Bullying
Dealing with the Dangers of Bullying; Abusive Behavior Becoming More Common Among the Young, Many Fear
Some kids call it ragging. Some call it messing. They used to call it dissing. To most parents it’s bullying. To grandparents it’s just plain disrespect. To experts abusive behavior is becoming more common. And, they say, it may have led to the slaying of two high school students and the wounding of 13 other people in Santee.
For example, on Friday, a confrontation between two teen-agers and a woman waiting in line at a McDonalds in Irvine went like this.”I want some f—ing lunch. I was just talking about some f—ing burgers. I don’t care what you f—ing want,” one boy said to the other. The woman standing in front of them asked the teens to please stop the offensive language. Other teens, mothers with young children and a group of special needs students were nearby. The first youth said, “I’m in a public place, lady, and I can say anything I want.” His friend joined in after he was finished demeaning the special needs kids at a distance.
“Mind your own business, lady. You can’t tell my friend what he can say,” he said.
Language and behavior once thought to be off limits is more commonplace in public places, and to some who hear it, it is at the root of extreme retaliatory behavior exhibited by some young people.
A mother of five children, Karen Kimball, wrote to the Irvine World News that schools and parents should consider protecting children from the trend of offensive language before installing security gates to protect students. “In light of (the) shooting in Santee, I am sure schools nationwide will again review their campus security and safety measures. But before the campus security officers take their SWAT training and students begin their ‘Don’t Shoot’ courses of study, we might take a moment as a society to consider a wide spread problem that is becoming apparent in situations such as the Santee shooting. The problem is a lack of Tongue Control,” Kimball
wrote. She was referring to last week’s shooting in Santee where a 15-year-old boy killed two high school students and wounded 13 other students and school employees.
“Clever wit, put-down humor, slap stick, and sarcasm are imbedded in us from our childhood through media, at school and even in our homes. At what point does clever speech, sarcasm, and teasing turn from a child’s game to outright abuse?” Kimball wrote. According to a federal report, retaliation for bullying and harassment played a key role in more than two thirds of cases of students retaliating against peers with assault weapons. School district intervention specialist Christine Honeyman-Fazio said that the fight to decrease the “communication of hate” is an uphill battle because kids are bombarded on a daily basis by media images. She said television, movies and music videos targeting children have made aggressive language and behavior the norm. She doesn’t see the media changing anytime soon, and said it will take the cooperation of parents, schools and students to change the trend. Honeyman-Fazio said children are being introduced to harmful images and language at a younger age. Just this week, she received phone calls from teachers who said that several first and second graders told them that they saw “Hannibal,” an R-rated movie with graphic, disturbing scenes. “In my opinion, that is psychological child abuse,” she said. “My main concern is the effect the media has on kids,” she said.
Patricia Hoffman, associate professor of child and family studies at Concordia University said there are levels of bullying, some manipulative and some down-right mean, and agreed that the media has played a key role in influencing this generation’s
aggressive communication. “We are hearing language that we would not have
heard in the past,” Hoffman said. “Children have more access to television and the
Internet and movies and less guidance on how to process the information they see. They are looking for absolutes. They don’t know how to deal with it and figure out how it fits into their world,” she said.
“They are left to make sense of it on their own. Then you add adolescence and the influence of their peers and what do you have?” “As an adult,” Hoffman said, “sometimes, I have to talk to people and ask myself, ‘What does this mean?’ So what do you get when you have a child who may not have anyone to help them sort it out?”
Stephen Miranda, teacher and counseling coordinator at Sierra Vista Middle School, said verbal assaults and bullying cross gender lines and race lines, and sometimes girls are more vicious than boys. He defined bullying as when one person wants
to win and have control over another and is not interested in resolving anything.
Bullying by girls might be physically passive, spreading rumors or isolating or excluding another girl. “I think it is even more vicious and long-lasting. It is a passive form of aggression,” he said. “They might isolate a student that doesn’t shop at Nordstrom or wear the right skater clothes.” He said the isolation can carry into high school. “In my opinion, it is more of a class or elitist attitude, and it cuts across all races,” he said.
Boys, he said may verbally attack others or they may “pants” other boys.
“It is a totally humiliating and degrading act of aggression,” he said. “The victim does not soon get over it. “The bully doesn’t see the large consequence and the bigger picture,” he said. “The bully says ‘I just did this or that.’ If the bully behavior is not stopped by middle school, it continues into high school and into adult life, Miranda said. What breaks the cycle of bullying, he said, is for even one kid to intervene or for the targeted youngster to stand up for himself early on.
“It takes great courage,” he said. “Students fear retaliation, that it will be turned on them.” “Adults should talk to their kids about equity and equality and what is right and fair.”
Adults should appeal to the youngster’s sense of compassion and fairness, Miranda said. “The situation in Santee bothers me because it was totally preventable,” he said. “He was teased and bullied. No one was willing to take a stand. He was wrong for what he did, but we are all responsible, teachers, parents and students. In my opinion, bullying should not happen to a single kid in this country,” Miranda said. “We want a win-win situation, we want the bully to stop and eliminate the behavior. It is destructive and aggressive. Both students, the bully and the target, need to be helped,” he said.
Mark Goodman, executive director of The Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., said the problem with enforcing laws pertaining to bullying is how bullying is defined and who defines it. “The concern is how to regulate expression that may run afoul of the First Amendment,” Goodman said. “Unpleasant expression is a part of life and people must learn to tolerate and respond to it in a productive way.”
“It is not the same as schools restricting obscene expression, which is punishable and can be censored. It would be preferable to teach students the value of civility rather than risking the punishment of expressing views that are different than ours.
“Expressing in inherently disruptive ways is not lawful, but not every use of a four-letter word is disruptive,” Goodman said. “No school can enforce a policy that risks becoming selective enforcement.” Honeyman-Fazio said Irvine schools define bullying as deliberately hurting another. “Kids that are leaders are inclusive not exclusive. Bullies exclude and target,” she said.
The school district deals with conflicts on an individual basis at levels ranging from a conversation on appropriate behavior to counseling to expulsion. Many instances of abusive behavior are dealt with as sexual harassment complaints.
“We want the students to know their resources, to give them skills on assertion and how to speak up and manage criticism,” she said. “Bullying is defined by the persons experiencing it, not by the person giving it out,” Honeyman-Fazio said. “To look in the eyes of a student who is being bullied is devastating,” she said. “Parents and the schools need to work together for the safety of all of our students, we cannot do it alone,” she said.
Contact Hansen at (949) 224-0080 or
jhansen@ocregister.com.
– Joan Hansen, Irvine World News