More Free Fall

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Reader,

Got Free Fall?

It is summer and hot and I’m tired. You know what I mean? And lazy too. So at this point in time it would be easy to post some stuff from our weekly Friday “Free Fall writing” group. Easier than trying to compose a big fresh essay. I was thinking in my head that during the summer no one wants to hear political essays. By “hear” I mean read, of course. I suppose that sometimes a bland and boring blog is truly for the best.

As you may know, our Free Fall writing is where we read aloud after we swiftly do stuff composed off the cuff, off the top of our heads, out of our subconscious, while Susan volunteers as our group timer. Yay Susan! (We should appreciate our volunteers!) She’s my age. Sort of my opposite number, while of the opposite gender, you might say. Married, with grown up boys, one still at home but probably not for long. A good family… Not like how I grew up. Needless to say, I don’t cry or have any self pity, while at the same time, according to folk wisdom, living “a life worth examining” is like circling around an onion and peeling down to yet another layer of knowledge. If the onion makes me cry it is only when I am in motion, such as reading and pronouncing words aloud; not when I am silent at home and can therefore stiffen up my whole body to stiffen away my emotions. I once delivered a eulogy without tears by dint of white knuckling a hard cup. There is a good reason why repressed people don’t go around looking spontaneous, relaxed and free.

Lately, from memories voiced by my brother Liam, memories that I confess I’ve forgotten for a good many years, I’ve been putting another onion layer into my mind and into perspective. I’m ready for a deeper slice around the onion. Maybe my forgetting has been from a vested interest. And no, not to avoid making any excuses for my life being different than my opposite number, although that’s one (very minor) payoff… Mostly, things were too gross to remember. Besides, I guess I wanted to act as if I was like everybody else by putting the past behind me. Below, the writing prompt was correspondence school:

My dear dad could have done correspondence school, or maybe just gone off to trade school. He thought about it. He thought about being a baker, but those were family run operations. He drove for a baker, and for Canadian Linen, but those were not jobs with a pension. He once told his sister, who at Cold Lake was making more than the base commander, “Yes, but will you have a pension like him?”

So he found a life with a pension where he would merely tell strangers that he was a “civil servant.” None of the guards ever had to operate the electric chair, which is a good sign that we shouldn’t have capital punishment. Often dad would say, “I’ll be walking the tower today” which gave him lots of time to be alone with his thoughts. In actuality, of course, he probably just “vegged out.”

Year later, after the Munich massacre, I would have to walk sentry all day, and it was excruciating for me. I wonder now if father liked his peers, as they seldom visited, and dad used to talk to himself a lot. Meaning I don’t think he talked to them. The good news is that he got to leave the service early because he was taken hostage so he said he was all messed up. I don’t think he really was, because years earlier he had taken a knife wound and been OK with that, and hadn’t even told his children but his big bandage showed.

Prompt was shovel:

I like shovels, I like the earthy common touch conjured up by the name. As a boy, I never liked the word spade, because no one I knew ever said that word.

Here’s an old one from the peasant’s rebellion against feudalism in medieval England:

“When Adam delved, 

and Eve span,

Who was then 

the gentleman?”

My scout troop peers noted how I was pretty good with a shovel: crump, kick, lift; crump, kick, lift. On the old farm we shovelled drainage ditches. I’m sure we had a pick around, but except when we were digging bedrock in the east land, we never used the pick. No need, our land was black soil from the glacier.

As an adult I was to dig in God’s own country: “God made it, then forgot it” we said as the land was all rock with a little bit of dirt for decoration. Now I used the pick to do all the digging, the shovel then was a mere afterthought to throw the earth. No wonder people used the phrase “pick and shovel.”

Prompt was a catch in the throat:

Lately, my body has been less restricted, more free, and with more opportunities to have a catch in the throat. Not something easy for characters in fiction, not something common on the idiot box for time wasting shows down from vaudeville and radio plays. But there you are.

