Public Education - The Problem With Bullies

Prince George's County's has been spending in excess of a billion dollars annually on its school system for some years. In 2005 the school budget was up to $1.4 billion. This for a system with 136,000 students. Schools take more than 50% of the county budget. The school superintendent recently resigned because the FBI was investigating him for possible contracting improprieties. He had been earning $250,000 per year. His predecessor earned something like $200k. Salaries for school principals in Prince George's reach the six figure level. In contrast, as a substitute teacher at Friendly High School this observer was paid $9.00 per hour with no benefits. Who do you think made a bigger difference in the lives and the development of the Friendly students: the superintendent, the school principal or the part time sub and neighborhood outreach activist? Who gave the taxpayers of Prince George's the bigger bang for their buck? Below are two short excerpts taken from Chapter 6 of Managing the Spiritual Neighborhood. You can read the account and make up your own mind.

Clearly when you address quality of life issues, you must keep young people in mind. A good portion of your effort will be directed towards bringing kids along, for they represent society's future. There is of course a program already in operation that aims to educate children. The public school system is in theory the place where young people learn the basic facts of life; the core knowledge required for each person to … what? Hold a job? Get into college? Become a good citizen? I can't say that I'm sure what exactly the school system hopes to accomplish with its students. I guess the goal is to get each kid a high school diploma, which I believe means that he or she has mastered arithmetic at least, can read and write to some degree, and knows a smattering of facts from a few other fields: geography, social studies, biology, music. The time that you spend in school certainly does affect your eventual development, yet one might argue that it's not until later that the larger picture starts to come into focus; when the fragmented information you retain from your classroom training begins to fall into place relative to a deeper knowledge about the nature of life. In any event, we would all acknowledge that the education of children is important. It is without question an activity in which every community should have an interest. The government certainly seems to be interested in it. There are laws that require a child to attend school until a certain age, and the state and local municipalities spend a big chunk of our tax dollars on running the public schools. As Garden Zone Managers we too would be concerned about what is going on at the local schools. Although a classroom is not exactly part of the garden zone – it's more like an extension of the interior environment – the children who attend nevertheless have a large role to play in the quality of life in the garden zone itself. The future Garden Zone Managers, our community leaders, might very well come out of those schools.

I say all of this as preface to the following observation: The people of this community, my community, do not assign much importance to the education of children. The community's interest is not nearly as serious as you might believe given the amount of rhetoric you hear from government officials and school administrators on this topic. To use the terminology of the last chapter (see Section 5.6), if you measure the strength of a common interest activity by the degree of community involvement, then in Camp Springs and the nearby parts of Prince George's County, you would have to conclude that children's education is not a strong common interest.

You can't tell this from the outside. It's only by spending time in class, with students that the truth becomes apparent. I recently had an opportunity to work as a substitute teacher in the Prince George's public schools, and it was that experience that gave me the full picture. Take all of the coarseness and discourtesy we saw in the neighborhood, increase it by ten-fold, concentrate it in a thirty-by-thirty-foot classroom, and then stand at the front of that room as band after band of twenty to thirty teenagers at a time comes flocking through. Kids who mock you, taunt you and throw things at you when your back is turned; who drop trash in classrooms, toss books out windows and smoke pot in the restrooms; who lie, cheat, steal, pull pranks, and generally show no respect at all for the people who are trying to educate them. This is what the teachers in our schools face every school day, from September to June. Your senses are assaulted by what goes on in a typical high school. Your patience is stretched to the limit. If you want to put your powers of detachment to the acid test, a classroom is the place to do it. Just the profanity alone, so thoughtlessly recited by these children, is enough to make you throw up your hands in despair. Despair at such crass behavior in such young kids. Despair at the utterly NON-educational atmosphere in these supposed halls of learning. Despair at the sorry state of our American culture. For these children directly reflect that culture … the pop culture … the TV culture … the Hollywood/Las Vegas/Madison Avenue culture. You cannot tell me that the community cares about the education of children when they allow this raucous environment to persist in the institutions where their children must gain the knowledge that prepares them for life.

