Thomas J. West Music

This apparently is a topic that wants my attention. It keeps landing itself painly in front of me.

With the recent press about the young man who committed suicide because he was publicly disgraced by his roommate using a remotely controlled web camera in their dorm room, I wrote an article two days ago about protecting your online reputation. Later that same day, I rode in a carpool with three other judges to a Cavalcade of Bands marching band competition. On the way home, one of the judges shared several stories about how the teaching staff of the junior drum and bugle corps he was a member of more than twenty years ago verbally, mentally, and physically abused the corps members as a matter of routine. I had heard some stories about not allowing corps members to sleep and giving them little to eat after practicing for 16 to 20 hours a day, but these stories were far worse than I had been led to believe.

A Right of Passage, or Accepted Cruelty?

Like many Americans, I absolutely detested my junior high years. Puberty did weird things to your body, all of my friends from elementary school had abandoned me, and I was an easy target for bullies. Bullies were punished when caught (I had a small victory when a kid who put gum in my hair and twisted it was put in the in-school suspension room), but it was common that cruelty to one another was accepted. This kind of cruelty has been portrayed in several movies in every generation. I wondered why adults would allow it, why they didn't do something about it.

As an adult, I understand that much of the cruel things that students inflict on one another goes unnoticed because the actions and words chosen really don't have much meaning for us as adults. We went through our growing pains, we developed a thick skin, and we expect our young people to do the same. Why is it, then, that most of my memories of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade are negative ones where I was physically and mentally abused by other students? Those things had meaning to me.

Much of this behavior can be attributed to young people finding their own sense of identity in how they interact with their peers. Even if the pressure to fit in is not in the mix, the pressure to stand your ground against an opposing force can be. The older the students get, the more serious, dangerous, and long-lasting their decision-making becomes.

How many movies have been made about hazing in college fraternities? How many movies are there where high school girls are absolutely nasty to one another? When does it cross the line from being social commentary to condoning cruelty?

What Can Schools Do?

Every public school has a code of conduct. The code of conduct for my own children's school district is a 49 page document. The course of punitive action is made very clear in those documents. Having that structure is important when students make destructive decisions. Creating a paper trail to establish a pattern of abusive behavior is equally as important.

There have been many attempts over the years to provide character-building programs to students. During my elementary school days, it was "Duso the Dolphin" and frineds who were helping us Develop Understanding of Self and Others. Many other programs exist, and all of them help build awareness, but in the long-run, you really can't teach people how to be kind and make good decisions in a course of study or presentation.

The only thing that teachers, parents, and administrators can really do to help students break the socially-accepted cycle of cruelty to one another is to live their lives as an example of kindness, put others' needs before their own, and insist on students behaving in like manner while in their presence.

One of the many reasons I enjoy teaching at my current position is because there are little to no discipline issues of any kind. The school is a closely-knit community, and the status-quo in the building is one of safety, exloring the unknown together, and mutually supporting and caring for one another. Sounds idealistic, perhaps? Just walking in the front door of our performing arts center lets you know you are in a place where even the walls of the building are works of art and the people who create them are just as multi-faceted and beautiful.

Stopping cruelty between young people is about showing them in small groups and in small doses that there is an alternative to what they experience in the rest of the world.

As our world continues to explode with information and creativity due to our amazing technologies, it is time to usher in a world where common cruelties like bullying and hazing no longer have a place. The way to make that shift is by having the courage to speak up when it happens in your environment and to lead by example in everything you do. While I do not share the sense of urgency expressed in this video, I do agree with comedienne and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres that bullying is a socially-accepted form of cruelty that takes the lives of young people when allowed to proliferate in any environment.

For all of you "geeks" and "nerds" out there who were ever picked-on, physically and verbally abused, or worse, you've got plenty of company. I think it's pretty safe to say that just about everyone has had the experience of being discriminated against or abused simply because of who you are, what you do, or what you look like. All it takes is for each of us to do our best to not apply that same pre-judgment to the people we encounter in our lives.

The paradigm shift is ours to make whenever we are ready to accept nothing less than a change in the way we perceive the world.

This article (c) 2010 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.