I’ve always known, without knowing why, that the last three kids in my family didn’t have the sense of humour of the first three kids; the first ones could laugh, the later ones were mannikins. Last night I was writing a letter to a brother who named labels. Our mother was like someone out of woman’s liberation where a super-violent person would be totally sane in public or around police officers. It was not healthy to laugh around her. That is all.

Prompt was campfire:

I’ve been thinking lately of my campfire days. Mother would always scream at me on days I came back from camp, on Sundays I mean, because she was angry that I got some time of happiness. It was stressful packing on Friday, but gradually I got used to it. I remember I would always find some cardboard and twine and punch holes and make an axe guard. Often I would file the axe sharper the night before.

Part of my stress was being criticized for what I packed: Call it “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Once I defended myself in advance for packing dry wood, on a rainy weekend, and it turns out I got laughed at for defending myself for of course, ha-ha, they would pack wood too. One weekend we attended a district jamboree; my troop won. Result? We still got criticized for being not as good as troops from a decade ago. My family was curiously detached from time, giving no credit to the modern decades, as well as no credit to me for being a patrol leader and troop leader. If only I knew then what I know now.

A campfire was my chance to mingle closely with the kids who were otherwise so far away. Once we drove past an Indian reservation on our way to camp. Boys were playing hockey with home made sticks. “Wow” said the rich Scouts. ‘Nothing’ was what I said, nothing about having such sticks at home. My brothers and I also made our own bows and arrows, staining the bows with salmon berries and leaving them for a season to cure.

Prompt was family circle:

My brother recently reminded me of my mother’s frequent rampages, where you could hear her from the mushroom sheds a hundred yards away. Strange how he has been my memory for this. I had remembered my mother burning my toys, but not this. I had remembered violence from others, but not this. My mother stopped hitting us after a mother down the road killed her three kids with an axe, and after Liam stopped her. So she started using words that probably did greater long term damage. Strange. I had nightmares after I left home about physical things, but not the mental. I was so pleased one day to realize the nightmares had stopped which meant, I was sure, that I was getting more confident.

The whole family circle had trouble. My dad walked my cousin down the aisle for marriage because her father was too drunk that day. I know now that people use medication when they are not willing to feel. Maybe I am the only sibling to have escaped such escapes. Lucky and determined, that’s why. Lucky.

Sean Crawford

August

Calgary

2019

Footnote: Speaking of spades, if you are a native English speaker you may appreciate this one: I believe it was writer Philip Jose Farmer who had a scene near the Mississippi where an army general says, “Have your man take his shovel and dig here…” A young Lieutenant speaks truth to power, “Uh, Sir, that’s an “entrenching tool.”” The older man replies, “I’m a general; I can call a shovel a shovel.”

Afterthoughts of Fear and Martians

essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Headnote: This was to run last week, but was held back for breaking diplomatic news 

Hello Reader,

As for last week’s piece on Fear and War of the Worlds,

Got afterthoughts?

Afterthoughts

Poem

Afterthoughts

I suppose a home without love, but with “gaslighting” and a harsh hovering threat of criticism, would subject one’s brain to a “Fog,” just as Julie Metz labels Part One of her book Perfection. Key quote:

 (page 339) “(My new relationship) is nothing like my marriage with Henry. What we strive for is the kind and loving embrace that allows each of us to feel cherished, think clearly, and possibly make some decent choices.”

I can relate. For years I despaired that I must be magically more stupid than other people, not realizing I was in a brain-fog, within a harsh family of liars. 

Another quote I can relate to comes from after Julie becomes a widow, grappling with the horror of discovering her husband’s secret life, her brain in a tempest:

(page 231) “Now I understood why the single mothers I’d been hanging around with couldn’t get through school, find satisfying jobs, or carve out time for their private pursuits. We were all just trying to get through the day.”

Lest we forget: When a future president, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, had his PT boat sunk by the Japanese in the dark, with sailors killed in action, after the motor fuel had created a fireball… he then had to swim all night, towing a man by holding a rope in his teeth, but luckily they found a desert island. Years later, in the White House, he would never let himself be photographed with his crutches—back pain from that night followed him all his life. 

