The newspapers have been full of commentaries in the past couple of weeks after a teenage girl came to the media with her story of being bullied by a gang of girls at school. It started with name calling and ended with an assault on a school bus. Until she “outed” the school in the media, very little to nothing was done by the adults who are charged with ensuring her security and safety at school, including the bus driver.
This has launched a torrent of e-mail of similar stories about other schools and other bullies.
I can remember being bullied on about three occasions during my public school days in the 1950s. Yes, folks, bullying is not a new phenomenon. And you never forget these incidents.
The first one occurred in kindergarten, when a bigger boy with three or so accomplices targeted me after school and pushed me to ground every day. One day I decided to push back, thinking he would back off. But he didn’t. So the next day, I tried a new tactic. I went up to him in class and asked him why he always wanted to fight me and why not just be friends? To my surprise he said OK. And throughout the rest of the school year we were good friends.
The next one occurred in the second grade. A boy who was not in my class and with whom I had never had any previous contact came up to me and picked a fight by shoving me around, for no reason. He was no bigger than me and I did not feel fear. Also, he did not come at me with cohorts. So I fought back and we ended up rolling around on the ground. This attracted a crowd.
Interestingly, I don’t remember the crowd as being friends with either of us. They didn’t know my name or his. What they did was cheer on the guy in the long pants to beat up the guy in the shorts. I was the one in the shorts. The fight ended in a draw with both of us too winded to continue and the crowd dispersed.
But I remember feeling that long pants were associated with manliness and shorts with wimps. For years and years after that I refused to wear shorts, no matter how hot the weather.
The last one happened in the seventh grade when I was about 12 years of age.
On the weekends I used to walk through the school grounds on my way to visit a friend. There were always 20 or so boys about my age playing ball hockey on the paved area. A small group of these hockey players began to taunt me for no good reason. I just ignored them. As each Saturday rolled around and as I walked by, the name-calling increased. It was always started by one boy and then the others would jump in like a chorus.
Then one Saturday, the smallest one in the group actually stepped in front of me holding his hockey stick as if he were going to hit me and dared me to fight him. I wasn’t a big person, but this kid I could have squashed like a bug, hockey stick and all. His bravery was based on the gang who were backing him up and who I believed would join in on his side if I should get the upper hand. I told him I would have to go home and get my hockey stick and managed to extract myself from danger. But as I left the school yard,I remember thinking that this had to stop because it was just going to get worse.
One week later, I was on the field behind the school with a mob of boys playing a game we used to call “kick, catch and run”. Later, I learned it was really rugby. But, we played it without tackling.
Except, the boy who was the ringleader of the bullying group was playing on the other team and every time I got the ball and ran, he would try to trip me or knock me down. Again, I just ignored this.
When he saw that he was getting no reaction from me. He stayed back after a scrimmage and started to fight me. I just lost it and unloaded on him. I pounded him until he was helpless on the ground. He was bleeding from his nose and his mouth. At this point the other players came back to question the fight. I said nothing, having made my point, and just walked away from the field. I saw the others get him to his feet and help him get home.
The next weekend when I came through the school ground nobody taunted me. The little guy who had challenged me to a fight looked at me with new respect in his eyes. The ringleader never said another word to me the entire school year.
That is what taught me the lessons worth knowing in dealing with bullies. You have to fight back and you have to do it early in the game when you recognize a bullying pattern. You also have to go after the ringleader because that is the one who provides the courage to the others.
In fighting back you are conquering your fear and you will feel a lot better about yourself, even if you don’t win the fight.
I recall reading a James Michener novel in which one of the characters says that he knows when he gets into a fight that he may not win it, but he is going to make damn sure that the other guy knows he has been in a fight – he will not walk away without having shed some blood. I carried that idea in my head for many years and it always gave me courage to face down those who wanted to fight me.
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label schools. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2009
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I swear, you couldn't make this up if you tried
Most people in this nation do not object to paying taxes when they can see a return for their money in the form of public infrastructure and public programs that benefit society generally, even if they may not be directly beneficial to the individual taxpayer. It is when you see your taxes squandered to pay salaries to people to think up things like the following that you start to cheer on the revolutionaries and the anarchists.
The Toronto District School Board has issued guidelines (invented and written by bureaucrats) to its teachers cautioning about the problems associated with Halloween. First Christmas, now every child's favourite day, Halloween. Unless you are a dentist, who knew there were problems with Halloween? Here is the TDSB's advice:
1. Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.
2. Peer and social/media consumer pressures target all children and their families as consumers of costumes, makeup, food products, etc. Many students and their families can feel this socio-economic marginalization keenly.
3. The images and icons associated with consumer-oriented Halloween can come into conflict with some students' and their families' religious beliefs.
4. The food products that are marketed heavily during the Halloween period can come into conflict with students' and their families' dietary habits.
5. Some students have had first-hand traumatic experiences of violence that make talking about death, ghosts, etc., extremely alienating.
