We need to treat teen bullying like we treat terrorism at airports
I wish we would treat teen bullying like we do terrorism at airports.
Can you imagine a school where someone just hints at wanting to bully a kid or starts to bully someone just a bit and they are swarmed by teachers, administrators, parents, law enforcement?
Can you imagine if when we heard some kid harassing another kid, everyone jumped in to stop what was going on? If only for the reason of “I don’t want this school to be put on lockdown for four hours”?
Can you imagine if because of a handful of teen suicides from bullying, the disciplinary measures across every school and police district changed to prevent its spread?
Can you imagine if because of teen suicides, we placed watch-lists and restrictions on those that had a history of bullying others?
Can you imagine if across the nation, students had the same amount of fear and anxiety about not being a bully and not tormenting others as Americans do over not raising any red flags while at the airport?
Can you imagine if local law enforcement took cyberbullying as seriously as we do with potential terrorist activities and fraternization on the internet?
I can imagine it, but I don’t think it’ll happen. Ever.
Teen bullying has and will continue to be tolerated because:
1. Bullying is seen as a “rite of passage” for young people.
2. Everyone is confused on who should deal with it and be held responsible. The answer: parents, police, schools. If they can send parents to jail for their child’s truancy, they sure as hell should be able to throw some parents into jail for their asshole kid’s bullying behavior. Harassment and abuse is harassment and abuse. Throw those kids in jail. Schools can lose funding if they don’t test well. Kid commits suicide at your school, kick the principal out, kick the vice-principal out. Kick the superintendent out. If other administrators want to keep their jobs, they’ll do more to stop bullying.
3. Bullying is often racist, sexist, homophobic or containing some other form of oppression. We can’t expect too much when you have presidential candidates spouting off the same messages of ignorance and oppression and nobody bats an eye.