(I think I’ve seen only one photo of President Kennedy with crutches, just as I’ve seen but one photo of President Roosevelt in his wheelchair) 

Poem

This poem takes place after the Martians are safely gone for good—praise the Lord—but the memory remains.

The Farm Abides

The farm was always here,

with perennial grass and chickens.

The Martians are gone, 

the farm abides.

I am standing in the farthest corner of the field.

I see a wide round puddle 

that shows the passing of a Tripod.

I remember that night lying in bed

wearing two pairs of sweat pants, 

a shirt, a sweater under a sweat top,

beneath good wool blankets,

freezing with fear, sleepless,

as the Martians advanced in the dark.

Tonight I will feel cozy with only two blankets.

I remember so often clicking my eyes open,

before I was even fully awake,

feeling dread.

Today is so good as I have warm hands,

dry feet, and a happy stomach.

Best of all, I can stand exposed in the wide open

by a broad puddle,

gazing carelessly at the horizon.

But I can’t kill chickens anymore.

Sean Crawford

July

Calgary

2019

Bullying Still

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Sometimes a “bullying solution” is 

not found with “the total school” or “the students” but firstly with “the teachers.” Just the teachers.

Hello Reader,

Got bullying? Still?

Sorry, I know I’m being angry here when I start speaking with words in italics, or in this case, writing with italics, but hey, I’m not apologizing.

In February I reported on bullying in Ontario, where the teachers were in denial. From May 4th, here is (link) a case where a girl’s teacher allowed her to sit in class with orange juice having been thrown on her face, the same girl who had received an award from the prime minister. The girl, Nadia Sparkes, 13, is a hero, except to losers who believe in excruciating conformity. Easier for them to crucify a peer than to look within and face their own discomfort. I had read about Nadia before; I never thought she would have to change to a school eleven miles (17.7 kilometres) away. Because of bullying.

Denial is easy: Regarding my last bullying essay to expose teachers and propose a remedy beyond merely “trying harder,” (link to February essay on Bullies and Teachers) you could smugly say, “Ontario is a b-a-a-a-d province, not like ours.” Oh sure, in fact, on a road trip in a province west of Ontario, I found a newspaper letter by a retired teacher who that said that in her school bullying was dealt with; in her school teachers would report bullying… Doubtful! I hate to burst your bubble Ma’am, but we even had to pass a law to legally FORCE teachers to report child abuse. 

To my knowledge there is no law forcing teachers to report a child sitting through class with orange juice sticking to her. The article adds that a bully who pulled a knife on Nadia “is getting support.” That’s nice, but Nadia is not. In the article there is nothing included about support for Nadia while other children continued to bully her. I strongly suspect she did not get any support at all, right up until she changed schools. Not if her teachers were like the ones in Ontario, and in Alberta, and in your province too.

As for Alberta, the letter I found was from a teacher here. Easy to deny and say,  “Our province is better than Ontario,” but… in March an innocent nine-year-old, here in Calgary, ended her bullying… by ending her own life… The parents had gone to the teacher four times. As it turned out, it was the teacher who sparked the bullying by being, er, “non-nurturing,” one day in class.

—Update, Mary 6: Today CBC Radio reported another family at the same school saying the school is “in denial” about bullying, saying they have given up and taken their girls out.

Now here I am at my keyboard feeling crazy enough to have put words in italics, which my English teacher says I’m not supposed to do. And feeling crazy to say we have to start with the teachers, NOT with the children, by making a concerted long-term effort. (which I essayed about in detail in February) I feel a teeny-tiny bit humiliated, right this second, from knowing, as I type this, that teachers will diplomatically say I’m impractical, or will use that age-old teenager’s slogan, “You just don’t understand!” My reply, after taking a breath… so I don’t use italics… 

“Is that so? Tell me, how are your other methods working out for you?”

