‘Bullying’

An Observational Essay on

How to deal with the advent of aggressive bullying

“We have to return to Nietzsche,” Fry says, (Stephen Fry that is) and specifically The Birth of Tragedy. “He argued that tragedy was born out of ancient Greece, out of a spirit that the Athenians had as they grew up as a special tribe that somehow managed to combine two qualities of their twelve Olympic deities.” Some of these qualities were embodied in Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Apollo, god of harmony, music, mathematics, and rhetoric. But then we have Dionysius, “god of wine and festival and riot. Absolute riot.” Tragedies, according to Nietzsche, “look at the fact that all of us are torn in two,” with part of us inclined toward Athenian and Apollonian pursuits, where another part of us “wants to wrench our clothes off, dive into the grapes, and make slurping, horrible noises of love and discord.”

This all comes down to the thoroughly modern myth that is Star Trek. On the Enterprise we have Mr. Spock, who embodies “reason, logic, calculation, science, and an absolute inability to feel”; we have Bones, “all gut reaction”; and “in the middle, trying to be a perfect mix of the two of them,” we have Captain Kirk, “who wanted the humanity of Bones, but some of the reasoning judgment of Spock.” The Enterprise, in a word, is us: “Each one of us, if we examine ourselves, knows there is an inner beast who is capable of almost anything — in mind, at least — and there is an inner monk, an inner harmonious figure.” Each side keeps getting the better of the other, turning even the bullied into bullies on occasion. The best you can do, in Fry’s view, is to “go forth, be mad, be utterly proud of who you are — whatever you are — and for God’s sake, try everything.”

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I have been studying an article with the intriguing title:

Behaviour Management Episode 8: Co-designing early years anti-bullying education.

Actually, it is a transcript of an audio podcast made on September the 24th 2020 and featuring a conversation between a lady named Jo Earp, and Dr Lesley-Anne Ey, a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia (UniSA).

In this podcast, they are concentrating on the problem of bullying within the education system, and how they think that education is the key to countering the phenomenon within a classroom/school setting. Their suggestions are that any programme inserted into the school setting should be co-designed by including all stake holders into the process.

While this suggestion seems (on the surface) like a laudable idea, I have some serious reservations about it. For a start they are only talking about one platform and one direction – Pastoral Care. However, Pastoral Care as such is only available as an entity within the Secondary School system; High School in Australia, but the problems do not find their origins there. The problems begin in the early childhood and Primary School settings.

To deal with this problem at any level, we must first recognise that even before school the character of a child is guided by, and dependent on, the attitudes and family dynamics in which they function because in many cases this is where the first seeds of the bully, or victim, are in all probability, sown. Once the child is in school however, this is where the ‘flowering’ of bullying as a normal response really takes place. We are talking kindergarten here, and by the time it gets to the Primary and Secondary level, a pattern is set.

When one talks to parents, the responses are usually, “The punishments for this kind of behaviour is patently inadequate. Of course, this doesn’t apply to my child because they wouldn’t do such a thing anyway!” I would suggest that rather than trying to use more punitive methods of ‘stamping out’ bullying, we should focus our efforts on teaching ‘kindness’ as a concept.

We must also recognise that normal ‘life structures’ have changed. These life structures used to be known as ‘rites of passage’ and indicated the signposts on our journey through life, but the signs have become indistinct and blurred, so that the average person no longer knows their status or position within the society they find themselves in. There are now three distinct levels of society, leaving aside the class (wealth) structure; the young, the middle aged and the elderly. In the past, the middle aged were responsible for bringing up the young and pointing them on the right path to positive citizenship, and they were also to look after the elderly and make sure they got their just rewards for lives well lived by looking after them, as they were looked after when they were young. Also, the middle aged and the elderly were to provide love and guidance to the young. This should be better documented by authorities and at the very least acknowledged!

Now, in the 21st Century the dynamic has changed and the ‘middle aged’ group comprising of people between the ages of 20 years to 65 years, are so caught up in trying to maintain the life style which they are used to, that they no longer have time for their children or the elderly because their economic situation is so tenuous that the looking after the young has, in many cases moved across generations to the elderly. The tragedy is that once the children are old enough that they no longer need ‘looking after’, the grandparents (elderly) are no longer required and are quietly packed off to an ‘old folks’ home’. However, that is a social problem and not the subject of this essay.

We live in an ‘age’; in the 1700’s we had ‘the age of the enlightenment’ and later, in the 1800’s, we had ‘the industrial age’ and now, in the beginning of the 21st Century we have ‘the age of entitlement’! in our schooling system, the children are told (no, --- drilled) with their ‘rights’ and so we have bred a generation of people coming through who believe that the world owes them something; whatever that ‘something’ is, they seem to be a little vague about, but they do appear certain that whatever it is, they are entitled to it, and just about, everything!

As professional people, who have endured the rigours of years of studious preparation to practice their profession, there should be enshrined ‘rights’. For example: if the professional is an Architect, they should have the right to design and present their ideas and visions without fear of reprisal. In the same way, Teachers should have the right to teach without constant interference from governmental bureaucracy, and more importantly, from the students – turning them (the teachers) into either a counsellor or social worker. Unfortunately, minority groups with a single agenda are hogging the media sources and using modern propaganda to frighten politicians and many professionals into adopting their own particular idea and then making that appear to be Law.

The main issue is that if we want to change the thinking and mindset of future generations, introducing the basic idea if kindness into the curriculum will not work, it is not enough! The question then becomes how; how do we educate people to understand the detrimental effect of having a bullying culture? I suggest that it will only be achieved by a medium such as philosophy, where all points of view (including those of a bully) will be given ‘air-play’ and be respectfully considered by all stakeholders.

A First Nations approach of using a ‘talking stick’ is a very good method of getting people talking in an inclusive and respectful way. A stylised stick, or piece of wood, begins with the convener of a session (usually one hour maximum) and no-one interrupts the person in possession of the stick while they are talking. The stick is then passed to another person who indicates that they have something to say and so on. This method has been used for tribal councils for thousands of years and it has the advantage of:

a) Allowing everyone who wishes to make a statement, or express an opinion, to put it on the table for analysis and careful deliberation.

b) It trains (not teaches) the attendees to be respectful of other people and their views and opinions.

c) It allows the development of carefully considered thought processing and the ability to respond in appropriate manners.

d) It encourages the development of (what I call) a reasonable person. That is a person who has an opinion and is willing to listen to the opinions of others, and if they sound more reasonable, change their minds.

I have personally used this method and found that when the session had ended, the children moved into the playground, or onto the oval and continued to discuss issues that were important to them.

I believe that this kind of inclusive training is one of the most important things that we can give to future generations. Instead of ‘pin-point targeting’ bullies, designing a ‘training’ methodology in which the bully is included on an equal footing, we can also eliminate the victim mentality that many children today feel. The chances of effecting change are much greater if there is no ‘them and us’ mentality involved.

There are no simple answers, but the more we seek to find ways of equalising this difficult life that we have been given, and come to a clear and defined notion of how best we can deal with the levels of difficulty we daily encounter, from the individual – to the family – to the community – to the nation – to our very humanity, the more likely we are to have a happy, productive and fulfilling life.