Kid bullies often turn into adult bullies

[quote]”Someone always says, ‘Kids are mean. Kids will be kids.’ Which implies that the kid bullies will grow out of it someday.” The muscles in his jaw tightened. His stare was unfocused and far away. “I don’t think they do. I think kid bullies turn into adult bullies.” — Jamie, from The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michele Hodkin[/quote]

With this assertion, Hodkin’s fictional character proves himself to be a very perceptive young man. Kid bullies often turn into adult bullies, and, like kid bullies, adult bullies focus on gaining power and dominance over others. For some reason, after kid bullies reach adulthood, our society stops calling them what they really are, bullies, and begins referring to them as “people who suffer from a lack of civility in their interactions with others.”

A recent poll finds 66% of us believe that “lack of civility” is a major issue in our country and that incivility has worsened during the financial crisis and recession. Whatever the semantics, adults who choose to bully are bad role models for kids. “How in the world can we stop bullying in schools when it is so close to our national character right now?” asks Dr. Gary Namie, a psychologist and cofounder of the Workplace Bullying Institute.

Certainly educators tried to raise awareness during National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, as we do each October, but bullying continues to be a major problem in our schools. Eighty-three percent of girls and 79 percent of boys report experiencing harassment. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly one in three 12‐ to 18‐year‐old students reported being bullied and nearly one in ten reported being cyber-bullied. How can anyone really be surprised when kids are just following the examples set for them by the public figures they see and hear in the media?

Bullying is the norm on many popular reality TV shows. Viewers are bombarded with episodes filled with scenes of name-calling, swearing, and physical violence on a regular basis. “Research shows in the short term our own concepts of aggression are activated in the brain when we watch these shows, and we are primed to behave aggressively,” said psychologist Sarah Coyne, a Brigham Young University assistant professor who studies the impact that aggressive behavior in the media has on its viewers. Reality TV, she found, depicts nearly twice the number of aggressive acts as dramas or comedies, yet those shows provide nightly entertainment for many school children and their families.

Our country has also been overcome lately with the scourge of hate groups whose members bully anyone who doesn’t agree with them. Hate groups, which exist to promote hostility against people of different races, religions, or sexual orientation, have grown by 67% since 2000. The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently tracking over 1,000 hate groups operating in the United States. This recent proliferation of hate groups has been caused by anger and fear over the economy, a convergence of non-white immigrants into the country, and the reality of a declining white majority. Though their extreme ideas and values are far from the norm, constant media attention makes their views appear more prevalent than they are and helps affirm their existence as an unobjectionable part of our world.

And one need look no further than Washington, D.C. to see some of the worst exemplars for any anti-bullying campaign, many of our elected officials and their political parties. Things are not much better in Ohio. Politicians have become so intent on ridiculing and bullying the opposition during rallies, interviews, political advertisements, etc., that they’ve neglected to think about how they sound to young people.

[quote]“Thuggery is nothing new in politics; it transcends time, ideology and party,” says Public Affairs Television senior writer Michael Winship. “But what’s even more disturbing is how much of the public is willing to ignore bullying behavior — and even applaud it — as long as the candidate in question hews to their point of view.”[/quote]

Bullying is such a problem in the Ohio Legislature that Senator Frank LaRose convened a bi-partisan committee of eleven legislators in September to plan its own anti-bullying campaign. LaRose is working with the National Institute for Civil Discourse and he described the meeting as the first of “an ongoing conversation among colleagues dedicated to improving the civil discourse in our legislature so that we can better serve the citizens of Ohio.” LaRose said the group agreed to hold three or four meetings a year to organize civility workshops for newly elected legislators and to encourage social interaction between members of both parties.

It’s somewhat ironic that a formal committee needed to be organized to help our revered officeholders learn to treat each other with dignity and respect, but kudos to Frank LaRose and the other ten legislators for understanding the need and initiating this anti-bullying plan for the Ohio Legislature. Word has it that some of their colleagues have already dismissed their efforts, so only time will tell if this committee will have any positive effect on eliminating incivility at the Statehouse.

What can we do about these and other bullies who negatively impact our youth? First, be more than a bystander. Speak out against adult bullies. Don’t sit by and ignore bullying, because silence condones that sort of behavior. Encourage family and friends to turn off those reality television shows. Teach children about hate groups and why they’re wrong. Vote out legislators who use bullying as a tactical maneuver in politics.

