Zero tolerance for bullying
Thank you, Ashleigh Harris. Thank you for your courage.
Harris, a 20-year-old student in Mohawk College's child and youth worker program, was instrumental in bringing an anti-bullying speaker to Hamilton for a talk last week. But, even more significantly, she talked to the audience herself about the torment she endured at the hands of bullies and its devastating effects on her life.
She talked about misbehaving in class in the hope she'd be kept in at recess so she would be safe. She talked about cutting and burning herself in reaction to the threats, assaults and humiliation.
Harris put a face on, and a voice too, an issue that, tragically, is still not taken seriously in all schools, and by too many parents whose children aren't the victims.
The vast majority of teachers and principals do understand that persistent bullying is a life-changing and traumatizing experience. They are empathetic and supportive of the victims and have no tolerance for the perpetrators. But some still don't "get it." There are still teachers and principals who suggest that the bullied youngster somehow brings it on him, or herself; that they "make themselves a target;" that they need to stand up for themselves. There are parents who, told their child is being a bully, write it off as "fooling around" or that it's (here we go again) the victim's fault.
We wouldn't tolerate those responses if the issue was sexual harassment or sexual assault. It would be repellent to suggest that it was justified because of the way a young girl was acting or dressed.
It is no different here.
Bullying is about power and ego; being a bully's victim is just a matter of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. And once it starts, a victim is most often quickly abandoned, even ostracized, by other students afraid of being the bully's next target and the bullying goes on and on and on. Harris's experiences also illustrate something some parents and all school officials know all too well: Bullying is as common, or more so, among girls than boys and is often more vicious.
Harris's experiences, and those of author Jodee Blanco who spoke at Mohawk a week ago, also illustrate that the effects of bullying persist long after the attacks stop often into adult life. Victims of bullying, and their parents and teachers, know the scars left by the humiliations, attacks, harassment and (perhaps worst of all) the unrelenting loneliness of being bullied. Many bullied children suffer post-traumatic stress.
The more that the bullied tell their stories, the more that schools and parents and even classmates will understand that bullying, or tolerating bullying, is contemptible and inexcusable. That especially applies to adults who don't make every effort to end it.
Bullied youngsters often spend their school lives in dread and in despair. Ashleigh Harris has given them a voice
Robert Howard
30 March 2009