Sean Crawford

Calgary,

Hoping a grief-crazed father 

doesn’t try to prevent innocent children suffering another Columbine massacre, 

By going after the guilty teachers in their staffroom at lunchtime,

with a gun, 

that shoots paintballs,

May,

2019 A.D.

Footnotes:

~Sometimes when teachers are supported then they can feel safe in dropping their denial. 

~It was a man from the provincial legislature, Brian Lee, who created the company that leads agencies and hospitals into being world-class, as I mentioned in my Bullies and Teachers essay. His company is called Custom Learning Systems Group Ltd.

~Supporting our dear teachers to effectively have a “non-bullying culture” could then result in less bullying in the adult world. Which could then help our economy. (if only from having less turbulence in the business world from bullying) To explain:

Today, May 4th, (for white coat, black arts)

 the CBC aired a documentary on how a taxpayer-funded hospital paid seven lawyers for a span of ten years to try to uphold bullying. But in the end the hospital was found to have “bad faith” by a jury and was therefore ordered to pay a bullied innocent doctor over a million dollars. What if future doctors, back in high school, had seen that everyone should have dignity? Had seen, with their own eyes, that bullies would not succeed? The taxpayers could have been saved millions of dollars.     

SIDEBAR, May 4th, after British council elections, 

On British adults being Bullies in Parliament.

Is it OK to have initiative? 

When I chair the weekly Friday Fee Fall, if volunteers are learning to put healthy expectations on themselves for their role as participants in a meeting, (and doing so much better than folks in the working world who “hate meetings”) 

then I don’t mind at all if they intervene to help things move along.

At work, if some staff are standing by a fence line, I am confident my manager wouldn’t mind if I started picking up litter blown against the fence, or sparked others to join me in doing so.

So yes, initiative is fine. 

But right now, certain Members of Parliament, while having zero initiative themselves, are saying Prime Minister Teresa May should step down, so that “someone else” could talk and lead, amongst the members of parliament from various parties, in order to deliver Brexit. Well.

This begs me to ask the question: Why isn’t the “someone,” who could be anyone, such as the conservative party’s Boris Johnson, already showing initiative? Perhaps by talking to other MPs; perhaps through joining Mrs. May in talking to the labour party’s leaders; or through keeping an eye on the ball by taking initiative, every day, to mingle with all the rest of parliament to spark new, improved ideas for Brexit. Instead, I have read about MPs claiming “new ideas” could appear “if only” there was another extension to the Brexit date, or if only Mrs May would quit parliament. From MP’s, such talk is fantasy. From teenagers saying “if only” I sense victim-talking. Better to replace “if only” with “next time…”

Those idle MPs who publicly want Mrs. May to take her eye off the ball by resigning are the same slackers who seem unwilling to be part of the solution. Mrs. May is too busy to reply or call them names. Not me: I call them bullies.


Update: The prime minister of Ireland is not impressed either. For June 11, 2019:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48602072 Also he said:

"What people are saying is, 'give up the backstop' which we know will work legally and operationally in return for something that doesn't yet exist but might exist in the future. 

"I can't do that to the border communities."

Mr Varadkar also said he was "concerned at the idea, and there is an idea there in Westminster, in London, that somehow Theresa May was a bad negotiator and got a bad deal. 

"That's not true. She was a good negotiator, she had a good team.

"She probably got the best deal that she could get given that a country leaving the EU doesn't have much leverage. 

"The fact that the failure of the House Of Commons to ratify the Withdrawal Agreement somehow means they are going to get a better deal, that is just not how the European Union works," he said.

Epi-notes:

~For more on MP’s being silly see my essay on Statesman Mrs. Teresa May, archived March 2019, and Billy Bragg and Brexit, archived January 2019.

~Drat! Fooey! Rats! That idiot investor, Warren Buffet, has said he would invest in Britain despite Brexit. And people respect him just because he’s a billionaire. That and his track record. So today the pound sterling has soared in strength against my poor scanty dollars.

