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The answer to bullies
By PAT MORGAN
Cox News Service
Thursday, April 20, 2006
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — In this post-Columbine, zero-tolerance world, Izzy Kalman is something of a revolutionary. He agrees that bullying is a big problem. But he contends that getting rid of bullies is not the solution (and, in fact, is not even possible). What we have to do, he says, is get rid of victims.
"People have a knee-jerk reaction when they hear that," said Kalman over lunch last month, while he was in West Palm Beach leading a seminar for school counselors and other mental health professionals. "They say I'm blaming the victims. I'm not blaming the victims, but I am saying that they are the ones who have the problem. Bullies don't have the problem. They aren't the ones committing suicide and shooting up schools. Those are the victims, and those are the ones whose behavior we need to change."
Kalman, who spent 26 years as a school psychologist and private psychotherapist, wants to make something clear. He is not saying bullying is good. He's saying it's inevitable, a natural byproduct of human nature. He's also saying that, to the extent it helps teach kids resilience and self-sufficiency, it's useful. And he's saying that, unless it causes physical harm, it's also legal, protected under the Constitution.
"Our Constitution guarantees the right to free speech," he says. "And that means the right to tell someone they are a big, fat idiot if we want to. Kids today are growing up with the idea that nobody can ever say anything mean to them. We are raising a generation of emotional marshmallows. We're promoting learned helplessness. And I am really concerned that when these kids grow up, they are going to be unable to handle adversity of any kind, because we learn to handle adversity from dealing with the fairly simple difficulties of childhood."
Like being called a big, fat idiot by the class bully.
It's all about power
It has been seven years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School near Denver. The two teenagers, reportedly longtime targets for bullies, killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before committing suicide.
Bullying hasn't stopped with the anti-bullying policies enacted by many schools after Columbine, says Kalman. And it never will stop, he says, until the victims — one by one — stop it.
Guns won't do it, says Kalman. And neither will a zero-tolerance policy.
Kalman points to the work of Canadian psychologist David Smith, whose research (published in the December 2004 issue of School Psychology Review) found that 57 percent of anti-bullying policies had no measurable benefit, 14 percent yielded mild improvement and 29 percent actually made the problem worse.
"You can't teach tolerance with a zero-tolerance policy," Kalman says. "It's no big deal to be tolerant of people who are nice to you. The challenge is to tolerate people who aren't so nice. On top of that, 'zero tolerance for aggression' is a logical absurdity, because it ultimately requires that we use aggression to stop it."
The way to end bullying is really simple, says Kalman. Remove its power.
"The truth is, we all want power. That's human nature. But many of us don't want to admit it," Kalman says. "We go after the bullies because they are open about it. When you can get someone to make a fool of himself — yelling and getting all red-faced and maybe even crying — simply by calling him a name over and over again, that's power.
"And in honesty, it's also fun. It's entertaining to watch other people make fools of themselves. That's why we watch those home-video shows and those reality shows on TV. What do we laugh hardest at? People falling off things, losing control or making a complete idiot of themselves in some way. They could be seriously hurt, and we're laughing our heads off."
Even identifying a true bully can be difficult, he says, because a child may act like a bully in one setting and a victim in another. It all depends on the balance of power.
"Who among us can guarantee that their own child will never be mean?" Kalman asks.
Once again, mother knows best
Kalman's seminars — as well as his book, CD and Web site — are filled with sample scenarios in which he often has seminar participants play the bully to his victim (a practice he highly recommends for educators, counselors and parents, pointing out how much kids love it when adults are willing to look foolish). His delivery is as much stand-up comedian as it is psychology professional. And his tenets, he freely admits, are hardly original — or even modern. They are based on ancient wisdom revealed to us by Mother Nature, our Founding Fathers and various philosophers throughout the ages.
Like my mother. And probably yours.
As I sat through Kalman's entertaining presentation, I found myself agreeing with his premise while still questioning the effectiveness of some of his suggestions, especially for young children whose self-confidence may be shaky. It's pretty hard for most adults I know to ignore rude or mean behavior, and expecting a 7-year-old to be able to "not care" when someone is saying horrible things to her — or more likely, excluding her, which is a favored bullying tactic of girls — is a tall order. Still, I had to admit it's a lesson worth trying to teach.
Kalman's answer to such concerns: "I don't think we give kids enough credit. You'd be surprised how well even young kids understand this. If they are being bullied, they really want to find a way to make it stop, and they probably know from experience that fighting back or getting angry or telling on the bullies hasn't worked. When they try this and it works, they are thrilled. After that, it's easy for them."
I also found myself thinking the room should be filled with parents rather than educators and therapists (Kalman does sometimes speak to parent groups). As several of the educators at his seminar pointed out, schools literally cannot afford to ignore bullying, even in its milder forms, for fear of being held legally liable if a child is harmed on the school premises. But if parents can help their kids learn to ignore certain types of bullying, it may prevent it from escalating or becoming chronic.
But mostly, I found myself repeatedly recalling the advice my mother always offered when I'd complain about being mercilessly teased by any of my eight older siblings.
"He only teases you because you get upset," she'd say patiently, time after time. "Stop getting upset, and he'll stop teasing you."
That's as succinct a description of Kalman's techniques as I could ever think up.
My mother never finished high school. But, as the highly educated Kalman rather gleefully notes, his method is not the product of psychological theory, scientific research or academic rumination.
It is, quite simply, "about experience and common sense." Both of which my mom has in spades.
It's a funny thing about parents: The longer you live, the smarter they get.
Pat Morgan writes for The Palm Beach Post.
