The documentary “Bully” presents a horrifying look at what life is like for students who are bullied, and claims 13 million kids will be bullied in the U.S. this year. Yet some say the bullying crisis exaggerated by busy bodies and bureaucrats who forget “kids will be kids and boys will be boys.”
Here are two perspectives on bullying.
The first from Nick Gillespie from Reason.com which describes itself as a website that “provides a refreshing alternative to right-wing and left-wing opinion magazines by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice in all areas of human activity.”
Gillespie wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal that contends over-protective parents and a rising wave of laws and regulation related to bullying don’t really reflect a boom in meanness among kids. He says kids may be better behaved than ever.
“I have no interest in defending the bullies who dominate sandboxes, extort lunch money and use Twitter to taunt their classmates. But there is no growing crisis. Childhood and adolescence in America have never been less brutal. Even as the country’s over-protective parents whip themselves up into a moral panic about kid-on-kid cruelty, the numbers don’t point to any explosion of abuse,” Gillespie says.
He says we live in an age of helicopter, pushy parents and we’re too willing to treat kids like “delicate flowers.”
“Now that schools are peanut-free, latex-free and soda-free, parents, administrators and teachers have got to worry about something,” he says. “Since most kids now have access to cable TV, the Internet, unlimited talk and texting, college and a world of opportunities that was unimaginable even 20 years ago, it seems that adults have responded by becoming ever more overprotective and thin-skinned.”
By most standards, he says, kids are “safer and better-behaved than they were when I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s” and young people are far more accepting of homosexuals than they used to be.
He concludes bullying – as defined by the Department of Health and Human Services defines as “teasing,” “name-calling,” “taunting,” “leaving someone out on purpose,” “telling other children not to be friends with someone,” “spreading rumors about someone,” “hitting/kicking/pinching,” “spitting” and “making mean or rude hand gestures” – is not a growing problem in America.
So take a deep breath and realize there aren’t that many bullies and most kids are okay.
Filmmaker Lee Hirsch doesn’t see it that way. He’s the documentary filmmaker who spent a year at three schools in Sioux City, Iowa, following five kids and families who have been impacted by bullying for his nonfiction movie “Bully.” (Trailer below)
The movie, which opened over the weekend and comes to Seattle on April 13, features stories about Tyler who hanged himself in his bedroom closet, Alex who is so starved for friendship he tolerates daily physical abuse on a bus.
When a mother confronts a school leader about her child’s terrible treatment on the bus, the administrator says, “I’ve been on that bus and those boys are as good as gold.”
It also follows an Oklahoma lesbian teen who tries to take a stand at her high school, a 14-year-old who took her mother’s gun and brandished it at her tormenters on a school bus, and an 11-year-old whose farmer father becomes an antibullying activist.
Bullying is real for them and from his view it is a crisis for young people in America.
Hirsch says he was bullied “hard core” through elementary and middle school. Gangs of boys would be figuring out how to cut him off and beat him up. Many people have a story about being bullied, and somehow, most of them got through it. That’s part of the problem. Because it’s something adults think they understand, they also think it’s not that big of a deal.
“I remember being very ashamed. You ask for help a couple of times and you don’t get it, then you clam up,” Hirsch says. “It’s like torture when it goes on day after day after day.”
One’s perspective on whether bullying is a crisis often depends on whether it’s happening to you, your kid, or someone you know. What’s your story? Do you think it’s a crisis, or overblown?
By LINDA THOMAS
Photos from the movie “Bully”
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http://mynorthwest.com/646/655075/News-Chick-Is-bullying-a-crisis-in-America?page=0
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Back when I was a kid, (I think Cyrus McCormick and Ulysses Grant were classmates), bullying was different. If somebody wanted to torment another kid, they basically had to do it in person. The “victim” could put up with it, or invite the perpetrator to step outside and see if he was tough enough to back up his trash talk. In general, even if you wound up taking a lickin’, that was a better course than getting a reputation as a spineless victim who would eat the worst imaginable insult, say “thanks”, and ask for more. Time have changed.
Bullies have traditionally been sniveling little cowards, (which is why they tend to hang out in packs), and the age of the internet has taken cowardice to new heights. Suddenly, nobody is responsible for what they post, because everybody claims to be “XBoxPLYR 415″ or “Skateboard 221″. Instead of calling a kid names in the hallway after class, the anonymous bullies “tweet” some BS or another to every kid in school. The butt of the joke gets needled about it all day long, but he doesn’t even know for sure whose nose to punch in response.
I wonder if the crowd who say, “Bullying? No big deal. I got bullied as a kid and I survived just fine!” have taken into account the new tools available to the anonymous and spineless who will say the meanest things conceivable- as long as there is no risk of anybody finding out who they are?
Get them alone and go psycho on them. I was a scrawny kid growing up and had gang of bigger kids who would go out of their way to torment me and force me into fights. Teachers wouldn’t do a thing. So I figured that I may as well try to stand up for myself and fight back. And forget that nonsense about “fighting fair.” I beat one of them with a stick, he never touched me again. Another i grabbed by the throat and lifted him off his feet in a rage. The only time after that they would mess with me was when they had several friends with them. And I would look at them, and they knew what that look meant.
Sorry, but sometimes violence is the answer.
Always have been bullies and always will be. Only the bullies who pick on the Homosexuals and other minority special interest fringe groups get any mention or condemnation from this regime and politically correct groups.
Like I said, bullying is bullying.