I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz lately about how nasty junior high is, and how there really is nothing you can do about it. How you have to just throw up your hands and let the bullying happen and they will survive. Are you telling me that we with all the institutions and focus groups and researchers, we still can’t get a handle on adolescent cruelty? I don’t buy it. I think that is something we tell ourselves and each other because we don’t have methods and strategies to deal with these issues, en masse or individually. It’s feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the way we expect 2 year olds to be brutal and teenagers to drink and drive and marriage to be a ball and chain–we expect junior high to be a social test. Maybe we could spend less time expecting teachers to be weight watchers and empower and pay them to do team-building exercises. Maybe there should be less time spent on geography and more on sociology. They are not learning squat if they are miserable, I think we can all agree on that. There has to be a better way to help these kids through this phase.
I have actually had kids admit to me that they would rather make their parents and teachers angry by being a jerk in school than be bullied. This has got to be a community effort; we can’t just turn our backs in relief because our kids survived the gauntlet. The first step, in my mind, is stop shrugging your shoulders when you hear tales of cruelty amongst kids. It’s 2010 and kids are still getting locked in lockers. Nevermind the myspace/facebook cruelty that is all underground. It is so easy to insult people on the internet; look at the responses on you tube sometime– they are 90 percent foul. Our pop culture swings on mutual insult and foul exchanges. Be brave. See my space for what it is – social networking tool? it is a social superiority tool –and just say no. Encourage the kids to be in relationships in which they speak face-to-face so they can read cues and understand subtle emotions. We cannot be afraid to teach them that, as Dorothy Day said, “It feels good to be kind to people, and it feels awful to be cruel.”