Practical Ways to Defeat Bullying in Your School
Their letters are separated by zip code, but united through bewilderment and feelings of betrayal from the organizations they believed would protect their child from bullying—the leading form of child abuse in the nation, and the only form of abuse we tell the most vulnerable among us to “just ignore.”
Their pleadings are almost always composed by emotionally flailing mothers who witness a common but mystifying tailspin of their beloved child, a spiral born from intentional abuse that weds power to fear, making it formable, and due to its predatory nature impossible for Christian school teachers and faculty to effectively combat alone. One bewildered mother writes:
Dear Protectors:
My 6th grade son has hemophilia. In 4th grade, he was bullied so bad by a child the school let in (after being kicked out of public schools) that he actually wrote a letter to his teacher stating he wished he were dead. He isolated himself and refused to eat. Was mad all the time and wouldn’t talk. This year he is being bullied verbally, emotionally, and now physically by the majority of students in his class. He has no self-esteem and doesn’t fight back. I worry constantly that he is going to kill himself. He sobbed to me for hours tonight and I still have not been able to get him to eat.
I refuse to go through the whole process over again of “let’s try and save the bully and worry about him”… This was the answer I received multiple times when I asked how exactly they were helping my son. In the process of “saving” or attempting to save the bully, they lost my son. I need him back. He is an amazing kid. I purposefully put him in a Christian private school so that the attention would be more focused on school, rather than sports, which he cannot do due to bleeding disorder.
Please, please lecture these students and make them understand not only the damage bullying causes, but also just how not Christian like that this is. I need someone to take this seriously. It is killing me watching my son so totally miserable.
As an expert witness regarding bullying and the law, FoxNews contributor as well as the founder of a freedom-from-bullying program used in public and private Christian schools, I have become a Moses to these bewildered parents, guardians and their bruised and sometimes bludgeoned children. For some, bullying is their first real experience with profound injustice, wickedness and in more extreme cases even evil. These beleaguered mothers are desperate for practical help and a sustaining hope.
Atop our list of freedom-from-bullying advice and insight to them is: Bullying pays in a youth culture (including Christian youth culture) where unkindness, meanness and even cruelty are currency, making it a cultural, not a school, problem. So if we are serious about fighting bullying like Christians, which is speaking and living the truth in love, then all of us—not just teachers—must labor to change this false currency. More so, parents (not teachers) are the front line of defense against such abuse for reasons explained later.
Much like our culture in general, such parents do not want to hear this. They want a quick and easy fix to their ongoing misery, and so do I. But having studied and battled this specific and greatly misunderstood form of abuse, I know an irritating truth: The right thing and the hard thing are usually the same thing.
Diminishing bullying is hard, but doable. And it starts in the home, not the classroom.
A recent study [Jan. 2013] from UCLA confirms this perverse maxim, which is confirmed by previous studies as well. Middle school “students who were named the coolest at one time were largely named the most aggressive the next time, and those considered the most aggressive were significantly more likely to be named the coolest the next time.”
The results indicate that both physical aggression and spreading rumors are rewarded by middle school peers.
“The ones who are cool bully more, and the ones who bully more are seen as cool,” said Jaana Juvonen, a UCLA professor of psychology and lead author of the study. “Pushing or shoving and gossiping worked the same for boys and girls.”
This perverse power transcends middle school. As more and more teachers attest during our teacher training sessions, this currency of cruelty that helps define bullying is being spent in the early elementary school years, throughout high school, and even further into college, a sobering and unprecedented expansion.
Educators didn’t hire lobbyists, consultants and ad agencies to convince the world that it’s cool and beneficial to be cruel toward others. But they are expected to get rid of it largely on their alone, an expectation that is as unrealistic and naive as it is unfair since cultural norms enter our schools each day like dirt on a student’s shoe. Still, this immature expectation persists, which educators must wrangle with the wisdom and shrewdness of serpents, pulling in parents and others of goodwill during each opportunity.
The Real World of Bullying
When Jesus said that the poor will be with you always, he may as well have added bullies, too. We will never “get rid” of bullying because in order to do so we would have to rid the world of the sins that sustain it, which are formidable. They include arrogance, pride, hubris, contempt and related sins such as “cupiditas,” for which Dante reserved the lowest levels of hell. Also called the “sins of the wolf,” cupiditas describes the kind of behavior and person who consumes others.
To the minority of students who become serial bullies and unleash the most harm, people aren’t people. They are commodities and tokens for barter, a disposition usually gained through the umbilicus of parental modeling [bullying can also stem from lack of parenting, especially male parenting]. When it comes to bullying, this exchange includes refining the pain and suffering of others into personal pleasure, power and domination as well as social capital, the cherry atop of this forbidden desert.
