Bullying - helping children understand...

Ask a group of teachers what’s the most important ingredient of a school and they will probably say good teaching. Ask parents and they may also say good teaching; good exam results; good facilities; good pastoral care. Ask pupils the most important ingredient and they may say ‘no bullying’. This should not surprise us. However much you enjoy learning, if you don’t feel safe, school will be an ordeal. Imagine how dreadful it must be to wake up every day and face the torment of victimisation in whatever form it may take: physical or psychological aggression, being excluded, being ridiculed.

This week is anti-bullying week which means that the spotlight, in schools up and down the country, will fall on the emphasis we place on helping children understand bullying and why it is unacceptable.

Bullying can be hard to deal with, partly because it generally happens when adults are not around. That doesn’t mean that you do not try to tackle it when it occurs: a school that dismisses unhappiness stating that bullying is just a normal part of growing up is a cynical place worth avoiding but it’s also difficult to tackle because children, girls in particular, can be fickle and changeable in their attitudes, no doubt because of their own internal uncertainties about their evolving identity. Sometimes it reminds me of the dodgems at the fair ground; those little cars careering in different directions colliding one moment, coming alongside the next. Using a range of tactics a child can mount a sustained campaign to isolate and then suddenly be sweet and inclusive only to resume, almost whimsically, the insidious nastiness once again.

There are books and websites galore offering advice on how to deal with bullying but one of the best descriptions of what young girls do is to be found in Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. The narrator has two friends, Grace and Carol. A third girl, Cordelia, moves into the area and the torment begins:

I’m standing outside the closed door of Cordelia’s room. Cordelia, Grace and Carol are inside. They’re having a meeting. The meeting is about me. I am just not measuring up, although they are giving me every chance. I will have to do better. But better at what? I lean against the wall. From behind the door comes the indistinct murmur of voices, of laughter, exclusive and luxurious.

Carol is in my classroom, and it’s her job to report to Cordelia what I do and say all day. They’re there at recess and at lunchtime. They comment on the kind of lunch I have, how I hold my sandwich, how I chew. On the way home I have to walk in front of them, or behind. In front is worse because they talk about how I’m walking, how I look from behind. “Don’t hunch over,” says Cordelia. “Don’t move your arms like that.”

They don’t say any of the things they say to me in front of others, even other children: whatever is going on is going on in secret, among the four of us only. Secrecy is important, I know that: to violate it would it would be the greatest, the irreparable sin. If I tell I will be cast out forever.

Cordelia doesn’t do these things or have this power because she’s my enemy. Cordelia is my friend. She likes me, she wants to help me, they all do.

Understanding behaviour doesn’t mean condoning it. Children need to see bullying outlawed at school to prevent them turning into bullying adults. Bullying in the workplace is now a recognised problem. This week is for adults too.