In spite of adult bullies who influence the children of America, educators will continue to teach tolerance not just during October’s National Bullying Prevention Month, but throughout the year as well. There are a variety of excellent resources to help your anti-bullying efforts. Unfortunately, the government website, http://www.stopbullying.gov/, wasn’t available during much of National Bullying Prevention Month …  thanks to those adult bullies in Washington who caused the federal government shutdown.

 

By Jeanne Melvin, Hilliard Education Association

Two boys face off in the classroom just before the bell rings. One perceives he has suffered a slight from the other one. A chair was moved. A new white shoe was stepped upon. A word was said in jest, but is now calling into question a man’s dignity. The eyes squint and the lips grow tight as he utters the word with two g’s in the middle. It is a word that devastates character and makes the rest of the class point and howl in laughter.

“Faggot!”

As an educator, what is your response? Do you start to take attendance and ask the class to go to their seats? Do you glibly utter, “Save the drama for your mama,” in hopes of diffusing the situation? Do you drop your eyes, or roll them, because this is just one more thing you do not want to deal with today? If you choose to ignore the situation, you may think that you are in the majority. You are not.

Here is a headline for the newspapers: Educators Are Doing Something Right. Friday, October the 11^th was the 25^th anniversary of National Coming Out Day, and many LGBTQ students and their allies and families feel more at ease about this because of the actions of educators across the country.

The February 5, 2013 issue of Education Week published the results of an article from Pediatrics showing that there was a significant drop in bullying of LGBTQ youth . . . in Great Britain.

There is good news for the students impacted in the United States as well. Efforts by the Obama administration to stress open dialogues about homophobia and the insistence to public school administrators that they may not squelch activities by Gay Straight Alliances has greatly reduced the use of anti-LGBTQ language at school. This is the result of lawsuits brought against school districts in Minnesota and California because they failed to provide environments that were respectful to students who were gay.

The school experience for LGBTQ students has not changed completely. In a 2009 survey that included bullying statistics, students reported that real or perceived sexual orientation was the second most common reason for being bullied. The first was physical appearance. We need to remember that gay students are not the only ones who are recipients of homophobic slurs. Students who participate in activities outside of gender “norms,” such as a girl who participates in football or a boy who takes dance classes, can be bullied in person or online simply for pursuing the activities that they are passionate about.

As a teacher for several decades and a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Campaign for most of those years, I have seen many helpful programs available to teachers. Most of these are free of charge and can give superior guidance to teachers who are searching for the best words to say. The HRC program called “Welcoming Schools” has recommendations that include age appropriate books and suggestions for discussions about gender stereotypes and other activities.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has supported the Teaching Tolerance Program for a very long time. While they are known for their excellent documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement, they also have resources for teachers about bullying that are endorsed by the NEA.

When a student uses a word like “fag” or the phrase “That is gay” teachers need to respond. I simply tell students that there may be classmates who have family members who are gay. Their words are hurtful to them as well as students who may be gay. Often times a student will come into the conversation with something like, “My aunt is a lesbian and she is sweet and I love her.” Of course, the presence of a GSA is always an important resource for teachers and students who wish to engage in positive and meaningful dialogue. Groups such as the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network can offer the tools for students to start these conversations.

By Linda Kennedy, Columbus Education Association

Whenever I hear phrases such as “right to work’ repeated loudly and frequently, I know that organizations are trying to convince me to react rather than think. Who doesn’t want the right to work? It appears to logically flow from Thomas Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness” concept. However, the use of other catchphrases has made me very skeptical.

Shortly after President George H. W. Bush’s famous “Read My Lips, No New Taxes” pledge during the 1988 campaign, his administration unveiled a wide range of “revenue enhancements” as a method to obscure the implementation of new taxes. From the automobile marketing arena, I have often marveled at the transformation of “used cars” to “pre-owned cars.” This creative wording has swept the industry to the point that my students stare at me strangely when I refer to “used car salesmen.”

“Right to Work,” I think, is the same kind of sugarcoated misnomer for policies intended to dismantle unions, effectually giving workers nothing more than the right to workplace conditions once referred to as wage-slavery.

