Letter to the Editor

The school district’s policy on bullying is OK as far as it goes, but

schools should also train children how to counter almost anything a bully

might throw at them. To achieve this goal, students should be taught

counterbullying skills upon entering the school system, and have age- and

gender-appropriate updates each year thereafter.

We should take the Charles Atlas approach and teach our 98-pound

weaklings how to protect themselves from sand-kicking bullies. I don’t

know that the curriculum should actually build muscle and teach

fisticuffs, but it ought to strengthen a student’s ability to prevent and

defend against bullying.

For example, a student who is well trained in playing “The Dozens” (a

game in which people pepper each other with verbal insults to build up

immunity and confidence) should have little to fear from a verbal bully.

If we can teach formal debating skills, we can teach informal verbal

jousting skills.

Why should schools be tasked with teaching yet another nonacademic

subject? A short answer is that students are sitting ducks in today’s

violence-saturated world. The social fabric that is used to provide some

protection from antisocial behavior has been rented a thousand ways.

Another short answer is that if kids take over many of the

counterbullying responsibilities, teachers can better concentrate on

academics. So, even on a purely tax dollar basis, a counterbullying

skills program would be well worth the effort.

My reading of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District policy reveals

that it intends to discourage bullying only by the force of higher

authority (that is, school administrators) directed at the bully, along

with damage control for the victim. The district policy may offer some

protection at school, but that’s not enough.

Every day, every student has to walk out of the schoolhouse cocoon

into the cold, hostile world. And after graduation, students will have to

deal with bullies for the remainder of their lives.

From the trenches of a middle school, a student wrote a devastating

analysis of the bullying issue. Byron de Arakal quoted him in his Sept.

19, 2001 column (“One kid’s plea for an end to schoolyard taunts”). The

boy considered the efficacy of the new get-tough policy: “When the

students at my school heard that there was a zero-tolerance policy, they

became uptight and stopped for only a matter of two weeks. I have yet to

see any students held accountable by school officials for their verbal

abuse.”

He had tried home-grown solutions with mixed results: “Ignoring them

is one answer, but after a while it becomes very difficult. I’ve tried

ignoring it for nine years. It doesn’t always work.”

The well-meaning policy ends up being counterproductive because it

tends to cripple students’ abilities to rely on themselves to protect

themselves. They are encouraged, instead, to rely on higher authority.

It’s analogous to building a padded room in which your baby can learn to

walk without getting hurt.

But if you kept your baby so protected until he or she graduated from

high school, you would have prevented your child from learning a critical

life skill: How to cope with gravity.

Bullying is like gravity: it’s not going to go away. Just as kids have

to learn how to deal with gravity, they have to learn how to deal with

bullying. Our schools can, and should, help them learn vital

counterbullying skills.

TOM EGAN

Costa Mesa