The End of Bullying?

In recent years, the effects of bully behavior in our nation's schools has become fully exposed with tragic consequences. We have seen news stories of children committing suicide, after a prolonged period of being subjected to bullying by their peers. Just this year alone in the United States the lives of Gabriel Taye, Sadie Riggs, and Mallory Grossman have been lost to consequences of bullying behavior.

But unless you're a child or a teacher, you don't really witness first-hand the extent of cruelty that children are subjected to. You are left only with second-hand accounts. But never fear, social media is here. Those second-hand accounts now appear on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. The bullies themselves, as well as bystanders who enjoy the spectacle, are posting their actions online.

In the United States, the schools are attempting to correct this behavior through raising awareness and reporting measures. The theory is that once a bully is exposed, confronted, and the victim's suffering is brought to light, the likelihood of a repeat offense is less. The problem here is that these measures are built on a hypothesis that the community's stand on bullying behavior being unacceptable will discourage such behavior.

Let us dive deeper into what a bully wants to achieve. The vast majority of bullies inflict physical and mental pain on their peers in order to satisfy their sense of recognition among their peers and to highlight a difference between themselves and their victims for personal status of superiority. To a bully, the confrontation is a part of the action they seek in the process. Therefore, the reverse situation of a non-damaging confrontation inflicted upon a bully does not guarantee that his or her destructive behavior will cease.

Awareness and reporting are a great start, but they are by no means the solution. In Finland, a new system has been implemented with significant success. It is called kiusaamista vastaan, translated - against bullying. The concept is rather simple - it is to starve the bullies of the attention they seek. It involves significant training for the teachers and a new part of the curriculum that teaches students to engage the victim of bullying with caring positive attention and to ignore the culprit. Much more than sending a message to the bully, this program sends a message of support to the victim and deprives the bully.

This program involves a large amount of educators' time to implement, which works well with the Finnish education system. However, it would require a wholesale curriculum overhaul in the United States, where the teachers are forced by the system to be more concerned with the students' test scores, than they are with their mental and physical well being. In Finland, being a teacher is one of the more prestigious and lucrative occupations, for which the best of the best apply. In the United States, that's simply not the case.

But Finland is not the only nation finding success in combating bullying behavior. In China, the Beijing education authorities were severely disturbed a year ago when videos of cruel bullying incidents in schools began to surface on social media. The courts ordered the education authorities to take action in order to combat this problem. Their solution is a multi-step program that forces bullies to undergo military training (what we in the United States call boot camp), provide community service, and make speeches at schools regarding the evils of bullying. The punishment is levied in a court, just like a criminal offence, and the initial sentence has a term to it in months of service required. After the term expires, the court hears from the program administrators and the offender to rule on whether her or she is ready to rejoin their peers in civil society.

In my opinion, the Finnish solution sounds excellent but unrealistic for the United States education system in its present shape. As it stands, I am in favor of the Chinese solution and here is my reasoning. Bullying behavior is a clear and present threat to the physical and mental well being of the entire student population. As a result, we as Americans, have to extend the Bill of Rights to our children in schools and punish the offenders who infringe upon them. For adults, assault and harassment are punishable offenses that can be prosecuted in a court of law. We can do our future generations a service, by addressing these tendencies early on.

What do you think? Should we take the Finnish, Chinese, American, or a completely different approach? Leave your comments below, as I am curious to find out what creative solutions we an come up with.  

The Root of Evil

Recent Events
Many of you are well aware about the recent Taliban attack in Peshawar Pakistan that has killed 145 people, including 132 children. This unspeakable atrocity has been treated as a planned operation to oppose the Pakistani security force activity against Taliban in Pakistan. Taliban is essentially targeting the children of the people who are fighting them. However, the Taliban has been targeting the Education system in Pakistan for a lot longer.

Poison in Education
The root of all evil in this world can be found in the degree and scope of education a society provides for its youth. One of my classmates in college once told me - "my parents did not want me to be educated in Lebanon, which is why I went to school here (Hartford)". The reasons that Syed's parent's didn't want him to be educated in Lebanon was due to the narrow view of humanity, a steady dose of hatred, and the lack of value for a human life that the local education set for the young. His parents did not want him to see his neighbors as sub-human, hate those who are unlike him, and sacrifice his life in the name of some holy war. So they smartly shielded their child from this poison and immigrated overseas to provide a better chance for their child to succeed. The result - when I met Syed he very much valued human life and treated his peers as equals regardless of race, sex, ethnicity or religion. But not all children of Radicalized Islamic areas of the world are as fortunate.

Taliban
There is no better example of education specifically catered to Radical Islam and Terrorism than that of the Taliban. The very name translates to 'Students'. However, the material they disseminate among their own followers is nothing short of repressive Jihadist propaganda that teaches a very narrow sliver of Islam, skewed toward fostering hatred. They teach a repressive diet of conservative Islam with a repressive view of women's rights and intolerance toward those who do not conform. The Taliban are so opposed to female education in Pakistan, that they were inclined to shoot a defenseless girl, better known as the Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, in the head. This organization is so opposed to freedom of education, that they are willing to kill their young to get the point across. And, sadly, this vile commitment has again manifested itself in Peshawar this past week. The Taliban, 'Students', know very well that their poisonous rhetoric cannot hold up to scrutiny when confronted by freely educated youth and they are afraid.

Enlightenment
Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister of Israel, once said: "Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us". She was specifically talking about opponents of Israel using children as front-line soldiers and/or shields. These actions epitomize the Terrorist mindset of taking the value of even a child's life as a 'shahid', a martyr, dying for a cause and rejoicing in the death itself. This concept is not unique to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Taliban itself advocates such acts of martyrdom for their own purpose and regard the militants who died in the Peshawar School siege as such martyrs. We must seek a higher level of understanding as human beings across this world - such atrocities have no place on this planet.

As people of the earth, each an every one of us must fight to provide free and independent sources of education to every corner of the earth. We live in the age of the Global Internet, where such collective action should be possible. We must similarly fight to expose these false prophets (Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) for the scum of the earth they are and eradicate them from existence - for they are the true poison of this planet.