The “Right to Work” movement in Ohio follows closely behind Senate Bill 5 in its attempt to limit worker rights. After thoroughly examining the details of SB 5, large numbers of Ohioans not just opposed it, they took to the streets protesting Governor Kasich’s anti-union plan. Angry workers mounted a petition drive resulting in the Issue 2 Referendum. They then canvassed door-to-door to repeal SB 5. While union members, anti-Kasich activists, and average citizens celebrated the victory of the people over special interests, the majority of SB 5’s harmful language was woven into the state budget legislation and became law (clearly against the will of the majority of voters).

Now, those same union-busting forces who won’t take no for an answer are maneuvering behind the scenes to join Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin in further restricting working rights. What Kasich, William Batchelder, and other members of Ohio Legislature’s self-proclaimed “Caveman Caucus” will not tell Ohio voters is that “Right to Work” states tend to have lower standards of living, lower educational achievements, and higher infant mortality rates. They will instead boast of high percentages of economic growth— much easier to attain from the starting point of a poor state’s small economic base. They will relentlessly parrot individualism and anti-communism. The “Right to Work” movement is very good at utilizing empty feel-good phrases to place their opponents on the defensive. But their opponents are members of the middle class, largely created by past union victories.

As a social studies teacher, I can’t help but take a moment to examine American economic history. When the industrial revolution spread from Europe to North America, the vast natural resources of this continent quickly generated enormous wealth. Although John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first billionaire (from his Standard Oil empire in Cleveland), he wasn’t the only shrewd businessman to recognize that monopolies could create social and political power as well as an outlandish bank account.

Rockefeller and other monopolists, such as Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt, were referred to as Robber Barons for their similarity to Europe’s feudal lords, who controlled virtually every aspect of medieval society. Not only were the Robber Barons getting rich, but the middle class was rapidly shrinking as industrialization newly demanded large numbers of unskilled immigrants to serve as cheap labor in mills and mines and reduced the number of independent craftsmen.

With profit as the overriding motive, industrial workers were subjected to incredible safety risks, not to mention shocking environmental hazards to nearby communities. In 1886, an average of 675 Americans died of workplace accidents per week. The union movement grew in response with such meaningful slogans as “An injury to one, is an injury to all.”

Countless laborers died in the streets to form unions in opposition to the Robber Barons. From their sacrifices came American economic reforms that workers rely upon today: workplace safety rules, environmental protection, child labor laws, social security/pensions, sick time, health insurance, short and long term disability insurance, paid vacations, the 40 hour work week, and overtime pay. There is little doubt that union workers sacrificed greatly to transform American society, creating a broad prosperous middle class and expanding opportunities for all citizens. Isn’t that what “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is all about?

Under the guise of “Right to Work,” modern Robber Barons are trying to turn back the clock. The gap between rich and poor is the widest it has been since the 1920s. If average Americans don’t fight back, we could again find ourselves in a pre-union environment with all of the above achievements wiped away. Although union members are a small percentage of today’s workforce, we are the only barrier protecting a broad middle class prosperity from those who would like to return us to the wage-slave days of John D. Rockefeller under the insidious slogan ”Right to Work”.

By William Wyss, Louisville Education Association

Last winter, I was one of a handful of people from Ohio who met in Ft Wayne, Indiana with parents, teachers and administrators from other Midwestern states. We found that across Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio there were similar problems and concerns with public education and so-called “education reform.” While it was comforting to be amongst people who shared and understood our concerns, we realized that lamenting about the factors that plagued public education wasn’t enough. We needed to do something.

With that in mind, I worked this summer to create the Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education (NWOFPE), a grassroots group to bring together teachers, parents, administrators and community members to advocate for public education. I assembled a steering committee, comprised of people from all over Northwest Ohio, who despite their varying ties to public education and political leanings, all believe that there are serious issues with public education that need to be addressed.

We felt our first community event should be an education piece about school finance, because so many of the issues impacting schools, high stakes testing, unfunded mandates and vouchers have a financial component tied to them.

With that in mind, we held a panel discussion last week, with treasurers from four Northwest Ohio districts. This group gave valuable information to attendees, and showed how all districts are suffering from varying degrees of financial difficulties due to state-level policies, especially those relating to charter schools and vouchers. For example, Jeff Fouke, Treasurer for Washington Local Schools, explained that his district receives $2,969 per student from the state, but pays $6,876 to a charter school when a child transfers out of Washington Local. This means that close to $4,000 in local taxes are diverted from public schools per child. All other districts on the panel, Perrysburg, Sylvania and Springfield, face this same reality. My district, Sylvania, is losing over $1.5 million to charter schools in 2013, despite earning an “Excellent” or “Excellent with Distinction” from the state year after year.

