Columbine Made Simple
I asked my class, “Who is a victim of verbal abuse?” Everyone’s hand went up.
Columbine high massacre
THE SCOPE OF THE TEASING PROBLEM
The true meaning of the school massacres and what the country should be learning from them.
Section Three
by Izzy Kalman, MS
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The message of Columbine is not just about two tortured souls who went on a shooting spree. The massacres are merely the volcanic eruptions that drew the attention of the national media. If anything of true value is to come out of the student massacres, it should be to raise the problem of victims of teasing to our national consciousness. For every one of the students who gained notoriety for exterminating his fellow students, there are literally a million others whose suffering is never reported by the media. Almost every classroom in every school has two or three students who live in hell because they are teased and ridiculed by their schoolmates. They often get into verbal and physical altercations with their tormentors, and comprise the majority of those students who are regular visitors to the principal's office. They are social pariahs, avoided by other children who are too embarrassed to be seen associating with such "losers". They are convinced that their peers hate them and that there must be something terribly wrong with themselves. In class they stew in anger, nervously anticipating the next insult, planning their response, and fantasizing grand scenes of revenge against their tormentors. This makes it hard for them to keep their minds on their studies, and their grades suffer.
Hard as the teasing victims try to defeat their enemies, they fail pathetically. Usually they are the ones who end up getting in trouble because their angry reactions to their tormentors are visible to everyone around them. They are almost always the first to throw a punch in a fight, egged on by their intimidators' challenge to "Make me [shut up]!" Attempts to stop their teasers by enlisting the help of school staff are generally fruitless and make their situation worse by earning them reputations as "tattlers." Thus, they come out looking and feeling like fools in confrontation after confrontation.
Sometimes parents get personally involved in helping their teased child, either by confronting the teasers and their families, which can result in ugly family feuds. Or they demand that the school help, which is often useless because the school may not know how to stop the problem. A conflict then arises between the parents and the school administration, often ending when the parents move their child to a different school. Of course, the problem has a good chance of reemerging in the new setting.
It should be no wonder that teased kids are so attracted to violent video games. Frustrated in their desire for power and revenge in real life, they find some satisfaction through fantasy. The pictures they draw are frequently done in black and red, reflecting their feelings of anger, hatred, depression, and vengeance.
In their teenage years, teased kids are likely to have great difficulty succeeding with the opposite sex because they cannot imagine that anyone could really want them. If they do manage to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, they can be shattered by feelings of rejection when their friend ends the relationship. This is what set off T.J. Solomon, a long-time victim of teasing and the shooter in the latest massacre on May 20th in Georgia: he went on his school shooting spree after his girlfriend broke up with him.
Being teased is a major factor in school phobia in the younger grades and truancy in the higher grades. The pain of teasing victims is so great that some of them even attempt suicide to escape their misery. For every teased teen who murders students, there are probably a thousand who take their own lives instead.
The suffering of teasing victims does not end when they finish school. They generally grow up to be angry, hurt adults with a variety of social and emotional dysfunctions. They lack self-esteem and are very critical of themselves, can't tolerate being criticized by others. Prisons and mental health facilities are filled with people who have been ridiculed since childhood and could never figure out how to make the ridicule end. If, in your professional life, you provide therapy to adults with emotional difficulties, ask them if they were victims of teasing during their school years. You may be surprised to discover how many of them suffered from this problem.
Why is it so painful to be teased, ridiculed, and rejected? Because humans are social creatures. In order to be happy, we need to feel accepted by our social groups. When close-knit, traditional societies used ostracism as punishment, this often amounted to a death sentence. Not having any social contacts, the isolated person would quickly give up the will and effort to live. Acceptance by the social group is even more important to us than acceptance by family members. The place where people typically receive the least respect is right in their own homes. Most of us have gotten used to being yelled at, put down, or rejected by our parents, siblings, spouses, and children, and come to accept it matter-of-factly. In the outside world, though, people are much more respectful towards each other. A harsh word from a friend, colleague, or boss can leave us depressed for days. Children, too, expect to be treated with respect in the outside world, and when they don't get that respect, they are miserable. For a child who feels ridiculed and rejected by his peers, words of praise by parents provide meager comfort. A child who is put down by his family members but is socially successful is going to be much more self-confident than a child who is praised by family but rejected by his social group.