6. Many recently arrived students in our schools share no background cultural knowledge of trick-or-treating or the commercialization of death as 'fun.'
A few comments on the foregoing.
1. Wicca is a modern panthestic religion that started up in the 1950s and that borrows from earlier pagan ideas (all modern religions are derivative). Wicca is associated with magic and witchcraft. Halloween was a pagan celtic celebration intended to ward off evil spirits that would harm agriculture, and had nothing to do with witchcraft. The only link between Wicca and Halloween is this connection to paganism and a witch costume being a popular choice for Halloween.
There might be approximately 15,000 Wiccans in Canada (extrapolating from U.S. statistics). Their numbers are so few that they do not even rate a separate religious category in the Canadian census statistics.
2. What does the school have to do with the commercial marketing of products and costumes associated with Halloween, anymore than it has to do with the marketing of crappy sugar laden breakfast cereals and expensive plastic action figures on children's television programming? Dealing with these things is the purview of the family. Halloween costumes can be very cheaply put together from most stuff found around the home.
3. Public schools are supposed to be secular. It is the parents who should decide how they should explain social/religious conflicts (including Halloween) to their children.
4. Why do teachers need to be told about candies and diets, are they presumed to be brain dead by their employers?
5. What does violence have to do with Halloween -- it is not a celebration of violence -- Easter and Passover fill that bill nicely. It is a good thing to talk about ghosts and death in the classroom, because any child that reacts in the way the TDSB thinks they will, obviously should be earmarked for trauma counselling.
6. Isn't the whole point of Canadian schooling to teach children about Canada's culture, heritage, history and traditions? Are we not trying to integrate newcomers into our society? How do we do that if we do not tell them about the things we celebrate.
At least give TDSB credit for finally remembering in its last edict that the point of Halloween is that children can dress up in silly costumes and have some FUN. You remember FUN, the birthright of every child before the politically correct bureaucrats and politicians took over the running of the asylum?
Apparently, some schools have jumped on this and started to call Halloween "Black and Orange Day".
Pathetic.
The Toronto District School Board has issued guidelines (invented and written by bureaucrats) to its teachers cautioning about the problems associated with Halloween. First Christmas, now every child's favourite day, Halloween. Unless you are a dentist, who knew there were problems with Halloween? Here is the TDSB's advice:
1. Halloween is a religious day of significance for Wiccans and therefore should be treated respectfully.
2. Peer and social/media consumer pressures target all children and their families as consumers of costumes, makeup, food products, etc. Many students and their families can feel this socio-economic marginalization keenly.
3. The images and icons associated with consumer-oriented Halloween can come into conflict with some students' and their families' religious beliefs.
4. The food products that are marketed heavily during the Halloween period can come into conflict with students' and their families' dietary habits.
5. Some students have had first-hand traumatic experiences of violence that make talking about death, ghosts, etc., extremely alienating.
6. Many recently arrived students in our schools share no background cultural knowledge of trick-or-treating or the commercialization of death as 'fun.'
A few comments on the foregoing.
1. Wicca is a modern panthestic religion that started up in the 1950s and that borrows from earlier pagan ideas (all modern religions are derivative). Wicca is associated with magic and witchcraft. Halloween was a pagan celtic celebration intended to ward off evil spirits that would harm agriculture, and had nothing to do with witchcraft. The only link between Wicca and Halloween is this connection to paganism and a witch costume being a popular choice for Halloween.
There might be approximately 15,000 Wiccans in Canada (extrapolating from U.S. statistics). Their numbers are so few that they do not even rate a separate religious category in the Canadian census statistics.
2. What does the school have to do with the commercial marketing of products and costumes associated with Halloween, anymore than it has to do with the marketing of crappy sugar laden breakfast cereals and expensive plastic action figures on children's television programming? Dealing with these things is the purview of the family. Halloween costumes can be very cheaply put together from most stuff found around the home.
3. Public schools are supposed to be secular. It is the parents who should decide how they should explain social/religious conflicts (including Halloween) to their children.
4. Why do teachers need to be told about candies and diets, are they presumed to be brain dead by their employers?
5. What does violence have to do with Halloween -- it is not a celebration of violence -- Easter and Passover fill that bill nicely. It is a good thing to talk about ghosts and death in the classroom, because any child that reacts in the way the TDSB thinks they will, obviously should be earmarked for trauma counselling.
6. Isn't the whole point of Canadian schooling to teach children about Canada's culture, heritage, history and traditions? Are we not trying to integrate newcomers into our society? How do we do that if we do not tell them about the things we celebrate.
At least give TDSB credit for finally remembering in its last edict that the point of Halloween is that children can dress up in silly costumes and have some FUN. You remember FUN, the birthright of every child before the politically correct bureaucrats and politicians took over the running of the asylum?
Apparently, some schools have jumped on this and started to call Halloween "Black and Orange Day".
Pathetic.
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