It's not my intention to undertake a full-blown analysis of the public education system, but there are several points I'd like to make based on what I observed during the time I spent subbing at Friendly High School, just up Allentown Road from Camp Springs. Apart from the gross incivility, the thing that stands out most at school is the absence of reality. Everything takes place in a vacuum. The classwork, the activities … everything is disconnected, unrelated, to the world outside. Granted, you would expect that practical application would take a back seat when you're learning theory, but what I'm referring to goes deeper. Very few of these kids are seriously focused on what they are doing. They are not emotionally or mentally able to give full attention to their studies. Rather, the whole experience is a game to them. Part of the problem is that there is nothing at stake. The world doesn't come to an end if they don't do their algebra. They still go home to a hot meal and a comfortable bed regardless of whether their biology work is done. For most students school time is an extension of play time. And since the attitudes of kids mimic the attitudes of the adults around them, this shows that we as a community, and as a society, don't take school seriously either. Actually, what it really shows is that there is no reality in our lives, we adults. We too are playing life as if it were a game, and the children pick right up on this.

To see just how much like a game school is, you need only examine the attendance figures. On any given day fifteen percent of the student body do not come to school at all. Another five percent skip class on a regular basis – they're tardy, they don't come back from lunch, they wander the halls. How long do you think these kids would last on a job, in a business? But what's really amazing is that the school administrators keep trying to make them come. They write tardy slips, fill out discipline forms, call their parents, hand out suspensions. Clearly by chasing these kids around the hallways we merely serve to enable their game playing. The principals and teachers stand side-by-side with the students as comedians in this farce. This brings up the second point: You cannot force someone to learn. Just as force doesn't work for teaching courtesy, it's equally useless when it comes to academics. We need to change our perspective about education. We shouldn't be running after people, dragging them to class. School should be purely voluntary. Those who are alert enough to see the value of it will be attracted to school. The kids, their families, their communities will understand that it's a privilege to attend school. Only then will students show respect for their teachers, and for the institution. As for the kids who do no work, who disrupt the class, who insult the teachers, that's a separate problem. Whatever we do with those kids – and we do need to do something with them – but whatever activity we involve them in, it must take place outside the school, or at the very least, separate from the classes where the conscientious students are working. It's absurd to keep letting disruptive kids back into class. It's simply not fair to the others.

No doubt it seems that I'm stating the obvious here. It is certainly obvious to most of the teachers you talk to. But the school administration apparently doesn't see it this way. Students of widely varying abilities go to the same schools, attend the same classes and mingle in the same corridors. However, it's not so much the different levels of ability that cause problems, it's the level of maturity. In other words, it's not intelligence but character development that distinguishes the good students from the bad. As we've already discussed, school-age kids don't display a lot of character anyway. Few of them are capable of true responsibility, concern, sensitivity, and so forth. But when you do happen to find a few mature, clear-thinking students, the contrast between them and the rest of the class is so dramatic that you have to wonder what could have possessed us to collect such utterly different creatures together in one room. The good kids show us just how far behind the bad kids actually are when it comes to character development. By ignoring the blatant differences in character we show the entire student body what little regard we have for courtesy – we the community adults, we the supposed leaders and teachers. It's exactly analogous to the situation in the neighborhoods. The argument is the same as it was regarding the quality of life. We need to turn our priorities completely around; we need to put courtesy at the top of the list, and children need to clearly understand that this is how it must be.

As for what to do with the kids who are not yet ready to be serious students, the bottom line is this: There needs to be more involvement on the part the community, especially the community elders. Here then, is another huge spiritual hole to fill. It's a whole other area on which the garden zone leadership must put its attention. Most everyone agrees that we have to increase the ratio of teachers to students. I submit that the way to do this is not by sending more teachers to the schools, rather, one must expand the school into the community; make the community an extension of the school. But you must first establish a community before any of this is possible; a real community, that is, a Natural Community. As we have seen, that whole process is itself an educational undertaking. If we could transform the community into a school, the teachers and administrators would no longer be strangers, visitors from another city, anonymous figures who serve as the target of pranks. Rather, they would be people with whom you live, and on whom your health and well-being depends, you meaning the pupil. Conversely, the lives and livelihood of the community members will depend on the students. It is in this fashion that we can inject some reality into the education of children. If a kid shows signs of becoming a screw-off, a prankster, or in the worst case, a criminal, then the community will sense it immediately and take appropriate action to correct the problem. How will they correct it? Again, we come back to the issue of spiritual development, and all that we have discussed thus far. You would like to say that the right approach for handling the worst kids is to get tough on them, but that raises the question of how one gets tough without using force. The solution I think, is to pull in the reins. You must narrow the range of motion. Give a kid something very specific to do, and make that his platform for experiencing the real world. If the practice of courtesy is like acting in a stage play, you would want to give a kid a specific part in the play, a bit part, and have him or her practice it over and over until it goes smoothly. But it should be more than just a mechanical repetition. Rather, we must ritualize a kid's activity. Ideally the kid's ritual should be included in a larger array of community rituals. You start him off with a small role, and if you detect the potential for greater development, you can introduce other parts, other rituals, deeper knowledge. Little by little you give the kid more freedom. Does this mean that you must be selective about which kids get to learn which subjects? Yes it does. But it also means that every kid gets an 'A' in every subject he takes. He has to get an 'A'. There is no other choice. Are we implying that you might have to decide early on which path a kid will take through life? The answer is yes to that too. You may indeed decide to make one kid a plumber, another a priest, and a third a civil engineer before they get out of high school. Perhaps before they have even finished junior high. I must admit, however, that it's not at all clear how one would go about determining which child was best suited for which path.

