In this issue:Interview in EdNews on "The High Cost of Bullying"
Turning the US into the USSR
"Accountability"–the New Big Brother wordBig Brother comes to Australian schools |
Interview in EdNews on "The High Cost of Bullying"
Dear Reader:
I was hoping to be able to send out a January newsletter, but I have fallen behind and failed.
I refuse to make excuses for the lateness of my supposedly monthly newsletters, but one excuse is that I had spent a fair amount of time writing responses for a print interview with Michael Shaughnessy, a school psychologist, professor of education, and senior columnist with EdNews.org, on the costly consequences anti-bullying laws are unleashing on our nations' schools. I consider this as improtant as the articles I write for this newsletter, and I invite you to read it. You can access it by clicking here. If you find it worthwhile, I hope you will refer other readers to it as well. I especially urge you to pass in on to your school principals and administrators. They, more than anyone, need to read it.
I also invite you to reproduce articles in this and previous newsletters for your own publications (please cite the author and source).
I would especially like to thank those of you who responded to my requests for case studies and for practitioners who use my methods. I will be making them available in the not-too-distant future.
Please consult the right-hand side-bar for my upcoming seminar schedule.
Other developments with Bullies to Buddies
Website changes
We have been revamiping the Bullies to Buddies website to make it more user-friendly, and it will soon have a changed home page.
DVD Program: Victim-Proof Your School
My daughter, Lola, has been working intensively with me to produce a DVD program for schools, Victim-Proof Your School. It is a complete program for reducing bullying in schools (or, more accurately, to get kids [and teachers, too] to stop being victims). The program consists of three components. One is an hour-and-forty-minute DVD for kids that teaches them how to handle all of the typical bullying situations. Another is a one-hour DVD that shows teachers how the typical anti-bullying interventions cause an increase in bullying, how to use my two "magic responses" for dramatically reducing bullying between kids, and how they (teachers) can respond effectively when they feel bullied by angry students or parents. The third is a printed trainer's manual that teaches how to use all of my techniques for making kids and schools "victim-free." This will enable you to become a Bullies to Buddies expert just like me. The retail cost of the package will be $495. We will be offering it at a 50% discount to the first 50 purchasers. To order, email my wife at miriam@bullies2buddies.com or call Miriam at 866-983-1333.
Bullies to Buddies Certification Program
The world needs more Bullies to Buddies trainers to give our schools a sane and effective alternative to the anti-bullying programs that are turning our schools into correctional institutions, and mental health professionals into law enforcement officers. I am developing a training program so those who so wish can become certified trainers. I will send an announcement when I am ready to offer this training.
(This will not affect those of you who responded to my request for Bullies to Buddies practitioners to be given space on the website. You will be listed regardless of whether or not you are "certified.")
I have written in previous newsletters how our country’s anti-bullying policies are creating a Soviet Union-style Big Brother state in which our minutest interactions become the domain of the government, and in which the government conveniently maintains control by turning its citizens into informers against each other. “Telling is not tattling” is the innocent-sounding slogan that is used by schools to indoctrinate our youngest citizens into reporting on their fellows to the school authorities. Of course, this is not done with bad intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Schools want to protect “virtuous victims” from “evil bullies”; the fact that their intervention is likely to make the bullying intensify and lead to a whole host of other problems seems to be of no concern to anyone. Even those of us most distrustful of government seem to think government control is a good thing when it comes to "bullying." (Do an internet search. I challenge you to find even one article anywhere–other than my own–that questions the wisdom of anti-bullying laws and programs. If you find one, I'd love to see it).
I know that my comparisons of our country to the repressive (former) Soviet Union may seem exaggerated. After all, we are the United States. In contrast to the “Evil Empire,” we stand for freedom and goodness. However, it may take someone who is actually familiar with the operations of the USSR to recognize the direction we in the “free world” are taking.
The following is a letter from a reader who knows first-hand what I am talking about.