~OK, I admit I was angry today: I was “s’posed to” follow up on last week’s essay on Alienation and Isolation. Well. So click in next week for Human warmth and The War of the Worlds.

My Father and War of the Worlds

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got Father?

Years ago, browsing in the community college library, I learned of a magazine, one specifically for men rather than being unisex, that allowed one amateur article per issue. Of the amateur submissions, half were about a man’s father. For many, dear old Dad is something to reflect and write about, something important.

So when I made a manuscript of poems around the topic of Martian invasion, of course my father would figure in there somewhere.

In this poem the danger is still far off. I suppose this symbolizes, in the actual world, my father being at last beyond the slings and arrows of worldly troubles.

Father, Using Wheelchair

My father, 

in his wheelchair,

resides beyond reach of the Martian advance.

He never

reads the paper,

or hears about Martians destroying the land.

Father strode as Cub-leader, Scoutmaster and Cadet Corps officer.

He knew a lot,

about the world.

Of course,

once I wished he knew more about my world,

and my life.

Father thinks: 

My brother

is sleeping in the next hospital bed.

My father, 

has my love,

beyond reach of my doings and dreams.

When parents become more loving in the later years it is not because “they are faking it” but because their lives are easier as burdens fall away. Children gone, job gone, house smaller, expectations more realistic… I try to judge them by the present, not by what they said or believed back beyond the statute of limitations.

My Three Dads

My dark haired dad

is permanently mad at me.

The wood stove glows red through the cracks.

Dad nicely holds the blast door shut

until I make another mistake.

My grizzled dad,

one day when I visit,

before I have learned to bring a pocketful of stir sticks,

gets real mad when I waste a spoon

stirring my instant coffee.

I act natural,

and soon take a walk.

Hours later,

I tell him I am mad at him being mad.

Mother answers he’s not mad,

he’s just impatient.

My white haired dad smiles

and says, “Sure you can.”

He believes what I say,

and he believes in me.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

February

2019

Footnote: 

~Speaking of families, a recent Cannes Film Festival winner that may have already left your town (since it has subtitles) is Shoplifters, starring some of Japan’s best actors. They rescue/kidnap an abused girl; later the new “mother” says something like, “We have to raise her to have concern for others, or else she will end up like us.” 

The girl’s real parents don’t even report her as missing… Of course with the her love and fear of her real mother, the little girl says about her bruises, “I fell.” When all is said and done, which mother would you think she chooses?

~For your slowww blue days, here’s a (link) music video, by Winnipeg’s Crash Test Dummies, that did not make the top ten on the charts in Canada. Wth a “resigned refrain,” it’s about isolated children; at least the children smile big and bow at the end. The song is Mmm mmm mmm mmm. (They are the band who did the mournful Superman's Song)

Bullies and Teachers

 essaysbysean.blogspot.com 

Hello Reader,

Got bullies?

Got criminally stupid teachers?

…Dear reader, as you are scrolling the testimony of children, before you angrily throw your tablet across the room, rest assured I offer a new constructive idea that teachers have NOT tried…

“What do you have to lose by trying something new…? What the hell do you have to lose?”

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, 2016 in Michigan.

A testimonial from the book below, page 106: 

“… The bullying went on all through school. Even some of the teachers would bully me. But in grade eight, one teacher recognized how bad things were. She even hid me in her classroom so I could escape from the kids who were attacking me…

…Mom practically lived at the school, in the principal’s office. Eventually the school apologized to us for something, but an apology doesn’t mean very much. What about handing out real punishments to the kids who bully?…

Because of all these attacks, my old injuries from other bullying never healed properly. My arm is still messed up so bad. I can’t play my guitar or my violin. I wear a brace on my back. I get terrible headaches from the neck injuries. Even now, since leaving school, I’m sick probably once a week from the stress.”

