Bullies

During my last two years as Head of Lake Tahoe School, the faculty and administration spent a great deal of time dealing with accusations of bullying. This tendency is not new among parents, though it has taken on a life of its own during the past decade and, with increasing intensity, during the last four years.  Please don’t misinterpret. I take genuine bullying very seriously, a claim to which a long line of students and teachers can attest. I also firmly believe that what some parents perceive as “bullying” simply isn’t.  Not to mention those same parents’ total lack of ability to recognize when their own children cross a behavioral line.

More to the point, the question that I wished I could have asked parents with complaints but knew it wasn’t appropriate was: For whom did you vote in the last Presidential election? If the answer were Donald Trump, in my fantasies, I would simply refuse to listen to their complaints. The current President of the United States is a consummate bully. Nobody is beyond the circle of his vicious attacks: race, religion, gender, physical disabilities, country of origin, income status, age, experience… It stands to reason, in my mind, that anyone who dismisses Trump’s assaults on others forfeits the right to object to the actions of anyone else, especially a child. Moreover, the message that such parents give their children, by not reacting directly and forcefully in ways that counter the negative Trump philosophy is to condone such behavior for their own children. 

Myriad reports across the nation during the last four years indicate that bullying rates in schools have increased significantly, especially in regions/districts where a majority of parents voted for Donald Trump.  Our children listen. They listen to the media, whether print or visual. They listen to their parents. Most importantly, they listen very carefully to what is allowed and what is not. They listen to the President of the United States, theoretically the most powerful man in the world, and they are keenly aware that he is allowed to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants. Unless they hear their parents react swiftly and strongly to his attacks, they interpret that silence as permission to say and act similarly. 

We can’t have it both ways.  We cannot expect our schools to ensure that every child treats others with dignity and respect without taking the responsibility, as parents, of ensuring that our children receive consistent, thoughtful messages at home as to what constitutes healthy, mature behavior. Anyone who accuses others of bullying and does not, at the same time, decry the actions and words of the current President, loses all credibility, in my opinion. In the past, I have sometimes agreed with policies of various Presidents and sometimes disagreed. Until this one, I have never felt the need to explain/defend/excuse/deplore the behavior and actions of any of them toward others, especially those unable to defend themselves. Children raised in violent homes very often become violent adults. Without intervention, they model what they see. The same is true of how youngsters express themselves verbally. The only way to counteract bullying is to recognize it and address it consistently. Adults should be held more accountable than children, not less.