[xtypo_dropcap]P[/xtypo_dropcap]ainfully shy, socially awkward, and gifted with a strange name—I was the perfect target for harassment at school. Kids can be cruel, as they say.
While bullies are nothing new, technology now allows for more pervasive cruelty; electronic media ensures that there may be no escape from the torment. Getting pushed or berated by my peers was at one time a predictable part of my day, but at least it ended when I got home. I can only imagine the hopelessness I may have felt had my humiliation been broadcast over the Internet 24 hours a day for all to see. The tragic examples that have ended in suicide are, of course, heartbreaking.
Another case of modern teenage social sabotage recently emerged when an Illinois high school junior distributed a degrading commentary of 50 female classmates online. The contents included insulting characterizations of each victim (reportedly top students), as well as ratings on the young women’s physical traits, and supposed promiscuity.
The subjects of this detailed critique contend that much of the portrayal is untrue, but told the Chicago Tribune that the list writer’s efforts were cheered by much of the student body.
Now that a new breed of school bully wields high tech tools, the rest of society is beginning to take more notice. In the past few years, nearly every state has updated its laws to address electronic harassment, and schools across the nation have begun cracking down on the abusive texts and threatening Facebook posts by implementing task forces, filing police reports, and granting expulsions.
These efforts effectively target a new symptom, but do they address the root cause? What compels kids to be so cruel? Outside of petty political bickering and reality shows, the rest of society manages to maintain a fair degree of civility. Why should school be any different?
Some may argue that the hormonally turbulent teenage years are wired for drama, but Paul Graham disagrees. In his essay, “Why Nerds Are Unpopular,” Graham suggests it is the environment of school itself that causes these problems. He likens secondary school to the savage culture of prison inmates—an insular, hierarchical society with its own peculiar customs and conventions.
“I’m suspicious of this theory that 13-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up,” he writes, “If it’s physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at 13? I’ve read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the 20th century.”
Read More ... meaningless existence
John Taylor Gatto, a public school teacher for 30 years and author of several books analyzing and criticizing the American compulsory education system, described the students he taught as individuals who lack compassion for misfortune, laugh at weakness, and who have “contempt for people whose need for help shows too plainly.” He blames their behavior on the captive and largely meaningless existence forced upon them in school.
“Ceaseless competition for attention in the dramatic fishbowl of the classroom reliably delivers cowardly children, toadies, school stoolies, little people sunk into chronic boredom, little people with no apparent purpose, just like caged rats, pressing a bar for sustenance, who develop eccentric mannerisms on a periodic reinforcement schedule,” declared Gatto in a speech at a Vermont Homeschooling Conference. “The bizarre behavior kids display is a function of the reinforcement schedule in the confinement of schooling to a large degree. I’m certain of that.”
The libelous-list writing student, a football player at Oak Park-River Forest High School, was suspended for his actions. But I doubt the punishment will have much of an effect—this was the third slanderous series that the student produced in the past four years. Discipline is pointless if the conditions fostering these delinquents aren’t also addressed.
When kids are systematically separated from the real world for the majority of their formative years—a world with real consequences and regular, meaningful interactions with adults—they look to peer approved examples in television and other electronic media to guide their behavior. In light of these conditions, the predatory school environment that emerges shouldn’t be much of a mystery.
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