Thoughts on bullying

This past weekend there was an piece in the Globe & Mail's Focus section entitled School Tyrants Unchecked by Judith Timson. The article was talking about Barbara Coloroso's newest book “Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide” and how her premise is that bullying (the topic of one of her other books) can lead to genocide.

This seems to quite a leap of ideas but certainly one to think about. I, often, as a teacher, thought of bullying as being an issue of self-esteem and power. That the bully was trying to show off his/her superiority but in reality was masking a sort of inferiority complex—an issue of self-esteem. Some experts, Ms. Timson interviewed or quoted, talk of genocide as being anb issue of one group being afraid of another group. The Rwanda genocides come to mind as the inspiration for Coloroso's ideas and book.

Barbara feels that the act of genocide is the extreme of bullying. She also talks of the youth factor in genocide. Recently I saw the film “Un Dimanche in Kigali” which was centered around the time of the Rwandan genocide and in it there were a great many youth involved in this horrific time. I see where Ms. Coloroso is heading although I haven't read her book. She talks about the “bully circle”—the instigators, the targets and the bystanders—and how if we can change the dynamic of these three components the bullying can and will stop. She contends that to change the reactions of the bystanders to be better resisters will aid in deterring the bullying behaviour. She stretches the point to say that if in the bigger world, bystanders become better resisters and stand up to the tyrants, genocide can be stopped.

One thing that I can see is that we do need, in a civilized society, need to talk about the issues and teach our children to be more human and compassionate. It all starts at home with our support as parents and our understanding of our children's needs. The youth component in genocide reflects the ideas that were expressed in recent blogs that youth need to be accepted and taking more control of their lives. They gravitate to the “gang” mentality when they are frustrated by the adult roadblocks and controls of their risk-taking,