It seems that we have once again opened up a rather complex topic with our line of reasoning. The question of how we decide who will play what role in society touches on some deep aspects of our culture. For the moment I'd be happy if we could determine who would play the role of the grass roots leader, the Garden Zone Manager. If we could single out a few promising young minds who are inclined toward serving the community, and introduce them to some of the ideas we've been discussing, then we would be taking a positive step in that direction. In the meantime someone had better start paying closer attention to what is going on in the classrooms, and find a way to improve the connection between the schools and the surrounding neighborhoods. Apart from becoming a substitute, as I did, or a full-time teacher, there aren't all that many ways to get involved in school affairs. I suppose you could connect with school kids by tutoring. In Prince George's County they have an after-school program called "Oasis" for that purpose. The PTA also comes to mind. What else? Field trips maybe? I guess the real question is not how to educate kids while they are physically in school, but how to educate them before they even get there. The preventive approach requires that we figure out where the bad behavior of students originates and address the problem there. This points us directly back to the homes, the families and the communities. In this respect it is indeed we who are the teachers. And how do we teach them? Well, at present we teach kids by pumping hour after hour of television tripe into their brains. We produce the gansta' rap, the techno-rave and the shock-rock albums that they listen to on the walkmen that we build for them. We sell them the alcohol, the cigarettes and the drugs that they consume while they're enjoying the music. And we raise them in a society where there is no longer any vestige of dignified, discrete conduct in personal relations. Kids automatically pick up the lowest values of culture when no one provides them with a glimpse of the finer values; or, more precisely, when no one shows them how to glimpse the finer values. In America it seems that we don't even know what finer value means when it comes to culture.

We have done a lot of theoretical meandering thus far, and we could no doubt continue at length in this vein, issuing broad criticisms as we go, but in order to narrow the focus somewhat I would like to discuss two specific problems related to school children and public education that I encountered while working at Friendly. They are: (a) the poor connection between schools and the environment, and (b) the problem of children who harass other children. I chose these not because they are the most serious issues to be addressed. On the contrary, schools are grappling with even tougher problems – drug use, poor grades and a shortage of teachers, among others – but you have to start somewhere, and these two problems are clearly universal. I dare say that there isn't a public school in the country where you won't run into both of them. Moreover, these issues tie in well with what we've been discussing, and their ultimate solution may depend on the success of a program like Garden Zone Management.

6.2 The Problem With Bullies

Here's another tough problem for you: What do we do about the bullies of the school? The boys, and sometimes girls, who pick on other kids? This is not a new problem, clearly, but that doesn't diminish its importance. There are children who spend their adolescence and young adulthood living in fear. Fear of being taunted and harassed; fear of getting roughed-up by school yard thugs. For, once you have been abused by a bully, you don't soon forget the experience. You're always having to look out for your tormentor … in the hallways, on the school bus, in the neighborhood. And it isn't necessarily the worst of the bad guys who does this kind of thing. Even kids who are otherwise fairly well behaved will push another kid around if they perceive that he is timid, less aggressive, or less able than they are.

I had a boy in one of my classes at Friendly who was victimized by these tough-guy wannabes. From my vantage point he didn't stand out much except that he kept to himself and did his work, but apparently those characteristics alone were enough to set him apart in the minds of his schoolmates. Some of the other boys in the class belonged to a rowdier crew. They were football-jock types who were always trying to out-class one another. They had to demonstrate that they possessed the minimum amount of coolness to be counted among the school's macho set. It was all quite childish of course. It's not exactly clear why boys feel compelled to participate in this adolescent jousting. I wonder if the reason that they must prove themselves to one another is because the adults around them don't require them to prove anything. In other words, if the more mature men – or women, as it were – in the community demanded more from these boys, if the adults showed their own leadership and mental toughness by having a stronger hand with the kids, then the kids would be trying to prove themselves to the adults rather than to each other. They wouldn't have to invent their own criteria for coolness, rather, the standard would be set by the community.

