The basements of school bullying

International Day Against Bullying: We need not only to raise awareness, but also to get to the root of the problem.

Joaquín Díaz Atienza

INTRODUCTION

We already have international days for all those political, social, educational, and health problems for which neither citizens nor state institutions have yet found a satisfactory answer. May 2nd was the International Day Against School BullyingIts media coverage was minimal, considering the seriousness of the problem. As the saying goes, it was just a brief mention on the news and a lot of publicity for politicians patting themselves on the back for the crucial measures that have been, are being, or will be taken. Just another demagogic farce, one of the many we citizens are subjected to in these times of entrenched postmodernity.

It is not my intention to describe the psychopathological effects of bullying on its victims, which, in situations of utter hopelessness, can even lead to suicide. I will only offer a few glimpses into family situations, involving students and teachers, that I have encountered in my professional career. Everyone is free to interpret my observations as they wish, but I assure you they are based on real-life situations.

To begin with, are we clear on what school bullying is?

There are many definitions, each more complex than the last, and these are often accompanied by questionnaires for their evaluation in the school setting. It is also said that each school implements its own anti-bullying measures, which have relatively limited preventative and therapeutic effectiveness for victims, while being very beneficial for the institution.

We say that a student is being bullied when, over a prolonged period, they are subjected to degrading comments or mockery, intimidation, isolation, verbal or physical aggression by another student or group of students, with the intention of causing them suffering or excluding them from the group, usually by exploiting some of the victim's unique characteristics. I wish to emphasize that a key feature of bullying is its continuity over time.

Therefore, isolated degrading comments and occasional physical or verbal aggression, which frequently occur among students, do not constitute bullying. Sporadic conflicts are common in any community, and the school community is no exception. Making this distinction is crucial if we truly want to control genuine bullying.

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 Here you will find the Peer Victimization Questionnaire for Schools. You can complete it and receive a PDF with the results.

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Do we clearly understand who the actors are in school bullying?

Below I briefly describe those family circumstances, those related to teachers, the school institution and the students -although with different roles- that favor the occurrence of school bullying and that interfere with any plan developed to tackle it.

Let’s analyze each of them:

• The

1. Every family has its own values ​​and tends to raise its children accordingly. A child who grows up in a family environment based on selfishness, a lack of social empathy, where respect is absent and conflicts are "resolved" in an authoritarian and aggressive manner, will tend to behave with their peers according to the patterns they were raised with: selfish, capricious, unsupportive, authoritarian, and defiant toward authority. These students are a source of conflict and confrontation, both with their classmates (especially those they consider more vulnerable) and with their teachers. Many of them become playground tyrants. They rarely act alone. On the contrary, they usually rely on other classmates, often surrounding themselves with the weakest, either occasionally or permanently, in exchange for immunity from their aggression. They threaten, blackmail, belittle, and isolate the victim. Parents will rarely recognize their child's bullying behavior, dismissing it as "just kids being kids or teenagers," or blaming the victim, or even the institution itself.
2. In families facing special circumstances (children with temperamental, personality, psychopathological, cognitive, or motor difficulties), we find some parents who tend to overprotect their children and, more or less unconsciously, demand that the school and classmates adopt the same overprotective procedures with their children that they themselves implement at home. They demand that the institution as a whole take on their children's problems and adopt protective measures that mirror those they reproduce at home. They tend to be very critical, disregarding the inherent challenges of a diverse institution and demanding that teachers and students treat their children according to their own standards. These demands often alienate teachers and classmates, fostering isolation and rejection of their children, which they perceive as discrimination or bullying for which they blame the entire institution. Here we find parents who don't understand the difficulties their children face in getting along with others and blame teachers for incompetence and classmates for bullying and discrimination. This situation becomes even more pronounced when their children have received a diagnosis from a healthcare provider.

