Bullying; It's just harmless fun, right?
Yesterday, I read a blog post on bullying. It wasn't a shock to me since I already knew that bullying takes place in schools. Somehow it's also something a friend and I always end up talking about when we meet. 'We weren't that bad,' one would say. The other would always agree. We weren't that bad. We never are. Right?
And yet, yesterday's post made me think more deeply about bullying and how bad it really was among my classmates or even batchmates. Were we really the last of the good kids? Wasn't name-calling bullying? Didn't teasing amount to bullying? Didn't laughing at another kids' inability to understand a lesson or subject bullying? Weren't we bullying kids when we excluded them from certain activities? But no... We did all that for fun. We all laughed at the end and went back to whatever it is we were doing.
Or did we? Did the kid being called names laugh it off? Did the kid who was teased laugh? Did the kid who was laughed at laugh with us? Did the excluded kids laugh?
And then I was taken over by a sense of guilty and shame. Not because I had always participated in these incidents. But even if I hadn't uttered those names or teased someone, hadn't I laughed? Hadn't I enjoyed it? And even if I didn't, even if I knew it was wrong, hadn't I looked away? Hadn't I ignored it while it happened?
And so were we really the last of the good kids? Were there batches that didn't in some way bully a kid? When I told my mother about this, she told me how an older kid would pinch her when she was in school.
So for years and years, generation after generation, kids go through something they don't like and we have some how managed to go about life without addressing the problem. You maybe thinking, in a world where kids are physically harmed and mentally abused enough to even harm themselves or commit suicide, what's a pinch or two? What's a bit of name-calling? It's harmless, right?
But why do we need to call people names, pinch them or in anyway make them unhappy or uncomfortable? Why do we like to intimidate people even as a joke?
I remember telling my grade three teacher to change my place in class because my 'friends' would eat all my food. I remember feeling so embarrassed when I was new in school and a kid told me a certain teacher's name was Elizabeth, when it wasn't. When we stood up to greet the teacher with a loud 'good morning, ms. ...' I felt like the entire world was laughing at me. I disliked this kid throughout school. I avoided her as much as possible.
I remember how we would say something like, 'if not, what would you do?' in a threatening voice when someone asked us to do something. For instance, if I asked someone to pass me a book. These were never serious but why do we have this mean streak we love to use when unnecessary?
I dismissed this as immaturity and a lack of anything else to do. When you spend six hours every day with the same bunch of people, you need to pick on people in order to keep things interesting. Gangs and cliques will be formed and some kids will just end up being the black sheep. You will tease or bully people because there's nothing else to do and because we are told that that's how things work. A class needs a class clown, someone who we can all depend on to annoy teachers, disrupt classes and make everyone laugh. Every class needs a nerd to impress teachers and get really high marks. Every class needed a teacher's pet who aimed at pleasing teachers. And every classes needed the kids who are easy to tease. And this is a system most of us just don't question.
And yet, we need to question why we want to tease, bug or bully someone. We need to ask ourselves why we snicker when a particular student is praised by a teacher. We need to ask ourselves why we are so mean sometimes.
But then I remembered moments when I brought these behaviors and thoughts into adult life. I remember going for lunch without asking certain people to join us simply because we didn't like them anymore. I remember excluding people from meetups or outings and avoiding them. And now it makes me feel so ashamed because in school, I wasn't just being a kid. I wasn't just going with the flow. As a kid and as an adult, I was just mean. I am mean. And it's high time I did something about this.
And I'm not making excuses but I think this meanness is a result of some thing that is just not right within me. When I'm mean to someone, it's sometimes because I don't know any other way to express my feelings towards them. We are so used to avoiding problems, bottling them up and then exploding. We aren't used to talking to people and telling them that what they did was wrong. We prefer raised voices and hurting people.
And if it wasn't about not dealing with my problems properly, my meanness stemmed from unhappiness within me. Maybe by laughing at kids who were being teased, I was finding a way to forget how a teacher had scolded me or how I was feeling left out from certain class activities. Maybe by ignoring a colleague I was trying not feel like they are better at the job than I am.