The most discouraging information the treasurers presented dealt with the staffing levels today vs. 2009. Every district represented at the event has fewer employees now than they did four years ago, despite enrollment staying at about the same level or increasing. In my district, enrollment is down only 1% since 2009, yet our staffing level is down almost 10%. This reduction in staffing has caused significant changes in Sylvania Schools. Class sizes are larger than ever, which means students are getting less individualized attention than before. The district reduced graduation requirements and went to an “open campus,” where students can arrive late and leave early, since there are not enough course offerings to fill up students’ schedules. Not only does it diminish students’ educational opportunities, it diminishes the sense of community which is vital in schools.

Despite the depressing statistics, I left the evening full of hope, because the event itself was a success. Our non-partisan, citizen-driven group coordinated efforts to create a meaningful community event. Local television and print media picked up the story, and gave us great coverage. Superintendents from two large local districts were present, along with several elected leaders and candidates who understand the importance of public schools and the problems we face. Seeing this diverse group of people rally around the common cause of public education energizes me, and makes me believe that, together, we can make a difference.

By Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association

We all wonder whether high-stakes standardized tests are “fair” to our students. Our students are unique individuals, yet on testing day with pencil in hand they are suddenly all the same. Whether they differ ethnically, racially, socioeconomically, no one seems to care.

As an instructor in an urban school district, I see some of my students struggle greatly with terms and concepts on standardized tests that are not always directly related to the curriculum. Ronnie Reese, a well-known writer and social justice advocate notes in his article Minority Testing Bias Persists (Huff Post Black Voices, 2013) that this concern has been around for a long time.

Anyone remember the 70s show “Good Times?” In one episode, the character Michael Evans, a young genius, fails an eighth grade IQ test on purpose to point out the racial bias in the test. In response to the question “Which word belongs with cup: wall, saucer, table, or window?” one of his classmates incorrectly chose table. However, this choice makes perfect sense to a child who places a cup on a table and has no experience with saucers. Michael further points out references to “residences” and other middle-class terms.

That was then, this is now, but the formats, terminologies, and designs of standardized tests still confer advantage to some and disadvantage to others. Today the biggest gap between the two will be exposed with computer-based tests, which penalize students who have not had sufficient practice navigating the technology. Many middle class test writers have swallowed the middle class notion that our children are more technology savvy than we are. They assume computers are so ubiquitous that every child can use them. This assumption is false. I can tell you from experience that even my best students need to be carefully guided when using a computer for research.

But testing bias doesn’t just affect the socioeconomically disadvantaged. When I was teaching at a private school for gifted students, I remember a teacher coming to me with a story about one of her students. The class was taking a standardized test for second grade and one of the questions asked, “Which man is working?” The answers were in picture form and showed men eating, sleeping, chopping wood, and reading a book. She explained to me that her student chose the man reading a book. When she asked the child about it, the student said his dad was a professor and read books for work. His father also chopped wood, to relax after work. If a professor’s child can succumb to a hidden test bias, then all children are susceptible.

Title IX has not completely erased the gender gap in standardized testing either. In the 1970’s a widely used vocational test was produced in pink and blue. It asked boys if they would like to be president and asked girls if they would like to be married to the president. This disparity continues in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and other vocational aptitude tests that are frequently designed to determine abilities and aptitudes in male-dominated fields.

In addition, young women have routinely had lower scores on college admissions tests, despite having higher overall GPA’s in both high school and college. A 2007 survey by FairTest, The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, showed that the ACT and SAT routinely under predict the abilities of young women to succeed in college. Indeed, in 1976 it was discovered that the young women were out-scoring their male counterparts in the verbal sections. In response, there was a concentrated effort to “balance out” the results by manipulating test items so they would be more familiar to males. Ever since, females have scored lower than males. The survey further notes that the multiple choice format, limited time response, and guessing penalty are at odds with the way that women typically approach problem solving.

We must ask ourselves, as educators, whether standardized tests measure educational quality at all. They certainly don’t measure educational equity, not as long as testing bias persists, and no matter how well crafted a test is it can’t remove all remnants of bias from its design.

