When bullies rule schools

An 11-year-old boy in Enfield brought a loaded handgun into his school last week. He did so, he says, for protection from an older pupil who was bullying him. The gun accidentally discharged in a school restroom, where the youngster was alone. He now stands charged with reckless conduct with a firearm, a Class C felony and has been sent to the Northern Maine Juvenile Correctional Facility in Charleston.

The incident prompted a member of the Enfield School Board to ask, “Do we (now) talk about putting metal detectors in the school?” My own answer to that question would go something like this: “Well, maybe you should consider them, but there is an even more urgent need in schools today for bully detectors.”

Almost without exception, each “school shooting” of the past few years was carried out by one or more students who had been bullied to the breaking point. The Enfield incident apparently follows that pattern. Even so, after initial attention to rumors of bullying, the national media and the school officials involved locally in each instance concentrate not on the probable cause but rather almost exclusively on the effect of the shootings.

Perhaps it is time to open a discussion of “the neglected side” of school shootings: the causal role of the bully in such tragic incidents.”

First, it is important to acknowledge that, for too many students today, the operative four-letter “f” word is fear. It is not the other one. Many youngsters wake up on the morning of a school day (if indeed they were able to sleep) fearing that, throughout the coming day, from the time they step onto the school bus in the morning until the time they step off that afternoon, they will be verbally and/or physically abused and humiliated by one or more bullies.

Imagine the courage it takes for these children to go off to school day in and day out. Yet, when one among them reaches the breaking point and tragically turns to a weapon for a solution, adults who should know better call him or her a “coward.” As in most tragic contexts, the irony here is not far beneath the surface. The bully is the real coward.

Who are these bullied students, typically? They are, in a word, different from their peers. They are often small, frail; they are usually unspoken, perhaps artistic; they mad dress for school as if in costume, not in the clothing preferred by their classmates; their few close friends share their traits and suffer the same bullying. Bullied children are, almost to a person, shy and socially uncomfortable. They are easily taken in by alternative notions and notion-pushers. And they couldn’t kick a field goal to save their lives.

So what? Being different is not a deficiency. Children fitting that profile should not go unidentified and unprotected by their educators. Indeed, in a school setting, it should be easy for the staff to identify those youngsters most susceptible to bullying and to be proactive in their protection of them.

To be sure, school officials often point out, as have those in Enfield recently, that they ask students to report any incidents of bullying which they – that is, the students – either witness or suffer themselves. But how realistic is that approach? Since the dawn of time, students have been reluctant to “snitch” on their peers. Here again, fear plays the deciding role. In this case, it is the fear of the witness that he or she will afterwards endure the same fate as the victim of the bullying witnessed. And, for the victim, the fear of even worse treatment makes reporting the incident out of the question.

Given those realities, it is past the due time for activating the bully detectors – vigilant staff members – already in place in our schools. Relying mostly, or even at all, on the reports of students themselves is a deeply flawed policy. The stakes here are too high. Would the students who killed or wounded their peers in school shootings have done so – or even have contemplated doing so – were their days on the bus and at school reasonably carefree and without the awful fear brought on by unchecked bullyism day in and day out? Maybe not.

Charles Packard lives in Camden and teaches Latin at the Ashwood Waldorf School in Rockport.