But maybe it's also about acceptance and self-esteem. If I didn't laugh along with the rest of the class, I would run the risk of them ganging up against me. If I didn't use the same nicknames the rest of the class used, they will come up with some insult for me too. If I had raised my voice and told them to leave a kid alone, I would have become the class enemy or a spoilsport. 'God! Someone doesn't have a sense of humor' they would say. 'Mind your own business,' they would say. So we shut up. We laugh along. Or we detach ourselves from the situation. We give excuses to comfort ourselves. We ignore the problem. And by doing so, we contribute to it.
There is also a matter of power. Imagine the power a kid feels when they are feared by the entire class? The power they feel when they can make the entire class laugh with just one cruel word or action? For some reason, we feel like we have more power when we pose a threat to someone.
Not all of us can do this. I can't look in someone's eyes and dare them to do something awful. I can't find the courage to do that. But being able to hurt someone gives us power. It makes us feel strong. It adds to our confidence. And so when a person realizes that they can dare others to eat dirt or hop fifty times before entering the classroom, they make use of it. They keep on bullying people. They keep hurting people.
And these kids who just want to matter in class go on to become despicable adults who boss people around. They ridicule colleagues. They insult subordinates. And they keep spreading unpleasantness.
And the kids who are bullied or teased or made fun of go on to have no self-esteem. They have no confidence in themselves. They always have their guard up. They are scared.
However, some of these kids, whether they were the bullies or the bullied, go on to become responsible adults who respect other people. And more often than not, they become examples of how bullying is just harmless fun. 'Look at A,' people would say, 'she used to be a big bully in school but now she's such a disciplined young woman.' Or they would say, 'you know, we used to be so worried about B. But now he's fine. Such a strong boy to have gotten past being bullied in school. Harmless fun, no?'
And so we tell ourselves that bullying isn't a problem in Sri Lanka. That bullying isn't a problem in the school we are proud past pupils of. That bullying was never a problem when we were in school. And when we hear of an incident of bullying, we say, 'we were never like that. Kids these days!' and we forget all about it. And so the problem goes unaddressed and unsolved. And kids continue to fear the place that is a second home until they are adults. And kids continue to fear the people they grow up with.
And this goes on and on. Kids try to grab attention of parents or teachers. They are told to ignore it or fight back. They are told to stop being weak. And after being ignored or forgotten over and over again, someone will do something that no one can ignore. And usually this something involves death. It isn't a cry for help because those cries went unheard. It is, instead, an end to their troubles and pain. And finally, their parents, teachers, classmates hear them. Finally, the country hears them. But then it's too late.
And yet, yesterday's post made me think more deeply about bullying and how bad it really was among my classmates or even batchmates. Were we really the last of the good kids? Wasn't name-calling bullying? Didn't teasing amount to bullying? Didn't laughing at another kids' inability to understand a lesson or subject bullying? Weren't we bullying kids when we excluded them from certain activities? But no... We did all that for fun. We all laughed at the end and went back to whatever it is we were doing.
Or did we? Did the kid being called names laugh it off? Did the kid who was teased laugh? Did the kid who was laughed at laugh with us? Did the excluded kids laugh?
And then I was taken over by a sense of guilty and shame. Not because I had always participated in these incidents. But even if I hadn't uttered those names or teased someone, hadn't I laughed? Hadn't I enjoyed it? And even if I didn't, even if I knew it was wrong, hadn't I looked away? Hadn't I ignored it while it happened?
And so were we really the last of the good kids? Were there batches that didn't in some way bully a kid? When I told my mother about this, she told me how an older kid would pinch her when she was in school.
So for years and years, generation after generation, kids go through something they don't like and we have some how managed to go about life without addressing the problem. You maybe thinking, in a world where kids are physically harmed and mentally abused enough to even harm themselves or commit suicide, what's a pinch or two? What's a bit of name-calling? It's harmless, right?
But why do we need to call people names, pinch them or in anyway make them unhappy or uncomfortable? Why do we like to intimidate people even as a joke?
I remember telling my grade three teacher to change my place in class because my 'friends' would eat all my food. I remember feeling so embarrassed when I was new in school and a kid told me a certain teacher's name was Elizabeth, when it wasn't. When we stood up to greet the teacher with a loud 'good morning, ms. ...' I felt like the entire world was laughing at me. I disliked this kid throughout school. I avoided her as much as possible.
I remember how we would say something like, 'if not, what would you do?' in a threatening voice when someone asked us to do something. For instance, if I asked someone to pass me a book. These were never serious but why do we have this mean streak we love to use when unnecessary?
