a given that most of you have been bullied or teased at some stage –
as a kid, a teen, or even an adult.
Would you seek compensation for the crap you went through? Yes? No?
Why or why not?
Ben Cox made news earlier this week by being awarded a $213,000 payout
due to the pain and suffering he endured when bullied in kindergarden
and year 1. Ongoing payments and superannuation mean that his total
award may add up to $1 million. What a fortune!
I must admit that when I first heard about this case, I thought "Not
another bloody whinger. Can't these people get over it? Everyone has
shit happen to them as a child. This will open a can of worms!"
But after thinking about it more, and reading more about Ben's case,
my thoughts changed.
His story is utterly heartbreaking.
He was repeatedly physically assaulted and emotionally abused by other
kids – he had a tooth knocked out, he lost consciousness during one
attack. His mother's attempts to intervene with the school and the
department of education were met with the usual "bullying builds
character" bullshit. He switched schools but his psychiactric
condition meant that he just wasn't able to attend anymore after year
7.
He is currently a reclusive 18 year old with no friends and no chance
in finding employment who stays in his room all day. It was horrible
to see images in the papers of the pale, overweight teen, walking
alongside his mother, looking like a lump of nothingness.
Sad though it is, it's not an unusual story and I'm not entirely sure
I agree with suing schools, teachers and Education officials. It's a
difficult issue though. When faced with no help from teachers,
officials and bullies' parents in this situation, suing may have been
the only way for his mother to get a response.
When reading the responses of others towards this case, it shits me
that the "bullying build character" opinion is so widespread. I don't
think some people get the difference between being picked on or teased
a bit as a shy kid to being systematically tortured every single day.
I was picked on at school – particularly the early years of primary
school. Maybe it did help build my character. Maybe it didn't. But I'm
fine. I quite liked highschool actually, despite being one of the shy,
quiet kids.
On the other hand, My brother was systematically bullied throughout
his whole schooling experience. No one can say that that experience
had any positive impact on him. He's an incredibily intelligent person
who shuts himself off in his own world, has a menial job so totally
beneath his skills because he lacks the confidence to apply for
anything better, who is scared of speaking to people in authority, who
finds it hard to maintain any close relationships, and who currently
seems to be on a mission to eat himself to death.
I can't prove that the ongoing bullying was the cause of all his
issues, but I am convinced he'd be a different person if he was in a
supportive environment throughout all those years. I am angry at the
bully's mother who – when confronted by a teacher with my brother's
ripped clothing – decided to call my mum and tell her that "boys will
be boys". I don't believe the story that my brother broke his nose in
year 10 "playing soccer". I don't believe that placing the bullies in
after-school detention occasionally helped one bit – it just made them
bully him more. I don't believe in the crap that says you need to
teach kids self-defense and they'll be fine – there is no way that a
scared, timid boy should have to be placed in that situation. He was
unable to make friends during his first attempt at university and did
not complete the degree. Things got worse when he went travelling in
his early 20s – his first mark at independence – and was strangled and
mugged in Italy. The thugs even stole his glasses. That pushed him
back into a depressive state, unable to do much with his life. All the
counselling in the world isn't going to undo all those years.
One of my cousins – also a victim of bullying – is a recluse. He's 32,
he has no job, he lives in his room and doesn't leave the house. He
didn't even attend his brother's wedding. God knows what's going to
happen when his parents can't take care of him anymore. He hasn't seen
anyone but immediate family for years. It's horrible just to think
about it.
Thing is, not all victims turn into scared little puppy dogs. Some get
really bitter – you wont see them at school reunions because they're
too busy talking about how much they still hate everyone. Others
become defiant and take charge – out to prove that they will and can
overcome it.
I understand that people need skills to learn to cope with bullies
throughout their lives – including the widespread bullying that can
occur in the workplace – but allowing children to endure torture like
that will not help them in any way. It's extremely difficult to
address the issue – often bullies have huge issues themselves (we all
have stories of how the kid who picked on us turned out to be a wreck
as an adult) and with the whole issues of cyber-bullying, it's harder
to detect. I have no solutions to offer.
