In 1995, the National Education Association estimated that every day, 160,000 kids stay home from school because they’re afraid they’ll be bullied. And at 2010’s summit, Duncan said, “A school where children don’t feel safe is a school where children struggle to learn. It’s a school where kids drop out, tune out, and get depressed.”
Kids still stay home from school—or give up on school entirely—because they’re afraid of being bullied.
TAKE THREE:
I am grown up. At a political meeting in my hometown, I mention that bullying often occurs on our school buses. “Oh,” says one man, “but all kids are bullied—I was bullied.” He sounds like the many people who think bullying is a natural part of childhood—a normal rite of passage.
In 2008, the Yale School of Medicine found that there seems to be a definite connection between being bullied and committing suicide. Would the grieving parents of Phoebe Prince and Carl Joseph Walker-Hoove, both from Massachusetts; Eric Mohat from Ohio; Megan Meier from Missouri; and Ryan Halligan from Vermont—all suicide victims because of being bullied—agree that being bullied is a normal rite of passage?
More videos race through my head.
TAKE FOUR:
I’m a student teacher, and in the class to which I’m assigned there’s a girl who is obviously a lesbian and who I’m sure has been bullied. One day I hear that she’s been raped in the girls’ bathroom with a Coke bottle by some of her classmates.
Studies have shown that more than 33 percent of gay, lesbian, and transgender kids are harassed physically in school because of their sexual orientation, and more than 25 percent are harassed because of their gender expression. A study done recently at Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens are bullied two to three times more than straight ones.
TAKE FIVE:
I can see this video clearly, because the boy it’s about is someone my partner and I helped bring up. Let’s call him Kevin. Kevin’s slight of build, has a pleasant, friendly face and a neat sense of humor, and his light brown hair tends to drape over his forehead. He’s the closest thing to a son I’ve ever had.
Now picture a sprawling one-story high school building with a flat roof. Put Kevin on top of it with other boys around him—and watch as the other boys hang him by his heels from the roof.
Thank God he neither fell nor later, like Phoebe Prince, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, and many others, committed suicide.
But years later, after Columbine, Kevin told me and my partner that had it not been for music, basketball, and people like us to talk with, he might well have taken a gun to school and used it, like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High.
In 2002, research done by the Secret Service and the US Department of Education found that 75 percent of the school shooters they studied were victims of bullying.
There are thousands of bullying incidents every day.
Bullies and bystanders are caught in a cruel vortex of aggression and fear.
Every single bullying victim hurts.
Some kill themselves.
Those who survive bear hidden scars forever.
Finding Light in the Darkness
by Lisa Schroeder
In the darkness of the night,
I shiver under the covers,
unable to free myself
from the bitter cold
hidden in the disgust you shove at me.
In the darkness of the hallway,
I spill invisible blood,
unable to protect myself
from the sharp sting
of the insults you throw at me.
In the darkness of the streets,
I cower as you come at me,
unable to defend myself
from the very real terror
behind the threats you kick at me.
In the darkness
I cry.
In the darkness
I wish.
In the darkness
I pray.
In the light of my family room,
I tell her of the coldness,
able to see
it’s not me
who is weak.
In the light of an office,
I tell him of the pain,
able to see
it’s not me
who is ignorant.
In the light of a new day,
we stand side by side
and we tell the world
we must not tolerate hatred,
able to see
it is us
who will bring change.
Write It
The Sandwich Fight
by Steven E. Wedel
The noise of the lunchroom was loud, rising and falling as the lower grades of Coolidge Elementary talked and ate, ignoring the illuminated red of the traffic light that indicated it was quiet time. Being a picky eater, I’d opted to bring my lunch. I took my sandwich—thin sheets of beef lunch meat with mustard on white bread—from my Charlie Brown lunch box and brought it toward my mouth.
“Give me a bite.” The voice belonged to Kevin. Something inside me squirmed, looking for a deeper place to hide.
A few days earlier, Kevin had demanded one of my mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies. I refused. He stole one. When I complained to my mom, her response was that I should have shared my cookies. Now, I’m not opposed to sharing. Never have been. But it goes all over me when somebody demands I give up something that is mine. Kevin had stolen my cookie, and now he was sitting there in his yellow button-down shirt, his own lunch in front of him, insisting I give him a bite of my sandwich.
There was more to it, of course. This was second grade, 1972, and only the first year for Enid, Oklahoma, schools to have a hot lunch program. I tried a hot lunch the second day of school and hated it, so I took my lunch every day from then on. Looking back, I suppose it was fitting I carried a Charlie Brown lunch box, considering how much ol’ Chuck and I had in common. Something inside made us easy targets for harassment. Charlie Brown had his Lucy, and I had Kevin.
Earlier in the year, he’d stolen my eraser. Our teacher, Mrs. Patton, was leading a group of kids in reading while I was whispering to Kevin to give back my eraser. The girl next to me was trying to help resolve the issue. Next thing I knew, Mrs. Patton was swatting Kevin, then the girl, and then had me by the ear and was dragging me out of my desk and lighting up my butt with her wooden paddle. Hey, it was the early seventies and that stuff was still allowed.
Classroom, playground, he was always there, always picking on me about something. But nowhere was it worse than the lunchroom.
I lifted the thin sandwich toward my mouth for a second bite, and he grabbed my wrist. We struggled, him pulling my hand and food toward his open mouth. How long until a teacher noticed? Would I get in trouble for this, too? Another swat?