Katie, age 16

Before me is an excellent Canadian book We Want You to Know subtitled Kids Talk About Bullying. First person stories, usually with a photo, each followed by a short question list of What do you think? The book is divided into sections to allow easier digestion of the material.—but the reading is bad for physical digestion: I found myself gritting my teeth at the stupid teachers.

The writer is Deborah Ellis, an internationally acclaimed author who has won many awards, including the Governor General’s Award.

As a library denizen, I had merely flipped through random pages—and was shocked. Both as a blogger and as a citizen, I knew I would have to return to the library and do a statistical analysis. So I did, although my survey is more rough than proper. 

Some tallies:

Teacher (and principal) was useless: 9 

Teacher tried, but wasn’t effective: 3

Teacher didn’t believe a victim, even a victim with a black eye: 4

This count includes a story where teachers would NOT disbelieve a bully’s rumour that a student had AIDS, even though they called the student into the office twice to ask, and even though the student (straight and clean) resorted to being tested.

I should have tallied “teacher blamed the victim” because that actually happened several times.

At last, some good news, Teacher succeeded: 2 

That’s right, the bullying was stopped a grand total of twice.

Teacher in denial or would not “see”: at least 8

Deny, deny, deny there is any Denial 

It’s this last tally that has me curling my lip in contempt. Call me an idealist, but I think every teacher is responsible for attaining a minimal standard of mental strength and morality. (Yes, I know teachers often need stress leave) 

William Blake wrote:

 … I shall not cease

From mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep

In my hand…

(Jerusalem)

Here’s some quotes on teachers and principals “in denial”:

(page 83) The whole time this was happening, a teacher was close by, watching the whole thing….So when Mom got out of me what had happened and saw the damage done to my back, she called the teacher up. The teacher said she thought we were all just fooling around. A group of kids, all of them twice as big as me, surrounding me, and I’m yelling and trying to get away—and she thought I was having fun? She just didn’t want to deal with it.

…One time, the principal called me into her office and made me go over every detail. She questioned me as though I was lying, as though she was a cop trying to get me to confess something.

Nothing happened to the kids who attacked me. Maybe she talked to them, but that’s it. They bullied me worse afterward.” 

From another student, (page 86) “One day in math class some guys behind me were calling me names. I could tell that the teacher heard it, but he didn’t do anything, so I grabbed my math book and threw it at the kid’s head… I was made to apologize…That’s when it really took off. This guy got all his friends to make fun of me and throw things… I told many teachers this was going on. I failed most of my classes because I never went. I’d go to school and read and look at magazines and wait for the day to end…

None of those teachers would walk into a workplace day after day, month after month, with people calling them names and throwing things at them. But they’d tell me again and again, “Oh, just ignore it…”

My mom wanted me to switch schools, instead of doing correspondence, and I’d like to go to a school and have friends, but I just can’t be around people anymore.”

(page 63) “…but they don’t step in. They’ll see this and that happening, but they won’t stop it.”

Another student’s story, (page 65): “Sometimes I’d tell the teachers. The teachers barely do anything. I’d get pushed right beside the teacher, and the teacher would quickly turn and look the other way.”

(page 99) “I have a mild form of cerebral palsy… Except for in Mrs. Gillespie’s class, kids would attack each other right in front of the teacher, and the teacher would pretend not to notice. If you don’t see, you don’t have to do anything, right? I remember being in class one day, kids throwing things at me and hitting me—So I just walked out.

Some of the stuff that happens in really dumb and unnecessary. When I got to high school, I was assigned a locker right in between the two boys that bullied me the most in grade school. What are the chances? It took a lot of phone calls from my parents to get that changed.”

This is not in a “big bad city.” Deborah Ellis: 

“All the kids interviewed in this book come from my little corner of Southern Ontario. This is a lovely part of a lovely country, and if bullying is happening here, then it’s happening everywhere.” 

My lip is getting sore from curling. Sometimes the teachers can be quite creative with their denial: 

(page 58) “My mom and dad went to the school a few times to talk to the vice principal and the principal. They were sort of supportive, but they never called it bullying. They have a zero tolerance for bullying, but it happens. And when it happens, they don’t call it bullying so they can say that bullying doesn’t happen.”

