Bullying in schools is getting worse, says the charity Childline, which claims it has received thousands more calls about the issue in the year to October than in the whole of 2004.
I went through a secondary schooling where it was routine to be having to handle the fear of violence and various other forms of intimidation; and the culture was a kind of machismo that bolstered the dog-eat-dog atmosphere. So we were disinclined to challenge the misery of bullying. I suspect that many adults didn't challenge it even when they shrewdly suspected it was occurring because they could rarely get evidence sufficient to act; our code of silence [enforced by the fear of reprisals or near universal opprobrium] and the complicity of an adult society which didn't take bullying seriously because it was itself implicated and saw it as normal both in children and in adult society; routine abuse of power and humiliation of others as a way to gain a sense of value. The worst effect of bullying is that it tends to conscript its victims to perpetuate its false promises of status and self-worth by the putting down of others.
Now I don't want to denigrate the concern for bullying, that would be counter to what I have just said. But I think it may be a mistake to try to use this tactic to deal with it. Too many of us have been through the system, and too many still are in thrall to the mythology of bullying so that the idea that a bit of having to cope with it 'toughens 'em up' gives enough wiggle room to let bullying breathe. What we also need to be doing is exposing the lies of bullying that it confers power, status and invulnerability with the truth that it confers perpetual insecurity, loathing, self-loathing and the inability to emotionally connect with the important things in life. As well as breeding a view of life that is inherantly short-term and short-sighted and unable to deal with conflict constructively, in other words, it's actually crap for life skills to boot. [Pardon the wording but I feel strongly and want to convey that].
The Observer | UK News | Children's czar warns of huge leap in bullying: On Del.icio.us: schools, violence, bullying, children, culture
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