"How faggy!”
“You retard!”
“What a spaz!”
While I would have loved to have been shielded from bullying while I was in school — and wish I could have protected my friends and children from the same — it is probably better that we all faced it head on. After all, as the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Or that other old adage, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me.”
As the school year begins again for kids across the country, children are going back to a controlled view of life — at least, in the classroom. Outside of class, on the playground and after school, is a different story. Summer’s reprieve from bullying is over.
In hindsight, I realize that I was bullied throughout my years in public school, though I didn’t have a name to call it. It was something we kids did when I was young, in public playgrounds and during recess. I probably dished it out as much as I received it. I still don’t know when I first experienced being bullied, or how I first learned about it, or why the practice is perpetuated to this day, even given more classes on multiculturalism, diversity, and anti-bullying programs. I realized, even when I was a kid, how harmful and hate-filled the message was: I knew the words were meant to bring down another person in order to feel better about myself, though that feeling was fleeting at best. Language shapes our perception of others as “lesser than” human beings, “second-class citizens,” not worthy to be our friends.
Read on: http://www.parentsociety.com/parenting/the-bullies-are-back/
No comments:
Post a Comment