← Columns

Bullying is real. Bulling is everywhere. Bullying is learned.

The Source

Bullying is real. Bulling is everywhere. Bullying is learned. Kids bully. Parents bully. Teachers bully. ..not all kids, not all parents and not all teachers, but intimidation and mistreatment are not hurtful practices confined to the playground or the elementary school lunchroom. This week and next my Lincoln Land theatre students will be traveling around the Jacksonville area with a show called Bully Beware. We’ll perform for four schools a day for four days. That’s a lot of driving, packing, unpacking, then scooting off to the next performance. Frankly, I don’t know if a half-hour performance warning kids not to bully others will make a difference. I hope it does. At the end of any day you always want to tell yourself that the world is better because you were there, but some days you simply don’t know. The trouble is, some of the people who most desperately need to learn the lesson won’t be there to hear the message. I grew up in a time and place where picking on the helpless was pretty much accepted as a part of growing up, where to many “bullying” wasn’t real. No, I wasn’t raised on the streets of East St. Louis or the Lower East Side of New York City. I learned my lessons in a small town in rural Illinois, and I doubt that we were any crueler than any other place. Perhaps we were kinder than most, but bullying was very much a part of growing up and many adults simply looked upon it as a part of life and in need of no special attention. The little boy who wasn’t tall enough to play basketball somehow deserved the ribbing he got in P.E. class. The girl with the slight limp should learn to deal with the occasional hurtful remark. The overweight girl simply ate too much and thus caused her own misery. After all, life isn’t fair. The only way to deal with it was to turn the other cheek and tough it out. That’s how we become mature adults, right? The cute girl, the prom queen, the handsome fullback, the talented singer, the perfect smile, the perky personality, the “in” kids deserve to get special recognition don’t they? After all, they were born cute, handsome, talented, dentally perfect, and perky. And as for the others…well….that’s life, right? This sort of victimization can actually be handled more easily in a third-grade classroom than with a group of adults. If seven-year-old boys tease little Johnny about his Goodwill Store shoes, we can step in and talk to them. But what do you do about the mother who really hopes that her son will date the cutest girl, the father who urges his daughter to hang around the really cool kids, and the teacher who secretly gives up on getting through to that kid who’s been trouble since the day he (and probably his father) entered her classroom? All natural responses…we are after all, human. But what we need is a new awareness that being by human we have our preferences…our favorites…our prejudices. I’m no saint. A young theatre student comes up to me full of eagerness and joy and talent and she’ll likely get my attention without any effort on my part. But my real job as a teacher…as a human being…is to keep my wits and soul sensitized for the boy in the back row with less showy qualities, but who wants just as desperately to be noticed. The toughest lesson I ever learned in my teaching career came in the form of a post-graduation note from a mother. The lady’s oldest son was a star, a standout. He was one of our school’s top scholars and a brilliant performer both in the classroom and onstage. Then his younger brother showed up a few years later and the kid wanted to be anywhere but in school. He told me as much. And as a result I didn’t push him to perform. I let him get by and get out of there as soon as possible. After both boys had graduated the mom wrote me a very kind note with a very painful message. She thanked me for teaching her sons, but then asked me if I realized how badly the younger boy wanted my attention. …how he didn’t have the talent of his older brother, but how he was desperate for my notice, my approval, my love. I didn’t keep the letter. It hurt too much to re-read it. But I will never…ever…forget what she said. It was the greatest and most painful gift I could have received. What we used to call “a part of growing up” and “toughing it out” was bullying. It is still bullying. It will forever be bullying. And in as much as we have done it to the least of our brethren…well, you know the rest.