The school bully

A story about bullying.
Many of us saw this week the video of a small boy taunting a larger, bigger boy whilst throwing punches and dancing around in front of the larger boy. All of a sudden the larger boy has had enough, he swings into action and grabs the smaller boy in a headlock. He then lifts him (easily) above his head and body slams him on to the concrete. The smaller boy staggers up and walks away. Score one for the good guys.

This video brought back some strong memories from my early years at secondary school. I had begged my parents to send me to a technical school (they used to be separate 35 years ago - if you wanted to do a trade you went to the tech). I wanted to be a mechanic and so my parents, against their better judgement, sent me to the technical school. It was a decision i would regret for the 3 years I was there. The school was out of control with bullying, fighting and pack rapes all happening regularly - but the most constant being the bullying and physical violence. As someone who wasn't all that confident and wasn't all that big (I didn't put on any hight or weight until I was about 16) I was fairly low in the pecking order. Not at the bottom mind you - which meant I also contributed to this culture of bullying on occasions. But low enough that I was constantly on the lookout for groups that might be traveling the school yard looking for someone lower in the pecking order so that they could give them swift kick, smack across the head or worse. One "punishment" that was quite common for these pack animals was "the pole". "The Pole" was often administered for no reason at all, occasionally because you wouldn't "bow down" to someone or in one particular case, lick someones boots. There was a small kid at our school a lot like the kid in the video this week. He took great joy in the humiliation of other children and would often travel around with bigger kids - but he was always first to administer the punishment despite his size. I had a mate name Michael Jones. We called him Jonesy of course and he was quite tall, but a bit of a dork with thick glasses and a quiet, humble demeanor. He was a good mate and we did almost everything together including riding our bikes to school and home each day. This one morning we arrived at school and we were riding our bike to the bike racks. We were on the school grounds and you were not supposed to ride your bike whilst in the school grounds. Along came this kid with his mates. Darren Chilvers was his name and he was a small blond kid who was always wearing dirty clothes and an even dirtier mouth. He saw us riding our bikes and immediately appointed himself school prefect, telling us to get off our bikes. We did - we didn't want trouble, it was not something we went looking for. But Chilvers wasn't happy with that. Like the boy in the video, he really enjoyed making fun of other kids, especially of those kids were bigger than him. For this attack, it seemed I was not going to be the target. He asked Jonesy what his punishment should be for riding in the school yard. Jonesy was feeling particularly brave today (who knows why - perhaps it was the bike ride which had elevated his heart rate up, or perhaps he had just had enough). He told "Chilvers" to "F*%# Off. Chilvers made some remark about how little boys shouldn't swear and Jonesy, feeling even braver, told him that the only little person here was Chilvers. Well, it never took much to get a reaction from this kid and his mates quickly grabbed Jonesy, one on each arm. Chilvers told Jonesy to lick his shoes. The mates tried to push jonesy's head down to the shoes but they couldn't hold him and get his head down to the ground. Then Chilvers pronounced judgement - "your getting the pole jonesy unless you lick my boots". Jonesy didn't look scared and continued to struggle to get away from the guys holding him, but to no avail. They marched him towards the nearest pole and as they let go of his arms, they grabbed his legs - one on one leg, two on the other and they pulled hard on his legs, slamming his testicles into the pole. Jonesy screamed in agony but managed to get one leg free and kicked one of the guys holding him. This was enough for the others to decide their job of discipline was complete and they ran off. I then wheeled both bikes over to Jonesy, who was still laying on the ground holding himself. He had a pained look on his face and as I handed him his bike he said thanks. I said "Thats ok", but he wasn't being thankful at all. He was being sarcastic. He then went on to ask my why I didn't help him and I didn't know - other than self preservation I had no excuse as to why a let them do that to my friend. But I'm not alone - many kids who are victims of bullying feel guilty because they didn't do anything to ghelp a friend or even themselves - or they simply felt helpless in the face of such an attack. Im 47 now but many of these bullying incidents are as real in my memory as if they happened yesterday. I don't still feel guilty for not helping Jonesy or for not fighting back, though I do sometimes still feel very angry at the teachers that allowed this type of thing to go on, or the parents who raised their children to be this way with others. I also sometimes feel sorry for the kids that were the bullies. I heard that Darren Chilvers has had a pretty terrible life. His father used to beat him, he has been in and out of prisons and has been married and divorced a number of times - I feel sorry for his kids given he probably never learnt how to be a good parent.

The issue of bullying is not an easy one to tackle - it requires concerted effort on all fronts. Just as more effort from me might have saved Jonesy from the pole, we all need to be willing to risk something to solve this problem. It wont change overnight, and violence like that which was seen in the video this week is not the answer - adults, parents, teachers, politicians (Yes, even politicians can help) - anyone that has any influence over what happens in our schools and how our children behave needs to be aware of the issue and be constantly working to solve the problem.

So what do you think you can do about it? Got any good ideas that don't involve teaching our kids how to fight and defenec themselves?