This post was actually a response to a discussion raised on the IF Project Facebook page. The IF Project is an endeavour by journalist Jane Lee to, in a 100 day timeframe, “launch a new magazine to shed light on the SOCIAL, ENVIRONMENTAL and HUMANITARIAN challenges of the world.”
I suggest you check out and contribute to the discussion itself, and you can keep track of the progress of Jane’s idea via http://ifprojectblog.com/
Bullying, or any form or violent or otherwise destructive aggression toward peers for that matter, is (and rightly so) considered unacceptable behaviour.
Yet I can’t think of a constructive approach to bullying prevention that takes into account what we know about communication and emotion. We know the links between (infrequency of) speech and aggression exist. This makes sense, given that speech itself can be considered an ‘aggressive’ act. (Perhaps we evolved the ability to communicate through language simply so we didn’t eat each other) Yet we have our kids in classes, told to ‘be quiet’ while they learn, in a one-to-many environment that cannot possibly accommodate the stimulus needs of your average child, let alone 30 of them. I read once upon a time a study of a group of people watching a play – over time, their heart rates synchronised. How likely is it that a young learner, who’s developing brain is desperate for stimulus, would tune in to and become affected by the ‘vibe’ of each of the other 29 (also bored, frustrated and under-stimulated) students around them?
Ask any substitute teacher – I’m sure they can give you a very good account of exactly what happens when you introduce new stimulus into such a tense environment.
It’s great that bullying is being addressed in general, and there are some great tools out there for post-event reporting. (See http://bullyproof.frontlinesms.com/ for example) Tools like frontline, if widely adopted, could be of great advantage, in particular in cases of Emotional bullying as Geoff has mentioned above.
But aren’t we treating the symptom, rather than the cause? We hear more and more about ‘kids these days’ – but isn’t that repeating the woeful cries of the ‘Adult’ Generations of the 60′s? The 40′s? Ancient Greece? Hell, the very first creation myth known to humankind (Enuma Elish – 7 Babylonian clay tablets, copies of which have been dated at 16th or 14th centure BCE, and is comparable to the creation myth in the Hebrew and Christian Genesis ) contains the idea – Apsu (the ‘Granddaddy’ God) wants to kill all his children because they’re too rambunctious.
Kids are energetic. Loud. Irrepressibly active, physically and mentally. In many ways, inevitable, in accordance with the laws of physics. And yet we insist they sit still and quiet for the better part of five days out of every week (under threat of punishment of even MORE stillness & quietness by ‘Detention’), and expect them not to exhibit behavior we KNOW occurs under such conditions.
There are opinions, studies and research that tell us that kids can’t empathize anymore because of facebook, they are too distracted and have shorter attention spans (if, in fact such a thing exists) or they’re otherwise becoming more and more ‘socially inconvenient’. Where are the studies then, that examine how kids behave in a different learning environment? With available stimulus appropriate to their age and interests?
I’m no expert, but I’d wager that such studies would offer more valuable, new and productive results than any of the same recycled gripes from the older, ‘wiser’ generations for literally the entirety of recorded human history.