Dear Izzy,
This is your new Russian friend Andrei Rodin. Thanks for the info you provide in your newsletters. It feels like a breath of fresh air. Trying to keep up with the most recent info on anti-bullying programs, I am amazed at how much taxpayers are wasting on the research, development, implementation of new policies, guidance lessons, seminars, etc., devoted to the latest breaking news on anti-bullying. What is there to break? “You can’t throw a scarf on everyone’s mouth” (ancient Russian proverb). And they tried to do so in the Soviet Union–to cover all mouths. Guess what? There is no more Soviet Union.
I am so tired of reading same old @$#& about reporting the bullies, teaching kids that being mean is not nice, being respectful while we–educators– tattle on each other to our administrators. This is one hypocritical environment that tries to establish heaven in schools while putting colleagues through hell on a daily basis. And the kids see straight through this. I think it is disrespectful and unethical, since we–THE TEACHERS–teach our students to be tolerant, kind, caring, while we are being vindictive, petty, angry, CONTROLLING...
The hilarious, if not scary, thing is that we are preaching tolerance and diversity while prohibiting the expressions of those. Instead of adding celebrations of Hannukah and Ramadan, for example, we banned Christmas and Halloween from schools. Now we are happy? Why can’t the educational society admit the simple strategy: Don’t like the show, change the channel? Instead, we’ve created an army of watchdogs who are eager to distract the kids from learning by taking their academic time to preach the values that they, themselves, do not uphold.
Thank you for your common sense, belief in kids, and support of those of us who are trying really hard to keep the mental health professionals from joining the police force. I really enjoyed your article about the Soviet Union. I lived in that hell. I thought I escaped it by coming here. No darn way. The Big Brother is checking my e-mail, as I learned last week during the meeting with my supervisor. Please, keep educating people on Freedom of Speech. If you ever run out of the examples of how scary it is to lose your ability to speak openly, let me know - I have 28 years of the Soviet stories I would love to share.
Looking forward to your next monthly newsletter.
Love and peace,
Andrei the Russky Rodin
Love and peace to you, too, Andrei.
"Accountability" – the new Big Brother word
While we're on the topic of Big Brother, I would like to bring your attention to the new popular buzzword that is being promulgated as the panacea for all of society's ills: Accountability. If you somehow haven't heard the word used recently, start paying attention. It's all over the place.
I am always skeptical of new buzzwords or slogans that are supposed to bring salvation. "War against drugs." "Zero-tolerance." "Just say no." "Consequences." "Diversity training." "Bully-proofing." "No Child Left Behind." I wouldn't complain if the campaigns actually worked. However, not only do they rarely solve their targeted problems, they often make the problems worse and create unanticipated problems in the bargain.
In his classic work, 1984, George Orwell paints a futuristic society, Oceania, in which the government–"Big Brother"–watches over all. In other words, everyone is accountable to the government for all of their actions. While the populace is brainwashed into believing the government is their salvation, the government is really their enslaver and the cause of their misery. Its Department of Truth manipulates the language, Newspeak, to promote the government's agenda of total control.
Of course our society doesn't work in quite as insidious and planned a way as that in George Orwell's book, but the process happens nevertheless. And we are increasingly headed in the direction of 1984, with the blessing of our own population, which loves to relinquish personal responsibiity for our lives and hand it over to the government, in the naive belief that our government knows best and can take care of us better than we can take care of ourselves.
And our latest Big Brother word is Accountability. What a great idea! Just make people accountable for their actions, and then they will do all the right things. All the ills of society will disappear when people are held accountable.
What can possibly wrong with holding people accountable? After all, it sounds like such a good idea.
Problems with "accountablity"
There are certain things people should be accountable for. I'll refer specifically to the education world. Let's say you are a principal and you are given a budget to buy textbooks. You must be held accountable for the money. You can't be putting the money into your own bank account. If you are a teacher and are scheduled to work from 9AM till 3PM, you should be accountable for your time. You can't be out shopping when you are supposed to be teaching.