At Friendly when a substitute takes a class, more often than not the students treat it like a free period, which means they don't do any work. Even if an assignment was left for them, you're lucky if you can get them to actually stay in the room, let alone open up a book. Mostly they pass the hour talking, socializing and horsing around. It's not unusual for kids to throw things at each other – crumpled paper, plastic bottles, candy, pencils – anything at all that is disposable and readily within reach. Usually these missiles are tossed in fun, as a tease, towards someone you pal around with. However, in this one history class I had, it appeared that the quiet kid – Gerard, I'll call him – was targeted not out of friendly playfulness, but for some other reason. I happened to look up just as a flying projectile hit him in the head. It appeared to be a paper clip, and judging by its velocity it must have been launched with a rubber band. When I saw what took place, I immediately demanded to know who was shooting paper clips. I didn't catch who shot it, but I could tell that it came from the side of the room where the macho boys were sitting. Gerard looked over in that direction, but said nothing. Needless to say, no one wanted to take credit for the hit. There was a momentary pause in the horseplay as a few kids looked up, and then the general uproar continued. I later learned that this was not the only prank that Gerard had endured. I happened to overhear him report a property theft to the vice-principal. It seems that someone had stolen his glasses. No one steals another person's prescription eye-glasses for their monetary value. Clearly people were going out of their way to torment this boy.

Gerard was not the only kid who was getting harassed at the school. I was present when a kid in another class, a girl this time, also had to suffer taunts and threats from a classmate. Alicia was a very sweet girl whom I briefly got to know in a parenting class that I covered. She was warm and talkative, with a sort of quizzical, questioning look in her eyes. She seemed to sense that there was something more mysterious about life than what we see on the surface, like a child who just arrived on earth a few minutes ago and is wondering what kind of strange and beautiful place is this where she has landed.

There were no desks in this particular class; rather, a couple of long tables were arranged where everyone sat together. The kids were supposed to be writing a paragraph about what they would do as parents; what things they would teach to their own kids. I was sitting off to one side working on my laptop when Alicia came over to ask about the assignment. I was struck by her friendliness. It was unusual. Students don't usually get very chummy with substitutes. On the contrary, they're more likely to challenge and insult them, especially someone new like me. After we talked for a bit, I turned my attention back to the work I was doing, and a minute or two later I noticed that another girl had come up and was standing over Alicia, taunting her in some fashion. For a moment I was confused. What I was hearing didn't make sense. It appeared that this other girl was actually trying to start a fight, and it didn't matter to her that I, the teacher, was sitting right there. The girl went right ahead with her taunts as if I were invisible. I don't even remember what she said; only that it was menacing and threatening, and that it sounded like a continuation of something that had begun in the past. Alicia for her part just sat there without reaction, looking up at the girl. I finally got up and intervened, and the girl went back to her seat. Later on as the students were leaving I said something to her about it, asking what her problem was with Alicia, why she kept trying to fight her. It seemed that this other girl had some sort of grudge against her. Yet it was inconceivable that Alicia could have done anything to bring this on. She was far too sweet, far too good-natured. No one in their right mind would ever want to hurt this child. All I could figure was that the other girl was meaner, more aggressive, but at the same time somehow jealous of Alicia, jealous of her sweetness perhaps.

What is most disturbing about these episodes is that no one does anything to stop it. Just as with the petty crime we see in the neighborhoods, it's not a big enough deal to us. Yet I guarantee you that for the kids who are getting pushed around, their lives have become pure hell. At the most basic level harassing another person amounts to discourtesy. It's an especially nasty sort of discourtesy, a sort that demands that responsible people intervene on behalf of the victims. But intervention is reactionary. In Alicia's situation my intervening during class that day might have given her a brief respite, but it certainly would not keep that other girl from threatening her again at the next opportunity. What we really need are measures that are preventive. As we've seen, true prevention requires that we engage these kids in a program that exposes them to pure awareness; that brings out an experience of the inner aspect of existence, so that refinement of action can occur. But that takes time. In cases of harassment you must do something immediately, and the only action that makes sense is to separate the rude kids, the harassers, from those who show more development. We need to pin-point the bullies, the wise-guys and most especially the kids who are violent, and keep them away from the children who act more maturely. Alternatively, we can identify the well-behaved students, and provide them with a place where they can study in peace. By doing this we will not only solve the problems of individuals like Gerard and Alicia, but also demonstrate the great importance we have placed on courtesy. There is thus at least some measure of prevention, of education, in separating kids. It is not totally reactionary.

