: Fellow Jubbers, you know what to do, and LiveJournalers, click the Post A Comment link at the bottom of this article. My sincere thanks for taking time out of your day to read this.
A heads up here, that this commentary deals with some very serious and very sensitive subject matter. And as such, reader’s discretion is advised.
“When did we start sending our children off to school, like we send our young men off to war?” Those words were what I once heard in a video dealing with the subject of school bullying. The more I think about that statement, the more it bothers me about how much truth there is, there. The last part of that questions was left unsaid: “...like we send our young men off to war: not knowing whether they will come back to us still breathing, still happy, still whole.”
Ladies and Gentlemen: I submit to you that the average adult has no earthly clue, hasn’t the foggiest idea about what really goes on at the average school. Although the kids know perfectly well what goes on, and who it goes on with. My life experience has taught me that there are only two kinds of adults at a school, amongst the teachers, principal, and other school faculty: Those who honestly have no clue what’s going on, which is bad enough; and those who enable bullying, who know full well what is going on, but refuse to do anything about it. I’ll have a few choice words for those enablers in a moment.
I remember some of the horrors that went on, even in my time in middle and high school, back in the 90s. It went beyond breaking into lockers and stealing books, spitting in peoples faces, and maliciously setting fellow students up to take a fall. There was even a rumor about a fellow student who got molested in their sleep by another student while on a nighttime school-sponsored bus trip.
Let us not forget the children and teens who have unfortunately resorted to taking their own lives, simply because they could no longer deal with the abuse, mistreatment, and frankly, torture induced upon them by fellow classmates. And then, we as a community of adults who rightly care about the children and teens in our lives collectively scratch our heads and wonder what on earth went so wrong, what on earth was so awful that this young person felt he or she couldn’t come to the adults in their life?
I lay the blame squarely on the adults in the young person’s life who are apparently asleep at the wheel - who either don’t know what’s going on, or who know, but willfully ignore the trouble and the warning signs.
And to the “Kids will be kids” crowd, who basically dredge up the same tired, and frankly, dangerous argument that kids should basically be allowed to do what they want to whom ever they want: Talk to some of the kids in your life about who gets bullied in school, and ask them about what kind of things are being done to the victim. Better yet, spend a little while on YouTube, looking up videos about bullies and what they do to their victims.
If you and I were to do some of those things to one another out in the street, I guarantee you some person looking on would be on their cell phone to 911, sending for the police. But when one kid almost beats another kid senseless, do you mean to tell me that that’s OK with you? Kids will be kids, right? If one adult were to do that to another adult, we call that “assault”. When one kid steals another kid’s things out of their locker, some would call that, “kids will be kids”. If one adult were to do that to another adult, we call that either “vandalism” or “theft”. When one kid makes a threat against another, some would call that, “kids will be kids”. If one adult were to do that to another adult, we typically file that under H for “harassment”. Don’t sit here and tell me we don’t have human rights abuses in the United States Of America. Human rights abuses go on every day, here. Just unreported.
To the adults (both parents and teachers) who willfully aid and abed, and let this sort of thing go on unchecked: have you no decency? Have you no shame? You know that bullying is taking place on your watch, yet you do nothing to try and stop it? I’m going to say this as plainly and as clearly as I know how: You are an enabler of child abuse. You are no better than the people we have locked up in prison.
While we are just starting to do so, I really wish we, on a collective, societal level, would recognize bullying for the form of child abuse it really is. Because once we do, we recognize bullying for the true threat to our children that it is. And act accordingly.
Let me leave you with this final thought on bullies who aren’t taught - by force, if necessary - to stop hurting others. Those bully kids and teens eventually grow up. And when they do, and they haven’t been taught to stop and change their ways, they will continue to hurt and harass (and do worse to) other people. Today’s bullies, tomorrow’s convicts. ...Tomorrow’s murderers, tomorrow’s rapists, tomorrow’s armed robbers, tomorrow’s thugs. Today’s bullies, tomorrow’s criminals.
Good night, and good luck.