Bullying is wrong.
Wanting to fit in at the cost of the well-being of others is wrong.
Why does it remain so prevalent in schools?
Why does it continue through adulthood? Why does bullying often transition to gaslighting?
Let’s take a look at what we know.
Chapter 1, Reading 15: Eve Shalen: The “In” Group from Holocaust and Human Behavior is about bullying and joining in when offered the chance. Researching for this blog I found a lot about why people thought she felt the need to join in and what that means, but I didn’t find much of why her “eighth grade class [which] consisted of 28 students” had “From second grade on, a small elite group [that] seemed to spend a large portion of their time harassing two or three of the others.”
Shalen stated that she didnât know why she was one of the unlucky few to be chosen as a target for the bullies. âIn most cases when children get picked on, they arenât good at sports or they read too much or they wear the wrong clothes or they are of a different race.â I think that is a limited assessment of the situation as it puts the emphasis on a motivational trigger which then serves as a catalyst for delinquent behaviour. Children donât only get picked on because of any of these things, but rather there is some other aspect that causes an instant dislike or even discomfort. It is felt by others who then become the âin-groupâ to hide their fear behind belittling the person(s) they are afraid of. Shalen and others like Shalen are victims because they care. Perhaps they are empaths who recognize that the harm is not intended in the way it happens, or at least not at first. With time, though, comes the ability to recognize that what they are doing is wrong yet there is no easy way to stop without âlosing faceâ to the rest of the in-group.
Even in her essay, she states “It was as if the outcasts had been invented by the group out of a need for them,” and, in my mind, throughout the essay, Shalen makes excuses for the bullies. She tries to understand and empathizes with them.
Are the victims of bullies victims by nature? Is it part of social hierarchy?
Are the bullies actually more charismatic by nature? Have they discovered the dark side of charisma?
Is it possible that the bullies are just the people who figure it out first and know how to work the system? It takes more than one person to be an âin-groupâ and to be bullying the others. It definitely seems that they tend to ostracize people who are unique and different. Are they scared of people who are walking their own path?
“The problem of bullying appeared to be a subset of the problems in any social hierarchy that is structured in such a way that those lower down in the hierarchy learn to accommodate to their position in the hierarchy by accepting and even developing their own fixed roles as subordinates.”3
“Instead of asking why bullying persists in spite of its widespread moral condemnation, we must ask instead how, given our overriding tendencies to form social hierarchies, we can ensure that they do not devolve into fixed roles for any individuals, or in which whole groups of people become subordinate? That is, rather than targeting a few bullies for blame, we must examine how we are all involved in societal enactments of dominance and subordination.”3
“Social hierarchies are endemic, innate, and most likely, evolved to support survival within a group-living context.” 1
Now that we have recognized that bullying is bad, we need to understand why it keeps happening
“There is little research that examines what might help adolescents âthink beyondâ not joining in and, instead, influence them to get involved to help the victim.”2
It is time to make it a priority to help young people deal with bullying. We teach that itâs wrong. We teach how to combat it, but we donât really teach how to address the root of the problem.
We need to start training young people on how to handle bullying. Physical Education should include self-defense. Fundamentally, we need to start training young people how to strengthen their self-esteem and their mental state of being. If we were to finally include some basic mental health classes at each level of development, I truly believe that young minds would be more resistant to the effects of bullying – and less likely to join in themselves.
I don’t know if this is addressed later on in the textbook Holocaust and Human Behavior but I wanted to go ahead and share my thoughts now. If it does get discussed later in the book, I will refer back to this blog and add notes to a new blog, which I will share here.
Research documentation Footnotes
1. Jessica E. Koski, Hongling Xie & Ingrid R. Olson (2015) Understanding social hierarchies: The neural and psychological foundations of status perception, Social Neuroscience, 10:5, 527-550, DOI: 10.1080/17470919.2015.1013223
2. Feigenberg, L.F., King, M.S., Barr, D.J. & Selman, R.L. (2008) Belonging to and exclusion from the peer group in schools: Influences on adolescentsâ moral choices. Journal of Moral Education, 37(2), 165-184.
3. Lantos JD, Halpern J. Bullying, social hierarchies, poverty, and health outcomes. Pediatrics. 2015 Mar;135 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):S21-3. doi: 10.1542/peds.2014-3549B. PMID: 25733721; PMCID: PMC6257421.