Bullying, education, and compassion

New York Times opinion piece on bullying, stressing the importance of education to change behavior.

It’s important, first, to recognize that while cellphones and the Internet have made bullying more anonymous and unsupervised, there is little evidence that children are meaner than they used to be. Indeed, there is ample research — not to mention plenty of novels and memoirs — about how children have always victimized one another in large and small ways, how often they are oblivious to the rights and feelings of others and how rarely they defend a victim.

In a 1995 study in Canada, researchers placed video cameras in a school playground and discovered that overt acts of bullying occurred at an astonishing rate of 4.5 incidents per hour. Just as interesting, children typically stood idly by and watched the mistreatment of their classmates — apparently, the inclination and ability to protect one another and to enforce a culture of tolerance does not come naturally. These are values that must be taught.

Yet, in American curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as the primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others. …

As an essential part of the school curriculum, we have to teach children how to be good to one another, how to cooperate, how to defend someone who is being picked on and how to stand up for what is right.

The authors, Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom, note that after three teenage victims of bullying committed suicide in 1983, Norway introduced a prevention program that has been very successful.

The incidence of bullying fell by half during the two-year period in which the programs were introduced. Stealing and cheating also declined. And the rate of bullying remains low today. Clearly, when a school and a community adopt values that are rooted in treating others with dignity and respect, children’s behavior can change.

And just maybe those children will grow up to be more tolerant adults.

Educating for compassion

A related thought comes from Martha Nussbaum’s Not For Profit, where she argues that the cost of education’s abandonment of the arts and humanities is a diminished ability to sympathize with others. We lose the capacity to imagine the situation of others, a skill we exercise when studying literature and history, for example.

Radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes have not been well thought through. Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive. If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance. …

[D]eficiencies in compassion can hook up with the pernicious dynamic of disgust and shame … [and] shame is a universal response to human helplessness.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, where six teenagers are charged in connection with the suicide of Phoebe Prince, the defense has leaked private information about Prince’s mental health history. Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor, comments:

Make no mistake: This is all tied to some sick defense strategy that’s beyond despicable. There is not a thing this child could have done to deserve what happened to her. You can never be responsible for your own death when somebody tortures you.

Resources:

Image source: The Inquisitr

Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom, There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully, The New York Times, July 22, 2010

Marie Szaniszlo, Expert: Leak of Phoebe Prince’s past a bullying move, Boston Herald, July 23, 2010

Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities