This past month, there have been cases of people retaliating against bullies--such as Casey Haynes (aka Zangief* Kid1) --and people asking for help in dealing with them (Alye2). There was a tragic case late last year about an elementary school girl who was bullied for enjoying Star Wars3. And then there are the many tragic cases of gays being bullied, and Dan Savage's brilliant and heroic "It Gets Better" campaign.
In the CBS interview regarding Alye's video, the superintendent of the school claimed her video took him by surprise, despite the fact that she says she's in therapy more than she's in class4. The superintendent was reluctant to talk about what was going on--even a calculated "we're doing all we can" would have been sufficient.
I have to wonder if public schools are doing the right thing: Are they trying to protect the victims, or are they trying to protect themselves?
I am not exactly naive here: I understand that an institution's primary directive is its own self-preservation. But a public school, one would at least want to think, holds the lives and well-being of its students as a primary concern. But here we have a problem: Does Alya attend an affluent school in an upper-class community in which the image of the school is more important than the safety of its students? Is this an Our Guys situation in which her oppressors are on track for prestigious sports teams (a book I read in college that I recommend to absolutely everyone) and therefore will get away with little or no punishment? The school administration would probably be reluctant to address the psychological well-being of its students, as psychological torment leaves no obvious visible evidence.
Even if a state passes anti-bullying legislation, it appears that school administrations seem reluctant to get on board, and are always reluctant to risk its image. So what went on in that administrator's head when Alye's video hit the web? "Oh shit..." This is one of the many reasons I love the Internet: It forces institutions to act. There is no effective damage control.
And now bullying has been acknowledged as a national problem. Perhaps, contrary to one of my previous essays, in which I lambasted school curricula and advocated disenfranchising parents, it is perhaps a good thing in this way that schools are beholden to them, to hold school administrations accountable for the treatment of their children [before you get any ideas, this does not compensate for the idiocy which parents have injected into curricula].
Can we have both? Can we let the teachers decide what to teach, and leave the administration beholden to the parents, without having parents take control of the act of teaching? Sure we could. It would be entirely possible to redraw the lines between dependency and autonomy between the community and the school system, much like between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government and the powers allotted to each.
Teachers would have the power to devise curricula in the same manner as I described in that previous essay. The administration would be responsible for protecting the teacher from the parents in curricula decisions, but in cases of bullying, it would have to prosecute students on parents' and other students' behalf.
There is one guiding principle through this process: The students come first. Do whatever would benefit the individual student most in the long term: That is, teach evolution and literature that parents find questionable precisely because it teaches them to be true to themselves, and protect them from the oppression of other students, for no student has a right to oppress another, much like no person in greater society has a right to rob, murder, or harass another.
1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEGQUAxlY5k
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37_ncv79fLA
3) http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/portrait_of_an_adoption/2010/11/anti-bullying-starts-in-first-grade.html
4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deS3Nsuw6iE
*"Zangief Kid" is an affectionate nickname. Zangief is a wrestler character in one of the most popular fighting games of all time.
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