One cannot emphasize enough the seriousness of this problem, and the immediacy of the situation. These students are being harassed now. Action needs to be taken now. If you want to hire more staff, build new facilities, institute new programs, that's great, but in the meantime these kids need relief. And Gerard and Alicia aren't the only ones. Over and over you see children taunting each another, making threats, and verbally abusing other kids. Much of the abuse is incredibly vulgar, and the manner in which it is delivered … the tone, the facial expression … is quite hateful, as if the person spewing this trash truly intended to inflict bodily harm on his classmate. Yet the kids aren't at all ashamed about it. They act like this is the normal way to talk. It's disturbing to say the least.

Now certainly a good percentage of kids make their way through public school without ever being hassled or threatened. But for us that's not good enough. When you live by the philosophy of prevention, nothing less than one hundred percent will do. Realistically, if I were the parent of one of these children, at the very first sign of abuse from another student I would simply withdraw my child from the school. And right now, given the current state of the Prince George's school system, that's the advice I would have to give to people in my own community. Yes, it's unfair that your child should have to suffer because a school supported by your tax dollars is failing, but there is no other practical solution at the moment. If your kid is getting harassed, you must simply get him out of there. In the specific cases of Gerard and Alicia, someone ought to approach the parents – quietly, of course – to inform them about what's going on, and offer them this advice. But who would do this? The school administrators aren't going to do it. They're not about to chase kids away from their own schools. A teacher perhaps? Possibly, if you found one who cared enough about the problem, and who had time to deal with it. What about the Garden Zone Manager? Assuming that the communities where the kids lived had such a person, wouldn't this be something that the manager might be concerned with? It makes sense that he or she would be aware of situations like this, and would keep parents apprised of what was going on. You would need to approach the family in a friendly, concerned way, and the Garden Zone Manager should be perfect for this, because that's what his expertise is, approaching people. Ideally he would already know the parents through his neighborhood connections. He could tell them, "Look, your child might not have said anything about this, but there are some bullies who are harassing him. You should probably consider finding another school."

Logically, this approach should also work from the other angle. The Garden Zone Manager in the neighborhood where the bully lives ought to be able to talk to his parents about how their child is acting. The manager would handle the situation just as he would handle any other neighborhood problem – with courtesy reduction (see Section 5.7). Everything we said in the last chapter about how to approach people, how to avoid force, and so forth, applies in exactly the same way. It's possible that by simply speaking up like this he may completely solve the problem. Moreover, the mere presence of an alert, concerned community leader could very well dissuade the bully from intimidating people. The leader might not even mention the intimidation to the bully. He might simply inquire about his health … ask how his folks are doing … catch his eye once or twice. Anything that deflects the bully's attention away from the potential victim. He is in effect offering himself as a substitute target.

Notice how the argument has progressed. We went from physically separating the bully, to speaking to his parents, to simply hanging out in his vicinity. It's a clear illustration of the principle of refinement of action; of how the effect becomes more powerful as we move away from gross action, and move towards finer levels. And why couldn't we go even further, and postulate that if enough people merely thought about the bully in the right way, that they could influence his activity? The thoughts could be positive or negative (preferably positive). The main thing is that we are putting our attention on the problem; we are creating an area of community common interest through the activity of thinking. I submit that just this very small step can have a significant effect.

A lot of possibilities come to mind when you consider the ways that a Garden Zone Manager could help out with the bully problem, and with the schools in general. They all center on the idea of involving the community in the business of schooling children. If a student is acting up, it shouldn't be left up to the principal to expel him, rather, the community should pull the kid out. There is a different philosophy at work, and a different kind of action. Rather than pushing the child away, you are drawing him to you, so that you can do something else with him. This of course implies that there are people in the community, leaders, who are charged with taking such an action, and furthermore that these people are sufficiently sensitive to this issue; that they understand how important it is to have a courteous educational environment. It's rare to find people with such sensitivity. What's more rare are folks who have the guts to come forward in this fashion. Look, this isn't Kabul, or Bogotá. Compared to the truly dangerous places in the world, we live in paradise. Yet even school teachers, whom one might expect to stand out as community leaders, even many of them fail the backbone test. Too often you hear teachers state that they prefer not to live where their students live, because there's a chance that some disgruntled kid might take revenge for a bad report. It's that insidious undercurrent of fear surfacing again. Just like the cops who won't get involved in the neighborhood, the teachers are also hiding behind the curtain of anonymity. They too run away from the problems of crime and delinquency, instead of facing up to them. The lesson they convey with their actions is far more powerful than any words they speak in class. That's why we need a different kind of teacher; one who is involved in a real way in the lives of his or her students. The only way this can happen is for teachers to become part of the community that they teach.