From the Beginning

To paraphrase the Buddha: “When a society is ready, the knowledge that something exists will appear.” Perhaps we weren’t quite ready yet when two Columbine high school students massacred their tormentors. But suddenly, perhaps grudgingly at first, all across the continent we admitted bullying could happen, and have consequences. In the US, a few isolated voices even called for a “war on bullying.” Good thing the US didn’t go so far as to declare war, as it would have been one more chance for the US people to be losers… 

(I am old enough to remember when failure was not an option once Americans declared war)

… Perhaps we still aren’t ready, even after years of anti-bullying efforts, since the book before me has to explicitly state, “Bullying is not inevitable. It doesn’t have to be a normal part of childhood… We can find ways to support each other, learn from each other, and create…”

Since my day, according to reports by kids in the book, there are now anti-bullying assemblies, sometime complete with skits. I doubt they are any more effective than those assemblies in my day that pleaded with us to intervene if we saw someone vandalizing. 

(Incidentally, at my school, vandalism included the main girls “smokers” washroom having every steel stall door ripped away) 

Of course we all thought our teachers were crazy to suggest we intervene. Today the assemblies are probably as useless as ever: Obviously they didn’t help any of the kids testifying.

I wonder how many boys and girls, bullied and sexually assaulted, end up losing their innocence … growing up to be well groomed, well employed, socially skilled adults moving among us, adults who are social isolates because they have lost something along the way… A kid above says, “I just can’t be around people anymore.”

From Hopeless to Hope

I remember a feature documentary on bullying I saw at a repertory cinema (the Garneau) in Edmonton where afterwards teens came out on stage to talk to their peers, not to us grownups, as they had little hope in us. What struck me from the movie, besides a teacher “trying” but being useless, was how the teachers were so ignorant. At the time I didn’t think to say, “in denial,” I merely would have said that, statistically, one or more teachers in the school would have been a victim of bullies in childhood, but somehow nobody was about to tell the other staff. Hence no experienced teachers shown on camera, and hence the “trying.”

“Physician, heal thyself.” Before teachers mind-read bullies to excuse them, and ignore victims, they need enough integrity to do some prolonged work teacher-to-teacher… After all, an effective army always trains the leaders before training the rank and file. And more: At leadership school the army has the trainees go through the same group punishment that they might have to later inflict on their troops. Like an officer returning every salute. It’s an integrity thing. Like teachers having integrity to surmount their denial before preaching to students.  

Integrity, for example, means when the provincial government was starting to do unbelievably degrading home inspections on people with disabilities, (Word of mouth in the disabled community quickly spread) I said to the government: The inspectors should first have their own homes equally inspected—by government strangers, not by their known government colleagues.

Blake:

…I shall not cease

From mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep

In my hand

‘till we have built

Jerusalem…

(the key word, for teachers, is “we”)

An “Outside the Box” Idea

Obviously at schools there would be lots of “concurrent” anti-bully activity, but nevertheless I suggest that figuratively “before” the teachers do assemblies and wall posters they engage in a full year of meetings, separate from the students, to “support and learn from each other, and create…” 

Hint: to build trust, teachers should be advised they need not self-disclose having survived bullying… but such honest sharing may spring out naturally after, say, at least six months, when support has given each teacher the emotional energy to NOT have the denial portrayed in a Bob Dylan song, “How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn’t see.” 

My belief is that teachers should be taking anti-bully action in halls and playgrounds, of course, but not through their sheer willpower, not like the Foreign Legion through gritted teeth saying, “March or die” but instead by being inner motivated like the tough Green Berets who emerge from the jungle to gladly give kids candy. 

