Randy Cassingham's Blog

Posted by Barbara in Maryland on June 8, 2007:

I started to respond several weeks ago to this blog but there are so many issues leading to Cho's decision to go on a rampage and massacre all those people, that I don't think it's possible to come up with all of them. I think Cho's problems ran as much to mental illness as anything else, but I haven't really seen a convincing analysis on the bullying issue from this point of view so here's my 2 cents worth.

Cho's problems with school bullies were obviously far worse than anyone suspected and his videotaped manifesto was a chilling shocker, but I still wonder what exactly happened. Bullying is a problem, but as an educator, I have to say it's way more complicated than it seems. Everyone wants to boil everything down to a formula for success and I see it as having the potential to become another chapter in the Zero Tolerance movement. One-size-fits-all solutions are usually disasters.

I work in public schools and I've observed both bully and bullied. It's not always a simple category of behavior. Adolescents are in the process of changing from child to adult and aren't exactly big on reasoned reactions to things they don't like. For this reason kids I've previously thought are very personable and well-behaved can surprise me with some ugly behavior that's clearly bullying. If I can walk through it with them, they often explain they're reacting to something highly annoying and perhaps even threatening from another kid.

For example, (names are changed) Jason is a whiner and blames everyone but himself for his problems. If the class is working on group assignments, no one wants him because he doesn't pull his weight, and the whole group sometimes gets docked. Jason is convinced other kids hate him and pick on him for no reason. Tiffany is a drama queen and drives everyone nuts with her daily sagas. Soap operas don't have that many problems and most of hers sound like she's got an over-active fantasy life. No one else believes she has so many implausible experiences and she makes up new ones trying for the sympathy angle. Tommy does rotten celebrity impersonations trying to impress people. He wants to be cool and popular, and he's striking out every time he launches into another embarrassing performance. Alan has terrible body odor and bathes every day, but doesn't believe in deoderant. Thinks it causes allergies and Alzheimers. He sees his BO as a variety of free speech but everyone else sees it as olfactory assault. When it comes to picking up on even the most direct statements, Alan has a hide like a rhino and considers his BO a badge of individuality and independent thought. I kid you not. Angela has a gross skin condition that creeps everyone out because they think she's contagious and they're going to wind up with oozing and flakey skin and their hair is going to fall out. Mike had cooties back in 2nd grade and half his class got them too. They're in high school now and no one's ever gonna let him live it down. It doesn't help that he rises to the bait, gets flustered and his voice cracks.

Then there are other kids who choose some bizarre ways of dressing or walking or mannerism. Last year I had 2 female students who are tall, BIG girls who're about the right size to play defense on the school football team. They try to minimize the size and overweight issue with tight clothing, mince when they walk, use exaderated gestures, and speak in high pitched Marilyn Monroesque voices that sound like a cross between helium for breakfast and fingernails on a chalkboard. One day I saw one of the girls react to a note so I confiscated it. The unsigned note referred to her backside spillover in the tight, low rise pants she had on that day and said "just say NO to crack!" Apparently half the class read the note before it got to her so when she had a hysterical meltdown in class, everyone was in on the joke. Add nebbishy, socially inept kids who pick their pimples or noses or cuticles or scratch places that polite people don't do in public. For some reason, the problems and solutions just don't compute for most of these kids.

The list can go on and on, but all these kids catch a lot of static about this stuff, so where to draw the line between heavy handed peer counseling and bullying? I suspect this is one of the reasons why it's tough to hone in on a usable strategy for bullies. A lot of times, bully is a matter of perspective.

In my experience, bullies don't see themselves as bullies, and most of the victims don't really see how their behavior sets themselves up for trouble. Once upon a time, kids understood better how to work out their interpersonal problems. If you had a problem, other kids gave you grief until you were cured or pretended to be. It was a little less unacceptable to get into fights, but probably the worst development is that kids these days copy the smart mouthed brats on TV. Everyone wants to have the best comeback and the meaner it is, the funnier the audience finds it. Much of bullying is all about the audience reaction. A single behavior can be seen as bullying from one point of view, or peer social advice from another. A bit simplistic here, but in a lot of cases kids really need to figure out what they're doing to make things worse and figure out how to change and deal effectively with their problems. That's for both bully and victim and I don't see it happening like it should.

Unfortunately many education professionals often have this value neutral approach to conflict resolution that says you can solve any interpersonal problem as long as you're willing to work it out together and see things from the other person's perspective. This probably works well enough for mild and moderate cases, but it's not going to work for the really hard ones. When this approach fails, the greater tragedy is the victim winds up feeling like more of a loser because bullies are not seeking understanding. Hard-core bullies are in it for the enjoyment of tormenting another human being and no amount of coaxing without some negative consequences is going to make it stop - it just feels too good!

Yes, there are some seriously toxic little sods who genuinely enjoy inflicting pain on other kids and fall into the extreme end of the bully scale. Numbers-wise, there aren't that many, but they've got a far higher profile than the others. No one knows how much of Cho's experience fell into which category. I know I'm projecting in the absence of hard data, but that Cho's response was mass murder implies he experienced some extreme bullying. But what if he just didn't know how to put things into perspective?

Posted by Paul from Long Island on March 29, 2008:

In 6th grade my son was beaten up by 2 kids and they wanted to suspend all of them. When I demanded a meeting with the school authorities for an explanation, the principal patronizingly explained to me that they have "zero tolerance for violence in this school and there was nothing he could do." (HE was being the bully in further brutalizing a shy 10 year old).

I told him that that policy was interesting but he should know that I also had a policy: "I have a zero tolerance for assholes anywhere" and told him that the last time I checked, curling up in a fetal position while 2 kids kick the crap out of you on the floor of an unsupervised locker room is not a "fight". That is assault and I handed him the police incident report number (he was stunned that I had filed the complaint but held off on asking for an arrest waiting instead for an appropriate school response). I told him to reconsider his decision or I was calling the media and would press charges against the school for child abuse. (Yeah I'm either part of the problem, a bigger bully or I don't take crap from anyone. Not with my kids at any rate). The two kids were punished and the principal apologized to my son, not for what he tried to do, but for the fact that it happened in his school.

I have found, like Konrad Lorenze, that the only response to a bully that will stop him or her, is to give him or her a bloody nose. Scapegoating behavior will continue when bullying is met with a passive response and in fact is redoubled in the absence of any meaningful defense. Sadly this is played out from the playground to international arena every day.

I teach my children that they are to walk away from any jerk with a big mouth but to draw the line when the jerk moves to physical violence. Then that bully had better search for a maxillo-facial surgeon because they are going to meet a baseball bat across their teeth. It is better that both the bully and the bullied learn the benefits of superior force early. It is better that the idiot learn civilized behavior and the consequences of the lack of it, on the playground or in school, as we did, than as a grown up when the costs are much higher.

That is educating our children to be responsible adults.

Posted by Dean, Gladstone, Australia on March 29, 2008:

A student once brought a real-looking fake gun to a class at my school, played with it, waved it around, freaked out the other people in the room. (As far as they knew, it could have been real.)

This situation was handled poorly by the office staff, whose only concern was the image of the school. They put the kid in a staff room, told him he was a bad boy, then later sent him back to class while they dicked around. The teacher was the same in the second class as the first, so the situation was a bit uncomfortable for him. After finally suspending the kid that afternoon, the admin saw fit to inform the school cop what had happened, and he was really pissed off.

I think there was a lot wrong with what the school did/didn't do, but no one cared because no one was hurt or killed. But my point is you have to look after yourself, because they won't tell the cop anything until it's too late.