But people can't be held accountable for things that are not in their control. "No Child Left Behind" holds schools accountable for lack of students' academic success. But how can they be held accountable for this? Education experts have been endlessly trying to find ways to improve student achievement and the controversies over how to accomplish this never end. Is a law going to force learning to increase? Of course not. If a school doesn't know how to get their students to do better than they are already doing, a law holding the school responsible is not going to make the kids learn better. What the law will do, though, is encourage schools to figure out how to avoid getting in trouble with the law. So they creatively manipulate test scores to show educational improvement that isn't really happening. And no less harmful, they start "teaching to the tests," destroying creativity in education and eliminating subjects that aren't measured by the scores the government is interested in.
Anti-bullying laws are holding schools accountable for the bullying that goes on between students. But how can schools be held responsible for making kids stop bullying each other when adults, even mental health professionals, don't know how to be free of bullying in their own lives, don't know how to get their own couple of kids at home to stop bullying each other, the research shows that most anti-bullying programs don't work?
One mental health professional wrote in her seminar evaluation form that she dislikes my approach to bullying because she believes kids should be held accountable (yes, she used the "accoutability" word) for the way they treat each other. Sounds great, doesn't it? If kids are held responsible, they will certainly treat each other better, right? Of course not. Try it at home with your own kids. All they do is defend theselves and blame the other kid when they are accused of being mean. And how would this woman like to be held responsible for her own relationships? Would she like a government official to punish her whenever her husband, children, parents, bosses, collegues and in-laws don't like the way she treats them?
No sirree, "accountability" is not going to bring our society closer to Utopia. It will bring only bring it closer to Oceania.
Big Brother comes to Australian schools
Australia is taking bullying increasingly seriously, which is not surprising in light of a recent lawsuit in which a school was ordered to pay over a million dollars for failing to stop a child from being bullied.
An Australian company is now marketing a video recording system called Bully Buttons. When kids feel they are being bullied, they press the nearest Bully Button and cameras start filming.
Of course everyone thinks this is a wonderful idea. That is the beautiful thing about Big Brother (which happens to have the same initials as Bully Buttons). It sounds so good that no one can see any reason to object to it. How nice to have a Big Brother always available to watch over us and protect us from each other. The company, of course, doesn’t want to be seen as Big Brother, but the fact that the company feels the need to defend itself in advance from such accusations speaks for itself: "We don't want it to be too pervasive or Big Brotherish,” the company manager is quoted as saying. I guess they only want it to be adequately "pervasive and Big Brotherish."
But what does it do to our freedom...to our moral development..to our social relationships? Imagine living in a world in which you had better be careful to be nice to everyone all the time or the authorities are going to pounce upon you, and of course your behavior will have been filmed so you can’t deny what you did. You are no longer free to act as you wish. You are no longer free to learn from experience in treating people different ways. Even if you can’t stand someone, you had better make believe you like the person because if you show any hostility, it’s on tape and you get punished. Mainstream society uphold honesty as a major value, but its Big Brother anti-bullying policies are promoting forced phoniness.
Anti-bullying policies want kids to have positive relationships. But what kind of relationships can you expect them to have when they are pressing Bully Buttons that get them in trouble with the authorities?
Anti-bullying policies are meant to get kids to treat each other morally. But is where is the morality when the purpose of your behavior is avoidance of punishment? Being nice in order to stay out of trouble is not moral behavior, it is self-centered and cowardly behavior.
As an adult, would you like to have all of your interpersonal interactions under the scrutiny and control of government officials? My guess is that most of you would say, "No." Well, if it’s not okay for us as adults, why should it be okay for kids? Why start them on a course in childhood that we detest as adults? What kind of a world are we preparing them for with these Bully Buttons?
Best Wishes,
Izzy Kalman
email: izzy@bullies2buddies.com
voice: (718) 983-1333
web: http://www.bullies2buddies.com