Bullying stems from profound spiritual maladies and requires powerful spiritual surgery instead of feel-good, pop-psychology bandages. Studies show that through word selection, body language and related behavior that your average bully not only received pleasure from another’s pain (the definition of sadism) but also believes she is superior to others. Bullies need a major infusion of humility, not greater self-esteem, which is already inordinate among bullies.
The good news is that when Christian schools help targets, bullies and bystanders undergo this deeper but more penetrating soul work through the portal of justice and real peacemaking, they facilitate some of the most powerful spiritual formation possible, including greater faith, wisdom, hope, love, humility, courage, and compassion.
This shameful economy where unkindness, meanness and cruelty pays isn’t limited to youth culture. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is worth an estimated $50 million and receives $225,000 per tv episode in part for demeaning and abusing others. Like so many bullies, he gains the world but loses part of his soul each time he unleashes a hurricane of obscenities upon a stunned pupil for the unforgivable sin of overcooking or undercooking, or for defending themselves against his verbal body blows and jabs of acrimony. Worse, he receives this filthy lucre because many adults find this verbal blood sport entertaining–exactly the way students from Christian school receive glee when a fellow student has her physical or psychological skin seared through physical, verbal or cyberbullying.
Immature and cruel youth culture reflects immature and cruel adult culture, so Christian schools fight an uphill battle against such abuse that restricts equal access to an education, lowers test scores and school spirit, increases truancy and psychological and spiritual fragmentation, and tarnishes the good reputation of their school, often unfairly, among the many other ailments that accompany this intentional form of abuse.
Then there’s school violence. The Secret Service interviewed 37 school shooters (some in Christian schools) and found that nearly all (85%) said they did it as revenge against bullying. Agents said their experience met the legal definition of harassment and moral definition of torment. Children are being tormented each day in Christian school and minority experience relief, in part because only about 10% of victims of abuse in general ever talk. The majority conclude that if there is a God then He must not care about them personally or justice corporately.
Yet within this “Theater of Bullying,” there is a silver lining, especially for Christian schools, which aren’t as beleaguered by red tape than the public schools and are better able to speak to the deep spiritual issues that maintain and promote bullying. Tackling bullying is a hidden opportunity for demarcation and greater enrollment if handled with acumen. Addressing bullying, far from an admittance of guilt, makes good business sense. Not only will Christian school’s help bring God’s Kingdom to the world through anti-bullying efforts since justice is love’s most public and becoming face, it’s an opportunity to distinguish themselves from less discerning educational opportunities, a distinction that with time will bolster their enrollment through greater student retention and attraction. “Hardly a week goes by when I don’t have a conversation about this topic,” says Larry Taylor, Head of School at Prestonwood Christian Academy in Plano, TX. “Parents who are thinking about having their kids attend our school want to know what we are doing about this problem.” A Harris Poll [Sept 2011] confirms this growing worry. It found that bullying is the leading concern not just among parents, but students as well, surpassing illicit sexual activity, gang activity and drug use.
Practical solutions to defeating bullying in Christian schools
To combat this churning anxiety among parents and students, think comprehensively. Students, faculty and parents must realize what bullying really is and their role in diminishing it. To start, the word should be stripped from the Sports Page. As a varsity soccer coach, I know that teams don’t bully one another. They beat one another in the theater of sport through aggression, strength, skill and cleverness–and sometimes merely good fortune. They do not strip an entire team of dignity and healthy self-regard. And just because a child gets his tender and sometimes excessive feelings hurt (often the product of over-protective and indulgent parenting), doesn’t mean he is targeted. It could just be a case of conflict, misunderstanding and related problems that do not constitute bullying and require different solutions.
Though definitions vary, most agree that this intentional and predatory form of abuse is the deployment of superior power (physical, economic, relational) to intentionally harm another multiple times and for no good reason. It’s victimization without provocation and often includes humiliation, isolation and audacity on behalf of bullies, who are more motivated by contempt and disdain, which are usually longer-lasting than anger, helping to explain why bullies can be so tenacious in their campaigns of cruelty.
There are so many misconceptions about the word bullying that schools and culture in general would be better served by using an alternative. Since bullies wed power to fear, the word terrorizing is pretty accurate. So are hating since most bullies look down on targets, and assaulting, since bullies violate a person’s physical and psychological well-being.
Yet even in this theater of bullying where all is not as it appears and where most targets are more sinned against than sinner, God through his grace may have built in a kind of Achille’s Heel into this abusive behavior that courageous and wise administrators can exploit to help foster God’s love, compassion and justice throughout their school.
