Many schools have signs on their doors proclaiming them to be Bully-Free Zones. I have even seen such signs alongside the road as I’ve driven past school driveways.
They indicate the schools are at least thinking about the problem. Unfortunately, they do not really indicate the schools have solved the problem.
Most people, in general discussion, immediately think of bullying as one kid pounding physically on another. I suggest there are other forms of bullying , sometimes more difficult to notice.
I was about 10 when my family moved from New York City, where I had attended P.S. 173 through third grade. In the small rural town in Maine where I started fourth grade, things were different. There, I was a “city slicker.” For a time, the punishment for my unfortunate infraction was an almost daily physical reminding of my inferior status. But fighting was against the rules in my home. And anyway, it only happened when the aforementioned Alpha Dog — let’s call him Tad — was not otherwise occupied.
Tad had a brother — self-described, “I may be short, but I’m wiry” — who occasionally tried to mimic his bigger sibling. The two were amazingly similar to the pair in “A Christmas Story,” the annual movie in which the tall kid beats up on younger folk, and the shorter, playing the toady, cheers him on.
Years later, other former classmates said they were unhappy with what happened, and the way I was treated. Kids don’t know how to butt in, though, often because they fear becoming the new target of abuse.
Over the course of my public school career, I found it necessary, and downright scary, to put one lad in a ditch and break another’s nose. Both were brief, frustrated, reactive instances that left me wondering what price I would pay.
In another school, a youngster entered first grade after spending his early years in a state at the opposite end of the nation. He had seen things of which his new classmates had never dreamed. His teacher, who herself had never been out of the county, found herself frustrated, and called for a parental visit.
“Whenever anyone else has a story, he always has to tell a bigger one,” said the teacher — let’s call her Ms. Newbie. “He always has to have the attention.”
It turned out the youngster’s stories involved such descriptions as his dad shooting fish before bringing them into the boat, and filling a bathtub full of crabs before boiling and freezing them for future dinners. They did, indeed, seem tall tales to youngsters whose own stories talked of catching brook trout from a stream, and to whom crabs were, uh, somewhat less than savory.
And, it turned out, they were true, derived from living his early years on the coast of Alaska, where halibut can be more than 200 pounds, and where Alaskan King Crabs can be cheaply bought fresh from the boat.
Unfortunately, Ms. Newbie’s life experience did not encourage her to check out her young charge’s stories.
In yet another school, another student from another state moved into a new elementary school. He quickly found a few friendly neighborhood youngsters, but he also finds a few classmates less than welcoming. They didn’t know the new kid, or anything about where he came from.
For his part, he knew little about his new surroundings. So he said things like “Back home,” and was reminded, in not very friendly terms, that he was not “back home.”
He was a star where he had lived. In his new school, others had staked out their own stardom, and early on, they, like Tad and Ms. Newbie, made it clear interlopers would not be tolerated.
It happens. It shouldn’t. And simple posting of a Bully Free Zone sign is not going to stop it.
Readers may contact John Messeder at john@jmesseder.net.
