As our culture increasingly tends towards the metrosexual, insists on ignoring the inherent differences between men and women, our schools have had increasing problems with violence. I believe the two trends are not unrelated.
Today, Mrs. Michelle Malkin posted to her blog, one of my regular news sources, her response to an anti-bullying program that New York City is introducing.[1] In it she block quotes sections of a recent column she wrote, and segments from reactions others have had. As someone who has been on the receiving end of the abuse school children can heap on each other, and as someone who has seen the same dynamic affect others, I figure my opinion is perhaps more informed on this than on many I choose to opine on.
Our school systems will not be able to effectively combat bullying and other forms of violence in the schools until it first embraces a theory of personal responsibility, and secondly empowers its teachers to make that theory real to their students. It is meaningless to tell a child that something is wrong, if there is no consequence to being or doing wrong. In the absence of consequence, at least some children will continue to do what he or she likes, for a variety of reasons. Some will do it because its personally pleasing, they enjoy the sense of power that bullying provides. Others will do it from their own insecurity. Others will follow the “leaders” of their group or class. Some will do it just because it is forbidden. A person’s conscience must be formed, it does not come prepackaged with all the rules we would have our children live by. This is why the Church introduces the child to Holy Communion and Reconciliation (Penance) around the second grade, as the child reaches “the age of reason.” Prior to this, the child is believed not to as yet have the capacity to fully appreciate what is right and what is wrong; their conscience is not sufficiently formed to provide sufficient feedback. This is a critical point.
It is critical because if their consciences have been insufficiently formed before that point, then a lack of discipline on the parents part will introduce them to the school system with a reduced understanding of right from wrong. The school system then has the choice of allowing a moral anarchy to reign, or to attempt to impose its own view of morality on the students. As moral anarchy is universally deemed unacceptable, that is, we do retain real (though insufficient) concepts of what constitutes acceptable behavior (for example, bullying is wrong), the school system necessarily imposes some (however minimal, and however much it attempts to be secular) moral framework on its students.
Granted then that this is a question of training the conscience and inducing the child to embrace that moral framework, the incidence of violence and bullying after an introductory period (a few years, but that is somewhat suppositional based on anecdotal evidence) is then a measure of the success with which the school has trained and induced. In simplified language, you can judge the success of the school by the level of bullying and violence that occurs.
This last needs to be qualified. We do have an inherent nature. Man is at once fallen, and is at once endowed with certain God-given tendencies, gifts, and personality traits. Our own experiences, including but not limited to the education (both moral and scholastic) we receive, will shape the extent to which and the forms in which these gifts and personality traits will evince themselves, and the extent to which they will fail to be realized. Similarly, our experiences, including but not limited to the education (both moral and scholastic) we receive, will influence the temptations we are faced with, and to what extent we give into these temptations.
This nature, or personality, then, will provide its own influence on the behavior of students in the school. If the moral framework developed by the students conflicts with the demands of their nature and personality, one will give way. This means that if the moral framework is inherently incompatible with masculinity, those boys with particularly strong sense of self will reject the framework. Boys will experience conflict(girls do as well, but I have much less experience with girls, and will not address them here). They will choose to act on that conflict in a physical manner with a higher frequency than girls will. This is then something that the moral framework, if it is to be successful, must account for. It must teach its young men, its boys, when to fight, what to fight for, and what to fight against. It must punish those who fight for the wrong reasons, while showing leniency who fight for the right ones. It must also teach the concept of proportionality, matching a valid reason to fight with the correct, and not excessive, level of violence.
Often this may be no violence at all, but we must also remember that the level of violence which is appropriate for an 11 year old is not necessarily the same that is appropriate for a 20 year old. It may be valuable to allow the 11 year old to settle a conflict physically where the 20 year old would be expected, and should be expected, to settle it non-violently. This teaches both 11 year olds valuable lessons. It teaches both children manly endurance. It teaches both that there are pains more meaningful than words, and thus that words can be endured. It teaches both how to fight, how to channel aggression, a skill they may need if they are called to face the violent criminal as a law enforcement officer, or in the unfortunate case when society must send its young men to war. It also teaches them how to forgive, how to end conflict, and how to move on. All of these are skills we see lacking in our school children.
