Schoolyard strife

>> Barbara Coloroso looks at kids’ contempt in The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander

by JULIET WATERS

In the aftermath of Columbine, when the debate began to focus less on freaks who kill, and more on the bullies who provoke them, parenting expert Barbara Coloroso—who lives in Denver, Colorado—was commissioned to research and write a book about the problem of bullying. In town last week to talk about The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: Breaking the Cycle of Vioence, the Mirror asked her a few questions.

Mirror: The writer Anne Lamott once asked, “How can anyone bring kids into the world knowing that they’re going to have to go through Grade 7?”
Barbara Coloroso: That’s where the worst bullying happens: Grade 7, 8, 9. If you notice in the book where I give the incidents of suicide, most of them are kids: 12, 13 and 14. I had 40 pages of those to draw from and I barely touched the surface.

M: But aren’t people always going to say that bullying’s a normal part of growing up?
BC: Conflict is a normal part of growing up. Bullying shouldn’t have to be. Having a penis drawn on your face and having to wear it all day, that shouldn’t be normal. That’s what happened in Ottawa recently, and the adults suspended the kids who did… So what? They’re probably going to come back and find that kid and do worse. There’s no healing, there’s no ownership of what they’ve done… The Citizen interviewed all the schools in the area about what their anti-bullying policies were and they all said, “We don’t have a problem… we have good kids here.” We had good kids at Columbine, too. They’re anglo rich kids. That apparently makes them good kids.

M: What was the biggest challenge in writing this book?
BC: I was given six months. As I did my research, I realized that all the anti-bullying policies have conflict resolution as their foundation. It didn’t fit. I had to tear my manuscript up after four months and start over, but I’m glad I did because I was trying to get a definition of bullying that I could live with. And what I came up with is that it’s about contempt. Bullies aren’t angry with the kids they’re bullying. They’re not in conflict. If you’re the sensitive caring one, and I have contempt for you, what is conflict resolution going to do? In fact, it’s more likely to try to focus on the sensitive person, try to change the irritating aspects about them, their behaviour, their shoes… As though anything would justify bullying.

It’s about contempt that arises from three psychological advantages that allow kids to harm others without feeling empathy, compassion or shame. First: a sense of entitlement—the feeling that they have the right to control, dominate, and subjugate others. Second: an intolerance toward difference. And third: the liberty to exclude—to bar, isolate and segregate a person deemed not worthy of respect or care. So if you have a hierarchy of kids and a series of cliques in your school, you’re going to have bullying.

M: What do you advise the schools?
BC: First you have to have a policy against bullying, and to have a policy, you have to be able to define bullying. A lot of schools have zero tolerance policies. But that’s just zero thinking. You have to know the difference between teasing and taunting. Teasing is what happens between equals. Taunting has an intent to harm and to create an imbalance of power. Next you have a procedure that makes sure the targeted kid is safe, and the bully is disciplined in a way that follows through on the three Rs: restitution, resolution, reconciliation. And then you have to have programs that really work against contempt. You have to be taught to bully… You have to be taught to hate. If it can be taught, it can be untaught. :

The Bully, The Bullied, and the Bystander by Barbara Coloroso. Harper Collins, hc, 217pp, $34.95