Bullying in the classroom begins outside the school walls.
As the school year opened, the sore wound of the bullying phenomenon opened along with it. Yes, it happens everywhere and many children live in social isolation and suffer from bullying and insults for months or years. They will carry the internal scars with them for many years into their future. Parents, if they even know what is going on, are helpless in the face of a system that often silences the issue in order to maintain a good reputation.
It is true that bullying has always existed, even when I was a child, but in our day and age, the phenomenon has become extremely worrying. The endless harassment breaks through the classroom walls and haunts the bullied child all the way from classroom to his mobile device, so there is nowhere to escape and find some peace and comfort.
It typically starts from a single child, the leader of the attack; a child who likes to control everyone and who is considered popular among his peers. Why is he doing this? Because he enjoys the satisfaction of being above someone else, so he degrades another child and organizes the whole class against him. However, that child is following his own internal urges as well as the examples he is absorbing from all directions, whether it’s reality shows, YouTube videos, or the adults he is looking up to.
Since our lives have become so filled with power games of pride and control, we shouldn’t wonder why kids are behaving the same way nowadays. We did not form a good enough environment for them, we did not pay enough attention, or provide the right education so as to nurture healthy, positive connections between them, and now the bitter results are coming back to bite us – mainly in the form of bullying.
So how can we deal with all this bullying? First of all, talk to the leader and explain what a terrible injustice he is doing to others and to himself. Equally important is to talk to those who follow the leader so that they do stop give power and fuel to the “leader.” We have to organize the power of many to counter the power of that leader. Why? Because young children instinctively understand what is “good for me or bad for me,” and a child who tries to initiate an attack and sees that it is not going well or even working to his detriment, will stop trying of his own accord.
With older children you can chat. You can show them how they, too, could remain on their own if they continue down this road of bullying. So if they have a desire to attract others around them, they should be positive leaders that everyone wants to follow and imitate.
But instead of finding ourselves looking for ways to combat bullying at school, it’s much better to treat the disease at the root before it spreads by building a healthy social environment for children from an early age. To make positive social relationships the center of attention in our educational programs, rather than individualistic success. And the sooner we do it, the less bullying we will see.
Posted on Facebook September 4th, 2019