Martin Luther King wrote that injustice and its related evils carry within themselves the seed of their own destruction. When it comes to bullying, this seed is the audacious nature of many bullies, who contrary to popular myth do not suffer from low self-esteem but rather inordinate self-regard. They behave badly for many reasons, and one of the least recognized is self-love, not self-hate.
More times than not bullies believe they are more or the most intelligent, skilled and popular child in their class. They believe they are superior to others and hold others in contempt and disdain. Like the dictators and despots throughout history, deep inside they believe that others deserve to be treated poorly. Phillip Yancey, while denouncing the racism of his fundamentalist youth, wrote that “Black people gave us [Southern Christians] someone to look down on, someone to mock and feel superior to” [Soul Survivor, page 14]. This same dark impulse to feel, think and behave superior to others is alive and well throughout the hallways, cafeterias, locker rooms, stair wells and playgrounds of Christian schools–all hotspots for bullying.
If one doubts this unsettling statement, consider this: physically and mentally challenged children are among the most bullied in any group gathering. Many have no relationship to their bullies, so there is no “conflict,” “miscommunication,” or “misunderstanding” Like African Americans under Jim Crow, physically and mentally challenged students are seen as children of a lesser god, unworthy of basic respect and dignity. As former professor at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard Henri Nowen explained, if our ability to think is our singular capacity that makes us fully human, how then should we treat those who do not fully possess this capacity? Are they fully human? Our unofficial and shameful answer, both inside and outside of Christian culture, is a resounding no. Of course we do not say so with our words, but we do with our behavior through the unvarnished and brutal portal of the human heart called bullying.
Bystander to ‘Alongside Stander’
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” Jesus said, “for they shall be called the children of God” [Matt. 5:9]. Remarkably, the word peacemakers here does not imply pacifism, unlike other sections of the Beatitudes. Instead, it refers to those willing to resist and actively bring conflict to an end.
Today, when it comes to bullying, we create much peace-faking, little peacemaking. Think, for example, how many times abused targets are forced to shake hands with their bully oppressor, as seen in the gripping documentary Bully. To help your students become real children of God, help them fight like Christians: those who are assertive but non-violent in the face of persistent injustice and sometimes evil.
A 10-year, landmark study by the Department of Health & Human Services revealed that most school-based, anti-bullying efforts are ineffective; some even dismal. The reasons vary, yet atop the list is that efforts to reform bullies through popular and more feel-good measures such positive discipline and peer mediation did more than fail: they put more power in the hands of school bullies. This study recommended that the best but also hardest route to diminishing bullying is to leverage positive peer pressure through bystander intervention.
Studies show that the vast majority of school-aged kids recognize bullying, feel sympathy and empathy for targets–yet they don’t act upon what they know and feel is right. Only around 13% help the target as 40–60% support the bully either overtly (“Hit her again!”) or covertly by snickering, pointing or giggling at the target then or later.
When we know and feel something is wrong and it’s within our power to act but don’t, most of the time it is due to the lack of courage, or to put it another way, the sin of cowardice [Rev. 21:8]. To transform passive, conflicted and often sinful bystanders into righteous and even heroic “Alongside Standers,” students who assertively but non-violently intervene, we must grow our student body’s capacity for courage, the virtue that many such as C.S. Lewis argued underpins all others.
Courage and moral strength are tethered throughout the Bible and across cultures. Sign language for courage is two clenched fists, a symbolism that is practically synonymous with strength. and Jesus told us that the greatest of all commandments includes our capacity for strength as well, a connection we hardly recognize in what he said is the greatest of all commandments: “Love God with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:33, emphasis added]. Here in we find our triad human capacity: think, feel, act. Schools [and churches] have focused too much on the first two but hardly on the third. Your anti-bullying efforts will continue to be truncated until you do.
Your children will commit such righteous and heroic deeds when prepared what to do before they witness bullying through roll play, and by giving them the right script to follow. One success story comes from 5th Grade Teacher Diane Alosi of Silverdale Baptist Academy in Chattanooga, TN:
One of my students, Melody, heard a student bullying another student. Melody, a smaller child, walked up and spoke boldly, using words straight from the Protectors Program. When Melody shared this with our class, her classmates spontaneously, without my direction, stood up and applauded her. Melody and the former bully are now friends and together they help defend other classmates!
I have had the great pleasure to meet this young protector as part of a 700 Club feature story about our faith-based program. When filming wrapped, she walked up to me and said it was an honor to meet me. “Melody,” I said, “it is my honor to meet you. I want you to run for President someday because we need more people like you leading our country.” Though small in size, Melody is large in character and esteem among her peers. Her eyes are deep, strong and steady, lion-like, which is the international and historic symbol of courage, the same symbol Lewis chose to represent Aslan, his Christ-figure in Narnia.
