Bullying Series Part 2: Why Schools Fail to Reform Bullies
I am not talking about schools with absolutely no concern about the socio-emotional life of students. Fortunately, I have never taught in such a school so far.
Agni and Prithvi belonged to a school which is firmly against punitive action. The school believed in reform and second chances. The school makes an effort to understand the child's circumstances and tries to ask "What happened to you?" instead of "What's wrong with you?".
The school consisted of a group of empathetic adults genuinely trying to help bullies reform. I like to believe I was one of those adults. However, as much as I would have liked to believe that reform takes time, that I must keep on believing in the child who is bullying, and that eventually, something will change, that the child will reform, I was failing. I was failing to reform bullies. I was failing to protect the bullied. It was a perpetual feeling of inadequacy and helplessness as a teacher that pushed me to seek help.
Believing in reform meant that the school tried to:
treat both the bully and the bullied with respect and dignity.
involve parents only as the last option because the school believed (and rightly so) that the students had difficult lives at home. Calling a parent might mean that the child would get beaten up at home. This might mean we are perpetuating the same behaviors we don't want to see in the child.
never expel a student or give a harsh consequence no matter how heinous the crime.
In the absence of a systematic plan or a curriculum for trauma-informed intervention, this meant that each time something unacceptable happened, the school would hear both parties out, lecture the bully, ask him how he would feel if someone did that to him, ask him to write an apology letter, lecture the bystanders in class, cancel an activity for the entire class, and sometimes lecture the bullied about how he must ignore what’s happening and understand that the bully had a difficult life. Then we hoped for the best and waited for the next bullying incident to happen to repeat the same or a similar set of actions.
All the above actions were meant to reform, to create change without bullying the bully. Unfortunately, it didn't work in Agni Prithvi. The students had seen the same sequence of events play out a number of times and knew that they could get away with it. A fake apology letter was not much effort.
Stay tuned to read about what TRD taught me about reform.