I dismissed this as immaturity and a lack of anything else to do. When you spend six hours every day with the same bunch of people, you need to pick on people in order to keep things interesting. Gangs and cliques will be formed and some kids will just end up being the black sheep. You will tease or bully people because there's nothing else to do and because we are told that that's how things work. A class needs a class clown, someone who we can all depend on to annoy teachers, disrupt classes and make everyone laugh. Every class needs a nerd to impress teachers and get really high marks. Every class needed a teacher's pet who aimed at pleasing teachers. And every classes needed the kids who are easy to tease. And this is a system most of us just don't question.
And yet, we need to question why we want to tease, bug or bully someone. We need to ask ourselves why we snicker when a particular student is praised by a teacher. We need to ask ourselves why we are so mean sometimes.
But then I remembered moments when I brought these behaviors and thoughts into adult life. I remember going for lunch without asking certain people to join us simply because we didn't like them anymore. I remember excluding people from meetups or outings and avoiding them. And now it makes me feel so ashamed because in school, I wasn't just being a kid. I wasn't just going with the flow. As a kid and as an adult, I was just mean. I am mean. And it's high time I did something about this.
And I'm not making excuses but I think this meanness is a result of some thing that is just not right within me. When I'm mean to someone, it's sometimes because I don't know any other way to express my feelings towards them. We are so used to avoiding problems, bottling them up and then exploding. We aren't used to talking to people and telling them that what they did was wrong. We prefer raised voices and hurting people.
And if it wasn't about not dealing with my problems properly, my meanness stemmed from unhappiness within me. Maybe by laughing at kids who were being teased, I was finding a way to forget how a teacher had scolded me or how I was feeling left out from certain class activities. Maybe by ignoring a colleague I was trying not feel like they are better at the job than I am.
But maybe it's also about acceptance and self-esteem. If I didn't laugh along with the rest of the class, I would run the risk of them ganging up against me. If I didn't use the same nicknames the rest of the class used, they will come up with some insult for me too. If I had raised my voice and told them to leave a kid alone, I would have become the class enemy or a spoilsport. 'God! Someone doesn't have a sense of humor' they would say. 'Mind your own business,' they would say. So we shut up. We laugh along. Or we detach ourselves from the situation. We give excuses to comfort ourselves. We ignore the problem. And by doing so, we contribute to it.
There is also a matter of power. Imagine the power a kid feels when they are feared by the entire class? The power they feel when they can make the entire class laugh with just one cruel word or action? For some reason, we feel like we have more power when we pose a threat to someone.
Not all of us can do this. I can't look in someone's eyes and dare them to do something awful. I can't find the courage to do that. But being able to hurt someone gives us power. It makes us feel strong. It adds to our confidence. And so when a person realizes that they can dare others to eat dirt or hop fifty times before entering the classroom, they make use of it. They keep on bullying people. They keep hurting people.
And these kids who just want to matter in class go on to become despicable adults who boss people around. They ridicule colleagues. They insult subordinates. And they keep spreading unpleasantness.
And the kids who are bullied or teased or made fun of go on to have no self-esteem. They have no confidence in themselves. They always have their guard up. They are scared.
However, some of these kids, whether they were the bullies or the bullied, go on to become responsible adults who respect other people. And more often than not, they become examples of how bullying is just harmless fun. 'Look at A,' people would say, 'she used to be a big bully in school but now she's such a disciplined young woman.' Or they would say, 'you know, we used to be so worried about B. But now he's fine. Such a strong boy to have gotten past being bullied in school. Harmless fun, no?'
And so we tell ourselves that bullying isn't a problem in Sri Lanka. That bullying isn't a problem in the school we are proud past pupils of. That bullying was never a problem when we were in school. And when we hear of an incident of bullying, we say, 'we were never like that. Kids these days!' and we forget all about it. And so the problem goes unaddressed and unsolved. And kids continue to fear the place that is a second home until they are adults. And kids continue to fear the people they grow up with.
And this goes on and on. Kids try to grab attention of parents or teachers. They are told to ignore it or fight back. They are told to stop being weak. And after being ignored or forgotten over and over again, someone will do something that no one can ignore. And usually this something involves death. It isn't a cry for help because those cries went unheard. It is, instead, an end to their troubles and pain. And finally, their parents, teachers, classmates hear them. Finally, the country hears them. But then it's too late.
Comments
Post a Comment