My main point though, is that the opinion that being bullied helps
kids in some way needs to be addressed. Do you think kicking a dog
every day and stealing its food will make it a better dog? No – you'll
end up either with the type of dog who is timid and scared and unable
to cope, or the type who shifts into attack mode. And neither of those
outcomes is good.
4 comments:
This is a wonderful post, Jezzy, and we ALL need to take it to heart. Of course, we have seen the impact of bullying here in the US very recently. The shooter in the VA Tech tragedy was bullied in grade school. It has bothered me for many years that we did not address bullying in the high school where I taught following Columbine. They just made rules that the Goth kids could not wear certain clothes anymore or have facial piercings. I have no clue how that was supposed to help. (I think it hurt, to be honest.) Our Goth culture usually consists of kids who have been bullied who band together and begin doing outrageously freakish things - like putting safety pins through their lips and leaving them. They seem to be saying, "Okay, I'm a freak. Let me know you just how much of a freak I really am."
I empathize with your story about your younger brother. My brother dropped out of high school and still lives with my parents at the age of 30. He works on occasion, but never keeps a job for very long. I know he was bullied some, but I can't say if that is what caused the problems he had with drugs or not.
Good post, Jez.
I think you are pretty much spot-on, in all respects, especially in rejecting the notion that being bullied builds character. Certainly one can and should try to learn everything possible from any situation that comes our way, good or bad, but that doesn't mean we should seek out painful experiences 'just because.' But I'd like to add yet another twist to the discussion. I know any number of kids who were bullied at home by their own mums and/or dads. It wasn't quite the same as when done by their peers, but when verbal and physical attacks are visited on a helpless child by his/her parents, it breeds in them the seeds of a great deal of dysfunction in future years. And it's not just children. Spousal/partner abuse is yet another form of bullying, too. Physical abuse is sometimes easier to spot, but the verbal bullying has an insidious effect on its object, destroying self-esteem and inflicting great emotional pain. Thing is, I've never met a bully who wasn't, at the core, a massively insecure person, who was trying by some twisted calculus to validate his/her own self-worth. Many or most of them had been victims of bullying in their own lives. But it does little good to try to 'understand' the reasons they act the way they do. In the end, the only way to stop it - or to curb it - is to take a zero-tolerance approach in the schools and in society in general, but especially in one's own life. Bullying is corrosive and it hurts. And while I can't keep all bullying from happening in my kid's lives, I will do my damndest to keep it from them, to empower my kids with as much self-esteem as I can to help them weather what they do encounter, to make certain they have physical and verbal skills to help them defend themselves, and ultimately, to be vigilant so that bullying is not something my kids ever engage engage in. It's all I can do, but I'll do all I can.
Oooooooooooh yeah, great post Jezzie... I must admit I would have had trouble reigning it in had I attempted it ( 20 pages later LOL ).
As I commented on Cazzie's blog post on the same topic, I got punched in the head almost every day by the wog boys at my school, and they constantly stole stuff from me ( money, food, a watch, a harmonica ) and were never caught or punished. It wasn't in the least bit character building... it turned me into a nervous wreck. I did find some others who'd also suffered though, and we started a sort of guerilla war which helped turn things around. I still wonder though... why the hell was it ever allowed to escalate to that point in the first place? As someone pointed out... stuff like Columbine and Virginia Tech are fucked up acts carried out by very fucked up units... but everyone has a limit to how much abuse they can take. If the overseers turn a blind eye to it, they may well do so at their peril.
I'm sorry to hear about your brother... it's a sad indictment of what happens when learned helplessness becomes internalized. I just hope he finds a way to get out of himself. It's hard.
I've been recently thinking about the effect of parent-child toxicity. There is a big difference between the children who accept that it's OK to fight back and those who resign themselves to "take it".
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