(This week’s civic education and engagement column from Danville’s The Republican newspaper.)
Quick! Tell me which Hendricks County school district is the subject of these comments: “My kid got bullied for two years and the school wouldn’t do anything about it.” “Bullying is out of control, and the superintendent pretends it isn’t happening.” “That other kid was so mean to my child and the principal said they couldn’t do anything about it.”
The answer? All of them. At any given time, every district in Hendricks County has parents who are furious about the presence of bullying in their children’s schools and the perceived lack of action on the part of principals and other district leadership.
Fact is, bullying was a problem when you were in school. It’s a problem today, and I’m confident it will be a problem when your great-grandkids attend school. But the schools aren’t to blame for bullying. Kids are. The simple fact is that kids can be real jerks as they try to find their place among classmates. Sometimes, they get downright rotten and cruel. (I’m sure you were always an angel.)
Bullying has been a part of humanity since we first started gathering in groups. It’s also common among many species of animals. Watch a litter of puppies, and beyond the cuteness, you’ll notice clear signs of a power struggle. You’ve probably worked for (or with) a bully. You may have neighbors or relatives who engage in bullying. Some people are just jerks. You may even be one of them.
In Indiana, bullying in school is illegal, so you may wonder why your local school doesn’t seem to enforce the rules more firmly. The reason is that what many parents view as bullying doesn’t rise to the standards the state has defined. Indiana says that behavior is bullying only if it involves acts or communications that are overt, unwanted, and repeated with the intent of harassing, ridiculing, humiliating, intimidating, or harming another student. (The full definition is significantly longer.)
When that student told your seventh-grade daughter she was the ugliest girl in the school and everyone hated her, it was certainly mean, but unless it meets the criteria in state law, it can’t be called bullying. In this example, it was a one-time remark, not repeated behavior, so the mean girl can’t be disciplined for it. When the principal says they can’t do anything about it, that’s because the law prevents them from acting unless all the conditions have been met.
Am I suggesting that bullying is okay and should be tolerated? Nope. But schools are required to follow the law. In my time on the school board, I heard numerous complaints from parents about their children being bullied, but as the situations were investigated, different stories frequently emerged. In a remarkably large percentage of cases, it turned out the student who complained was actually the aggressor.
In others, video evidence proved the parent wrong, like the parent who insisted another student knocked her child down in the hallway. The video showed the two students accidentally brushing against each other as they raced through the crowded hallway on the way to the cafeteria. (Middle-schoolers are inherently clumsy as they adapt to their fast-changing bodies.)
Then there was the grandmother who physically tackled a grade-schooler. She thought her behavior was justified because she believed the student was bullying her grandchild .. and complained to us because the principal had the audacity to scold her for the act.