Some of these are lessons that can be taught while attempting to teach children the ways they will need to respond as adults, you can attempt to suppress all fights and still produce manly yet moral men. You cannot however expect to do so by the types of anti-bullying campaigns that I envision reading the articles Mrs. Malkin as linked to. Telling children to be nice simply will not cut it. Providing only verbal examples, and only verbal rebukes will not do the job. Nor is it a question of how the children learn, it is not a question of the audio learner versus the visual learner. Adding in graphical experiences or reading assignments will not help. The problem here is that you are attempting to treat a boy as something other than a boy. Perhaps not like a girl, but you have a false view of the masculine. The problem is not the aggression that the boys will display and act on, it is its focus. Aggression must be channeled. Into sports, into better grades, into protecting the innocent, into something constructive and/or laudable. Aggression left unchannelled will, in at least some cases, produce destructive results. Sometimes this will be in the form of bullying, sometimes this will be in the form of the child who, having been picked on, snaps.
Seen from this view, the solutions start to become clear. It is useless to emphasize inclusion, the children will not ever enjoy the same things, and peer pressure will inevitably cause the marginalization of some student(s). More valuable would be to provide an escape for the excluded child. Let the geek child (who may not be interested or need the recess most children benefit from) stay in and help with younger students, or read in the library, or something similar. This protects him from his class at his most vulnerable time, with the least disruption on the rest of the class (they still get their much needed recess). Provide real punishments for the wayward child. Something that will cause a reaction, a “behavior journal” is a bad idea: children learn to say whatever it takes to get you off their case at an early age. Talking to them and emphasizing the need to include and be friends will not work either, for the same reason. The bully will quickly learn the right words, but not change his behavior. Loss of activities can work, for example staying in for recess, however the loss of an outlet for energy may outweigh the benefit (to the class).
In the end though, from the above you can start to see the rest of the solution. And the rest of the solution requires either participation from the parents, or a change in society’s concept of acceptable forms of punishment.
Some parents will abuse their children. Some will fail to understand and accept the correct border between chastisement and abuse. This does not mean that all corporal punishment is abuse. This confusion on the part of society is at least partially responsible for the problems in our school today. While at least partially the result of the reality that this line (the line between abuse and punishment) varies from child to child, and while some adults have mastered that tone and manner that can make a verbal chastisement more effective than any physical one, corporal punishment has proven successful throughout recorded history; it is only the modern society that fails to understand and accept that to “spare the rod” is to “spoil the child.” And the spoiled child will never make the good (both in terms of behavior and academic performance) student, nor the good citizen.
Some of this confusion however stems from misplaced priorities. Concern for the child’s “emotional health,” as measured by how often the child feels good about himself has lead teachers to revolt against grades, to end the incredibly successful practice of reading groups (which reduces the entire class to a low medium in which the slowest students are left behind, and the brightest are left bored and idle), and similar insanity. Similarly, if the child does not have an emotional reaction to punishment, it has not been effective. Punishment should be something that the child will have a passionate desire to avoid, either to avoid the pain, the shame, or the loss. For example, “time out” may work, if the loss of autonomy is something the child feels. Alternately, it may fail if, rather than causing an emotive reaction against boredom, satisfaction is found in day dreaming or planing the next exploit.
In the end however, any school except the boarding school will have insufficient access to the student to make a real impact on his or her behavior. As one looks at today’s students, with one third to one half not doing their homework, and supported in that disobedience by their parents, the logic of this statement becomes self-evident. If the lessons of the day are unlearned by the parent who goes ballistic at the thought of the punishment the teacher has imposed, the child will be confirmed in thinking that the punishment was unjust, and thus its transformative effects will be lost. If the punishment requires time after school, then this effect will be loss, unless the parent cooperates in enforcement. If the children learn from the parents to ridicule their peers, then the school will find itself hard put to counter this daily influence. If the parents care more about being friends with their children and/or their children’s friends, with being the most popular parent instead of being the best parent, then the child will be spoiled, and the school will see, and be unable to counteract, the effects spoiling a child has on his behavior and on his performance.
Parents then, are the rest of the solution to the woes in our schools. Parents must parent, parents must grow up themselves, and embrace responsibility, both form themselves and for their children (to a proper extent), or things will continue to go downhill.
[1] Malkin, Michelle. “LAND OF THE MEEK” http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002882.htm