I believe that, despite the testimonies about integrity-challenged teachers in the book, one day all teachers could be acting with the sort of inner professionalism that manifests after an entire faculty comes to be first willing to do the right thing, and then determined to do the right thing, knowing that fellow teachers are alongside, forming the bonds that lift the spirit. And yes, I think this just may take a full year or more if done properly, using research that is decades old. (But still not widely applied)

This could result in teachers manifesting better tools to talk to children—Hey, why aren’t teachers being convincing, in terms even disfigured, awkward children could understand, that bullying isn’t their fault? (Like the tool of three-C’s we teach teens about their parent’s alcoholism: You didn’t Cause it, you can’t Cure it, you can’t Control it… and… As with drinking, here is no reason to insist the victim “have to” figure the bully out: A bully bullies because he bullies) 

Without tools, the hapless child may be like the army hero in David Gerrold’s Chtorr Wars: The hero is an adult before he realizes that, back in high school, a bully who shook his self esteem with an accusing story-description, was in fact using a description from a TV comedy routine. Let’s not go into denial by claiming the kids already know all the educational fables and tools. Gerrold’s hero didn’t. There are new babies being born every year who don’t already know every concept, not in terms they can relate to and then internalize.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success  

Note on teacher and peer training: 

My disabilities agency once brought in a world-class training organization called Custom Learning Systems Group Ltd. 

(created by a former MLA, or, Member of the Legislative Assembly, Brian Lee)

to have six local agencies cooperate in training to become“world-class,” training that first trained the peer trainers, (I was one) and would require three years of agency-wide small support meetings and periodic train-the-trainers training, at a proper pace and sustained momentum and hear-things-six-times peer support… —but the provincial government shut us down by “changing their minds” about funding.

This same training is used in big for-profit hospitals in the US where hospital accountants can see that ca-ching! turnover is reduced; ca-ching! absenteeism is reduced; ca-ching! training time is therefore reduced; ca-ching! quality goes up and profits are increased.

A possible objection: What if the principals and teachers are too extended (stressed, beaten down) to try anything new? Is teacher training to stop bullies hopeless?

Answers: Secondly, what Yoda said: “There is no “try,” either do or do not.” 

Firstly… Consider a “hopeless” big far flung aluminum corporation that was “doomed” to have labour strife, rising costs and loss of marketshare. The brand new CEO appeared at the stockholders meeting. To their surprise, he did not mouth the usual expected platitudes. Instead he announced, and meant, a “focus on safety.” Shareholders and executives alike were mystified at the CEO for his “sideways” effort. It would be a lengthy effort, one that included firing big senior executives who allowed accidents.

Similarly, it might seem downright mystical to help the bullies and victims, “sideways,” through helping teachers first but that is indeed what I am proposing.

The CEO’s strange safety metric somehow helped the metrics for stress, turnover, absenteeism, costs and more. Labour and management, who had been deeply suspicious, came together, and market share increased. 

Similarly, I would hope that a lengthy effort focused on teachers, for their anti-bullying and anti-denial, would result in bonds that uplift, with an increase in the school equivalent of market share, whether that be learning, reputation, funding or happiness.

God save the queen.

Sean Crawford

North of Montana

February

2019

Footnotes:

~Here is Blake’s poem, as simple as singing in a church basement, by Billy Bragg

~Not being qualified to train teachers myself, I could at most serve on an advisory board with teachers who are “on the ground.” 

~For suggesting resources for group development and teacher training, I am out of date, sorry, but I can recommend the excellent textbook my college mentor (see January 2019 essay) used: Dynamics of Groups at Work, by Herbert Thelen, University of Chicago Press, 1954, 374 pages, based on empirical research going back to the 1940’s. Q: How excellent? A: I absolutely refuse to loan my copy.

Related essays:

~Saving Tomorrow Land (with bully footnotes) is archived August 2015.

~An essay on moral development, and me at my school where even athletes (jocks) feared to tread is Ex-Convict Bill Sands and Me archived August 2013.

~Did you grow up with the new math? Well, in my province they want to bring in a “new, new math” but of course I’m only John Q. Public: Who am I to snarl Stupid New Math archived March 2014.