By Linda Kennedy, Columbus Education Association

There have been some very public teacher resignations lately. Some are quitting via YouTube, like this lady, and this fella, and then there are folks who’ve published letters like this one. Veteran teachers are resigning in the face of overwhelming opposition to what it is they hold most dear and they’re getting out while their integrity is still intact. It’s all very poignant, powerful, and I don’t want to see any more of them. Stop it. Just cut it out, and I mean right now! Quit quitting.

Get fired instead.

If you’ve had it, can’t face another single day. then quitting is not what you want to do. Yes, some people will read your resignation letter, or your blog, or view it, and even if it goes viral, what will the result be at school? You know, the place you’re trying to affect with your fury? You’ll never know. You’ve subtracted yourself from the equation, and once you’ve avoided the door hitting you where the good Lord split you, you might as well tie your vocal cords in a knot.

Instead, make them defend their stupidity. Go out in style. Go to a board meeting in your best plucked chicken costume and tell them you’ve got nothing left to give. Stand up at staff meetings and demand to see the data driving their proposed reforms, and do it wearing tails and tap shoes. Tell your students what’s going on and listen to what they have to say and then teach them how to say it better to more people. With bullhorns. I mean, isn’t something wrong when one of our loudest voices today is a 9-year-old boy?

Oh, I understand. It’s hard to imagine a more ludicrous situation. I mean, Ohio’s school funding scheme has been declared unconstitutional four times and nothing’s been done about it for fifteen years. When your bosses get obstinate in being incorrect, often they are just as adamant in holding teachers accountable for their policy failures, which is fun. And of course Ohio began its misguided love affair with standardized testing in 1994 and it’s only now, as we begin to prepare for the Common Core with school officials juggling policy in a frantic effort to meet those new needs with less and less of that questionable funding that we realize just how destructive a relationship we’ve had with them. We get the blame for what they do, right? Teachers don’t set policy, didn’t buy the tests, have no more say in what to do with our funding than any other registered voter, right? They keep screwing up. We’re the experts. They should ask us, right? It’s disrespectful that they don’t.

Which brings us back to you, the potential quitter.

These quitters here are respected, while those of us who choose to stay seldom are. The quitter stood up. Only, after they’ve gotten to their feet they use them to walk out the door.

Look, quitting is stupid. Fired is better. If you’re screwed anyway, if you cannot do what they’re asking, not for another five minutes, then here are your choices:  A) Quit quietly, B) Quit loudly, C) Make the grand gesture. Like, go to the PTA meeting to hand out unlit torches and pitchforks. Auction your students’ futures on Ebay maybe. OR D) stay, fight, and risk being fired.

It isn’t complicated. A and B are safe but won’t get the job done. C has poetry and flash. People will pay attention, but you’ll be dismissed afterwards in both senses of the word.

D is what you ought to do.

Forget about all that you have to lose. You’ve decided to chuck it anyway.

FIGHT.

You’ve got all the ammunition you’re ever going to need, all right there full-grown in the fecund soil of the internet. Solid data and scientific results destroying about every harebrained reform anybody might propose. Beat them over the head with results until they see reason – a data-driven butt-kicking. If you have to, beat their careers to death with it, publicly, in our defense. Make them wreck themselves on the rocks of your good sense and proven fact. Fight! And if and when they manage to fire you, fight them some more.

Some people think the union is there for the profession. It isn’t. It’s there to protect your job. You are the one who is supposed to defend the profession. You can’t do that sunning yourself in Florida or greeting people at Walmart. If you feel every last vestige of joy has been boiled out of teaching, well, you decide right back that they can’t do that. Update your resume in staff meetings. Browse Monster.com on your lunch break. Meanwhile, do everything you’ve ever dreamed of doing in the classroom but didn’t have the guts to do before, teach the hell out of those kids, and dare them to fire you for it. Love what you’re doing harder than you’ve ever done all the while broadcasting all the inadequacies of whatever it is that’s stupid and damn the consequences.

Maybe those scores on your exit exams will end up protecting your career.

Hey, if not, you’ll have had a ball, you’ll have had time to make your preparations, and maybe, if enough of us find the courage to follow suit, you’ll help to save us all.

Fight.

Fight.

LEAD.

By Vance J. Lawman, Warren Education Association – Trumbull County