Anti anti-bullying
[but obvi not pro-bullying]
The horrors of history have been totally hidden from from young people. The banality of public school education today—absolute emptiness. This picture of human life: everyone nice. Niceness is the answer and the public school’s [say] “no bullying, treat everyone nice, be actually open and tolerant, never make any judgments, etc.” But the actual hard facts of human history and world geography…they know nothing!
-Camille Paglia at Author Events, 2017 (20:45 in)
Preface 1:
There are two ways to for students to deal with bullies.
We’ll use the example of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green insulting Rep. Jasmine Crockett at a House Oversight Committee hearing, saying, “I don't think you know what you're here for...I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you're reading.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez immediately cried out, “That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person,” as she went on to implore the committee chairman James Comer to intervene.
Crockett jumped in, throwing some oblique shade while asking the chairman, “I'm just curious. To better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody's bleached blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” Crockett asked.
Preface 2: There are two ways to for teachers to deal with students being bullied.
I’ll use the example of a teacher in an inner city school who once asked me for advice. She had a student who was persistently being bullied. No matter how many demerits she gave the bullies, or deep talks she gave them about the evils of hate speech, they just wouldn’t let up.
“Well obvi. They think you’re cringe.” In other words, it seemed that she hadn’t won the students’ respect, and that her bureaucratic/HR-style of correcting them made her authority even less credible. “Why don’t you just try being real with these kids?”
I went on to tell her about the time that two “cool” kids made fun of a “nerdy” kid in front of me (they held up a condom package in front of him and said something along the lines of “you’re not gonna be needing one of these this weekend”…implying he wasn’t cool enough to get any girls…total confirmation of what I said in my piece about how dumb us men are). Rather than give them a demerit or a detention, or tell them about my “anti-bullying policy,” I pulled them aside after the other kid left.
“Dude, for real?”
“What?”
“You’re dumb for doing that.”
“Yeah….I guess.”
“First off, I know you’re better than that. Second, that’s embarrassing that you just felt the need to pick on someone less confident than you.”
“You’re right…I know.”
“Go dab him up and tell him that was dumb and that you’re sorry.”
Mind you, I’d already established a rapport with those students. This was thanks in part to the fact that my authority was rooted in the greater ideals that our school presented to our students, ideals rooted not in vague, abstract concepts like “tolerance” or educational methods like “character education,” but in values with real and lasting substance, that were inculcated in students through very hands-on challenges and experiences. The admins, faculty, and staff actually believed in these ideals and (earnestly attempted to) practiced what we peached. And students (more often than not) bought in. Thus, it was easy for me to use my authority and appeal to some ideal of respect and communal camaraderie.
Nobody likes to be bullied. Yet thanks to the foolishness of our Ancestors (Genesis 2), people are bound to disregard each others’ dignity. No amount of un- and re-education programming will eliminate the impulses rooted in original sin. Instituting “Zero Tolerance Policies” for what is an intrinsic part of our nature is futile.