By Scott Carlson
If you weren’t aware, November 12-17th is ‘Bullying Awareness Week‘–a Canadian grassroots effort that works to spread the amazing message: bullying is a community concern, not limited to educators and students; it’s not up so someone else to address, but a project for all of us to work together on.
It’s an amazing message. However, I think calling it an ‘Awareness’ week, well, falls short of that mission. The term ‘awareness’ makes it seem like the point is to spread knowledge about the issue. Here’s the thing, though: Everyone is already aware of bullying, and lots of people are concerned about it; the issue is rather that many adults seem to me unsure what they’re supposed to do about it. Maybe they think schools should do something differently, or perhaps it’s simply up to parents. After all—bullying is something that just happens between kids, right? So, isn’t it just about better education and parenting strategies?
Hardly.
Bullying is really a blanket term for all kinds of nasty behaviors, usually between young people–from excluding/leaving someone out, to calling names, to attacking someone with a weapon. It’s used to cover homophobic, racist, and sexist actions. In a word it’s, well, complicated. The bad news is, so is trying to deal with it. The good news is, I would argue, there’s space for every single person to help, whether you work directly with youth or not.
Not that youth workers and educators don’t play important roles: At BYTE, for example, we focus on building fun, interactive workshops that make youth comfortable, generate honest discussion, and work together with them towards building compassionate, proactive strategies to challenge bullying behaviour—in others, and in themselves. It’s important to us that these are rooted in individual youth’s experiences, and that youth are empowered by their peers, not just “scolded†into good behaviour by adults. We’re also running a series that works to develop strong youth leaders, with broad understanding of violence, and skills in art, interpersonal communication and multimedia.
Lots of schools, especially high schools in Whitehorse, have strong ‘anti-bullying’ programs, such as the successful Challenge Day programs at FH Collins and Porter Creek Secondary School.
This is all great, but it’s really just a small piece to the puzzle. Bullying is often a reflection of our culture and our community—this is why it disproportionately affects LGBT and minority youth. To truly counter the discrimination and violence we call bullying, we have to work together to counter the all-too common idea that any group, or any person, is somehow worth less than another.
That might seem like an overwhelmingly large project–and it is. But it begins with small, everyday actions: As individuals, we have to think carefully about the words we use every day. We have to put a name to sexist comments, like calling a man or boy a “girl†as an insult, as though there is something wrong with being a woman. We have to challenge racism, like casual racist jokes, or racist stereotypes built up from popular culture. We need to challenge the idea that being a “real man†is about being tough, emotionless and always in control—and that, rather, it can be about being empathetic, communicative and emotional.
As a community and a culture, we need to demand a popular media that doesn’t under-represent minorities, or harmfully appropriate and mis-represent certain cultures, and that doesn’t demean and objectify women. We have to be critical of movies and TV shows that glorify “heroes†that solve all of their problems through violence, rather than the more important and nuanced skills of communication.
In our anti-bullying workshops, when we ask youth why some people bully, they almost always come up with the same answer (among others): because they feel powerless, frustrated, and want to take that out on someone else.
So, maybe most importantly, if we want to counter bullying–and address a host of other issues, too–adults, governments, police, need to help empower youth. They need to bring youth into important discussions, involve them in making community decisions, and work towards having a strong youth voice in all we do. Ending bullying isn’t about just “bullying,†it isn’t about “us†adults and “them†youth—it’s about what we can be doing better as a culture, and as a community.
And I can guarantee you, if we even just give this a try, we’ll wind up not only reducing bullying, but in building stronger, more exciting and dynamic communities.