Not Your Average Schoolyard Bully

Today's kids are mean. Ok, that's a blanket statement, but by-and-large, the average kid is blatantly mean. No, he's not beating someone up after school like the proverbial schoolyard bully of old. But, he is slowly, daily, assassinating someone's sense of self and peace of mind at school.

School is not all that great a place to begin with. It is an institution, after all. It can be a hellacious experience for a teen right from the start. Bad hair days, a sudden pimple break out, having to ask to use the restroom, and then there are no doors on the restroom are all indiginities that slap a student in the face in the first few minutes after the bell rings.

And then the harrassment begins. Teens tell each other what to do, tell the teachers what they can go and do, and talk over each other at an alarming rate. They butt into other people's conversations and cause controversy where it is uncalled for. They bully people by giving their unsolicited opinion whenever and wherever they want. A new form of bullying in our society is unbridled egomania run amok. In short, RUDENESS IS A FORM OF BULLYING. Rude teens may not be beating someone up with their fists, but they are just as surely forcing their will on another person.

Post Columbine anti-bullying campaigns and legislation have had to be enacted all across the United States. Just today on the front page of the Muskogee Phoenix the announcement was made that MPS would begin using the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program developed in Norway after two students killed themselves because they had been bullied at school.

But, in America, an even deadlier teen response to bullying is to go get a gun and shoot the bully. Columbine, Jonesboro, and too many other places have seen the result bullying can have on a young people. Just this past October a Wisconsin teacher was shot by a teenager who felt the teacher had harrassed (bullied) him. In America, we have a different response to bullying.

What is causing this? You really don't have to look very far to find several sources for bullying behavior among teens. Man's natural aggression is enhanced today by hypermasculinity portrayed in music videos; many unsportsman-like professional athletes; parents who beat up other parents or kids on the sports field; and what Jason Katz refers to as the "ratcheting up of what it takes to be considered manly" evidenced in movies like the soon-to-be-released "300" based on the graffic novel about the ancient Battle of Thermopolyae. Add in today's comedy programs like South Park, the Simpson's or Bill Marr (who invites unsuspecting guests on the show and then demeans them by not allowing them to get a word in edgewise), and the belief many people have that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want without repurcussion, and you have a society that actually promotes bullying behavior.

While anti-bullying education should start at a young age, it's never too late for parents to correct bullying behavior they may observe in their teenager. You never know, you may just be saving your kid's life.