Kids can be mean. I don’t think they do it intentionally. In trying to sort out their place in the world, kids say things and point out differences using obvious, blunt words. Most kids haven’t learned nuance or tone in order to truly convey their curiosity. For instance, kids will say, “You’re fat!” or “You are REALLY short!” The person hearing those words already knows that they are overweight or short, but hearing someone point it out can be hurtful. If the person hearing those words is another child, the words can explode inside of them like a grenade. No matter how long it has been since they heard it, a person can recollect with vivid clarity the day and the place and the time that they were picked on or bullied for their appearance (or their academic standing, or their choice of school activities). It hurts. It can wake a person up from a dead sleep feeling as if it was happening all over again. Generally speaking, children learn social graces and tact as they age and as they develop. Some students need more guidance in those areas than others. Some never seem to learn and grow up to be adult bullies. These are the most frightening of all.
Many times, adult bullies are reacting to whatever happened to them before. They are products of their environments. Workplace bullies turn offices and cubicles into virtual torture chambers, where the employees feel that they are held captive. Many times the bullies are tolerated, much like they were as children, because it feels as if reasoning with them will do no good and it’s easier to just give in than to try to fight it. What if they never learned to be bullies to begin with? What if we, as a society, said “enough” and addressed the issue? What would that look like? Where would we start?
There is no question that the public school system in the United States is full of teachers that are maxed out with trying to teach to standardized, common core tests. I propose that we stop trying to get kids to learn how to take a test and go back to teaching them how to think. Let’s show them that emotional intelligence is just as important as academic intelligence. Let’s teach and encourage them to have emotional integrity and how to interact with others. Long before “common core” became an unfortunate part of our lexicon, a woman named Jane Elliott developed a lesson plan to help her students have a better understanding of discrimination (The Pennsylvania State University World Campus, Psych 424, L10, 2015). By separating her students by eye color (brown vs. blue) and explaining the problems with one group compared to the other, she created an atmosphere of conflict and anger. Even though she never told them to, some of the children resorted to physical violence to deal with the conflicts. This was a clear illustration of the work of Albert Bandura. His work explains that humans learn behaviors through observing others (Bandura, 1978). The act of observing helps us to avoid wasting time reinventing the wheel, so to speak, and pick up the behaviors quickly so that we can add our own pieces to the puzzle. So, while the children in Ms. Elliott’s classroom were never told to hit anyone, the students took what she taught them (about disliking and ignoring children with different eye colors), adopted that behavior and then some took it to the next level of hitting. All of this happened in just a few days.
Children are always watching. They see what we do, they hear what we say. They take what they hear and see and absorb it. And then they build on it. In the musical, Into The Woods (lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim), the character of the witch delivers the ultimate moral of the story:
(Sondheim, 1998)
That’s the goal – each generation learning more and growing more and surpassing those before them. Teachers have an enormous impact on the children in their stead. Leading with example about how to treat others and enforcing the negative consequences for non-empathetic behavior could go a long way in preventing schoolyard bullies from turning into boardroom bullies.
Bandura, A. (1978). Social learning theory of aggression. Journal of Communication, 12-29.
Sondheim, S. (1998). Children Will Listen. (B. Peters, Performer) Royal Festival Hall, London, England.
The Pennsylvania State University World Campus, Psych 424, L10. (2015). Lesson 10: Education. Retrieved from PSYCH424: Applied Social Psychology: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa15/psych424/001/content/11_lesson/02_page.html