Power of Two
One Oregon study reveals that like Melody, if one student (and they don’t have to be large in size or even popular) uses assertive but non-violent words such as “Stop,” “That’s wrong,” that bullying can end almost 60% of the time and within 6–8 seconds. We take this amazing dynamic even further, in part through a profound Greek Proverb: “Only the gods are courageous in isolation.” Jesus showed this kind of courage in the Garden of Gethsemane–but he was divine. The rest of us need others to bolster encouragement, which means to comfort and to urge forward. This may be one reason why Jesus sent his disciples out in tandem.
Have your students make an agreement with another student that they will defend each other from bullying, but then here comes the school-culture-changing part: Together, when they see another bullied, they will intervene on their behalf. During the same 700 Club taping, I met two boys who used the power of two on behalf of a bullied boy with Aspergers. He was considering leaving the school and his grades plummeted. But that was before these two protectors changed his life through courageous, assertive but non-violent words and deeds.
More Than Preparation: Parental Expectation
But preparation is only half of the equation to turning passive bystanders into heroic alongside standers who will change the culture of your school and in doing so, transform spiritually as well. The other half is expectation, as in parental expectation. Parents must expect their child to do something positive when they witness bullying, such as direct intervention, reporting [not tattling] to authority, comfort the target, and so on. It’s for this reason why we know that the most important presentation we give at Christian schools is to parents, not students. Parents far more than teachers are the invisible hand that moves the actual hand of students for good or bad.
I desire to end this series with a sunny example of Bystanders becoming righteous and heroic Alongside Standers, like the protectors of the young boy with Aspergers. Having confronted bullying, they now know how to call a bully’s bluff, making them better leaders now and in the future. Yet as Christian school leaders, you know that bullying isn’t always so easily eradicated. We have left numerous voicemail messages and sent even more email responses to the distraught mother of the hemophiliac boy mentioned at the beginning of this series. No response.
Though we always hope and pray for the best, we also know that in this perplexing theater of bullying there are dark hallways and even darker haunted rooms. Without a protector, his odds are slim, and grow slimmer. He needs someone to help loose the shackles of bullying, the way PE Teacher Sampson did on behalf of a very young Frank Peretti, a gifted Christian writer who accredits this teacher, along with counselor Mr. Eisenbrey, with saving his life from the horrors of bullying: “I can’t overstate the pivotal nature of that day in my life. From that moment onward, everything was so different. I could enjoy school. I could get excited about being a Cleveland Eagle…I got involved in school drama productions–where I could actually use some of the gifts God had given me–and I burst out of my shell, making lots of new friends, and just going nuts being creative” [The Wounded Spirit, Frank Perreti,].
Culture isn’t getting kinder, more loving or humane. We believe bullying will worsen in the coming years, but get better within pockets of resistance, and Christian schools can lead this resistance. “I have been in Christian education for more than 20 years. And one of the changes I’ve noticed is that the crassness of our culture is seeping more and more into our Christian schools,” a wise Christian school counselor told me recently. “We’re seeing problems we didn’t see before, including bullying.” Instead of hiding from it, she said that Christian schools need to adjust to these changing challenges by bringing a new expression of God’s love and wisdom to it.
Some Christian school leaders will have to contend with unaware board members who do not have daily contact with the world of students, and who believe “bullying doesn’t happen here.” As one ACSI-accredited teacher told us recently, “We seem to be moving past this belief that bullying doesn’t happen in Christian schools. Of course it does. Instead of putting our heads in the sand, we need to show our students, faculties and families how to transcend it.”
Another obstacle is more practical: covering the cost of implementing a freedom-from-bullying program, which can be expensive. To help alleviate the cost, make your anti-bullying effort comprehensive and curricular, not extra-curricular. Your parents already pay for curriculum in additional to tuition. Far from an admission of guilt, most parents will be glad to pay for a program that provides greater school safety, spiritual formation, character development and leadership growth.
And as a board member of a private school myself as well as a varsity soccer coach, I know that school’s spend far more money on uniforms for just one or two sports teams per year than on a comprehensive solution to bullying, the same program that can pay for itself by retaining just one student’s tuition who would otherwise leave their school due to bullying. Where we put our money is where we put our values.
Wanting to diminish what is now the leading form of child abuse in the nation without a financial investment is like wanting to remove asbestos from a school building but without paying for the cost of abatement; or more on target, defending your school in court against claims of neglect related to bullying and not wanting to pay an attorney. Bullying is asbestos to the spiritual and psychological lungs of your students. They are more than worth the investment now and for eternity.