3. The teachers

• Regarding the teachers involved in improving coexistence within the school community, there's nothing to add, because this post focuses more on those others characterized by their lack of involvement, burned out by parents and some students due to classroom problems. These are the teachers who tend to label students negatively in front of their classmates without any consideration, creating an unfavorable atmosphere among some students. They are almost always unwilling to collaborate and always ready to marginalize anyone who doesn't fit the student profile they deem appropriate.
• Their biases are obvious, and they have no qualms about expressing them in class. They are always ready to justify the bullying of the students they target, with expressions such as, "They're disruptive, annoying, bad students, they're just complainers who can't take their classmates' 'jokes.'" They flatly deny the existence of bullying and will always consider it "normal" behavior among students. In some cases, I've even observed them tending to hide clearly compromising situations in order to avoid the necessary personal consequences.
• They deny to parents that what their children are saying actually exists, and they always offer a minimized version, promising, of course, that they will take care of it from that moment on, "not to worry, they will closely monitor the situation," which they never do. Some even make mocking and degrading comments about the alleged victim in public after the parents complain.

If the matter goes beyond their relationship with the parents, they will defend themselves to the administration with all sorts of arguments. These are the toxic teachers, the ones who are only interested in themselves and have little or no involvement in the school's problems. They only react when threatened with potential complaints to the inspectorate or the public prosecutor's office.

• The school institution.

1. Out of sheer homeostasis, it tends to avoid conflict. It tends to maintain balance and institutional harmony, so it usually denies problems. The more serious the situation, the greater the withdrawal, the more secretive, the more self-defense, and the less transparent. In the case of school bullying, due to social sensitivity, all staff members will deny, minimize, and only react when faced with evidence, in a way that is, most of the time, protocol-driven and without considering the unique circumstances of each case.
2. This doesn't mean that all schools react as I've described, although that's the most common scenario. Let's not forget that the bullied student is a problem, a black sheep in an institution ill-equipped to resolve certain conflicts and desperately trying to maintain its prestige. Hence, it's not surprising that the bullying problem often ends with the victim transferring to another school. "Get rid of the bully, and the problem is solved," without realizing that this measure is a short-term fix that will lead to long-term problems.

• The students

1. Not all students have the same cognitive abilities, nor the same skills for dealing with conflict. Not all react the same way to the inevitable frustrations that arise from interactions between students and between students and teachers. Therefore, students with low academic performance, an excitable temperament, a lack of the necessary skills for peaceful conflict resolution, poor empathy, and low tolerance for diversity would constitute a primary risk group. It is not uncommon for this type of student to ally themselves with other classmates with the same profile. Faced with academic failure, they seek other arenas where they feel important, one of which is bullying.
2. The "smart" students, the teachers' favorites, those who see themselves as superior to their classmates because of their good academic performance, often ridicule, mock, and humiliate those they consider to have fewer cognitive abilities or to be more timid, when they lack sufficient empathy. When they become bullies, they don't usually use physical violence, but rather sarcasm and humiliating comments. They are extremely dangerous because, in the eyes of teachers and their own classmates, they are model students. Therefore, they are very difficult to detect.
3. Sexual orientation. Most often, students (and to a lesser extent, female students) who have issues with their sexual orientation are victims of derogatory comments and exclusionary behavior. But I have also observed the opposite: female students who, during puberty, have harassed teachers or classmates, and male students who have used their sexual orientation to generate negative opinions and behaviors toward some classmates, fabricating harassment that never existed.
4. As with issues of sexual orientation, students with a pragmatic social communication disorder and those with Asperger's syndrome are often victims of bullying. They are frequently subjected to social isolation, humiliating comments, and "jokes" that violate their dignity. However, in other, less frequent cases, some students may play the victim, blaming their classmates for acts of exclusion or rejection that are not actually occurring. In their need for understanding and acceptance, they blame others for their own inability to maintain satisfactory social relationships.

In conclusion, If we truly want to improve the situation regarding bullying, it is essential to personalize each case and not establish protocols with excellent theoretical content that are soulless, devoid of emotion, and completely disconnected from each individual's reality. Their technicality almost always leads to failure.