A global report on school violence identifies bullying as the biggest problem in US school playgrounds.
Slut. Fat. Gay. Those are some common words – weapons – America’s youth uses to target each other in bullying.
A global report released on Monday by children’s development organisation Plan International gauges the economic impact of school violence, which it categorised as corporal punishment, sexual abuse and bullying.
The US pays a high price for its youth violence, both in and out of schools. Plan estimated the total cost of all forms of youth violence at $158bn (£100bn).
One wonders why BBC chooses to focus on the issue of bullying in the schoolgrounds of the United States, as if there were not enough issues in their own schools to talk about, including bullies.
This is treated as something new? It was a common feature back in the early ’60s when I was repeatedly bullied — glasses broken, books dumped out of my briefcase, etc — for being what would now be called a geek.
When I asked my father, a 20-year military man, what to do about it, he said, “If I ever hear of you starting a fight, you’re gonna be in a world of trouble, but if somebody else starts it, feel free to [i]finish[/i] it. Oh, and by the way … here’s a few good ways to finish a fight in a hurry.”
After a week I was never bothered again.
Bart,
The difference now is that if you defend yourself, you’re punished just the same as if you were the bully. Thus, the bullies are empowered and the other kids feel helpless. No good kid wants a suspension or worse on his or her record; the bullies couldn’t care less. That’s why some kids fall into such despair over being bullied and see the situation as hopeless.
Add in all of the instant communication that makes humiliation relentless and public and the fact that we’re a less civil society than we were in the early ’60s and it can become intolerable quickly. There was even the case of the mother who posed as a teen-ager and used the internet to bully a young girl who had a spat with her daughter. The girl committed suicide.
We have a problem. It’s not enough to say it’s always gone on; it needs to stop.
Let me say that I was highly bullied in middle school in the mid-90’s by people I had previously called friends. It is a horrible place to be. It does not surprise me that people commit suicide over it (it was something that I contemplated at the time).
Here’s the “but.” The Church has a great opportunity here to speak into children’s lives and let them know God’s love and that the things bullying says are lies that do not describe who God created them as, which would be described better as ‘beloved by God.’ I have to say it is an opportunity for the Church to reach out to those who are hurting because of lies and tell them the goodness of God’s truth.
The solution: resurrect Charles Atlas and bring him into the schools!
Yes David, because the Christian response to bullying should be ‘get fit, and pound the bullies into the ground’… So much for the whole “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,’ really we should all just make sure the bullies never bully again by force and violence.
Gotta jump back in.
To strike someone on the right cheek requires a backhand stroke. That is how slaves were struck. When Christ says “offer him your left cheek” it poses a horrible dilemma for the aggressor.
If he strikes you with a full fist, which is how the left cheek is struck, he is doing so as an [i]equal[/i], and you have the right to defend yourself. If he demurs, he has shown himself to be a coward.
Jesus is telling us to call out the aggressors in our lives.
#6, I was joking actually, but I do believe kids need to be taught to stand up for themselves, i.e. be assertive to counter the bully’s aggression. I am not advocating physical violence, unless as an absolute last resort as self-defense.
The current “solutions” to bullying often have unintended and bad consequences. Telling the teacher, parents calling the school non-stop, raising awareness publicly that a particular kid is bullied, etc, all play into the hands of the bully and just provide more fodder for teasing. It is not PC to suggest it, but a bullying expert that I met once suggested that most of the responsibility in ending bullying lies with the kid being bullied. In other words, these kids need empowered, not bailed out or protected by mommy or daddy. Teachers can, he said, identify bullies and separate them in the seating chart, although he pointed out that usually the bullies are the bright kids who get a lot of pressure at home, and they are very good at hiding their evil work from teachers. This expert even recommended taking self-defense classes if necessary to end physical bullying.
Bart, I’ve checked a number of commentaries on this in the past, and none interprets the turning of the cheek as challenging the person’s conscience, and saying that a Christian has the ‘right to defend yourself.’ In fact, the turning offers submission and is instead a witness that Christ is working in us. It is also the case that the Pharisees had taken the ‘eye for an eye’ passage, which was meant for public retaliation of a proved wrong, and turned it into a private retaliation which Jesus is here correcting, going on to the section about love your enemies. The witness of Church history speaks just as loudly in that throughout the Centuries, the theologians, including Martin Luther among others, denounced personal retaliation.
BTW, that group Luther was in was committed to just-war theory, they were not pacifists and the issue of protecting another person with force is a different issue to talk about.
David, I understand you were joking, but the fact is that is how a lot of people think and it is, in fact, in a Christian-ethic problematic. As far as the other thoughts go, unfortunately we live in a broken world and the right thing may not always get us the results we want. When I was bullied in middle school, it was partially because they knew that I had recently gotten my black belt in Karate so I could have easily taken them down. The reason I never did? I knew enough of the Sermon on the mount that as much as it hurt to not retaliate and as good as it may have made me feel to retaliate and possibly even get me to stop, I knew it was wrong.
And this is where I’ll end because the Church’s offering is not in how to take care of the bully to keep him from ever doing it again (although justice through proper channels can do this and I would say that this is Biblical) but the Christian witness is to who God is and who God has said each person is, His beloved whom he will strengthen. Never underestimate the witness of not fighting back, because, especially with the issues of bullying, it will be our witness to Christ’s love, not retaliation, that wins people for God, which is what we, as Christians are called to, not personal retribution.