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.

Alienation and Isolation

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Can you keep a straight face?

As, with a fool’s overlarge smile, I proclaim, “I”m proud to be a member of society!” ?

Me neither.

Sometimes, out on the open highway, among fields or in mountain valleys, I have an interpretation: I sense a cluster of cars far ahead of me, a cluster far behind me, and here I am, no cluster, alone in my big bubble. Maybe it’s even true, I don’t know.

What I know is that at work or play, in various parts of society, my default is to see myself in a bubble of one: There’s everybody else, and then there’s me, different. And I know this default interpretation of mine is wrong. To reduce this concept to simple high school terms: Even the most popular cheerleader or confident student council member would nevertheless, on occasion be binary: “There’s all the other students, and there’s me, different.”

I only clued in when I was in high school myself, in tenth grade. That’s when my English teacher, Mr. Wong, one the very few teachers I still remember, had a semester long theme: Alienation and Isolation. Words that apply to not just hermits, but to all of us. I finished his class knowing that for years to come my temptation to lapse into my default of “Alienation and Isolation,” would remain, always and forever. All I can do is make such lapses fewer and fewer, by using my intellect and fierce self discipline: I will tell myself, “Don’t be silly,” as often as necessary.

Because Alienation and Isolation are a natural universal things, it is easy to write poems and popular songs around them, and these we took in Mr. Wong’s class. As for songs, Sounds of Silence was one. I am a rock was another. Both are by Simon and Garfunckle. Average people who never abuse alcohol could relate to Johnny Cash as the alcoholic singing Sunday Morning Coming Down. As for poems, from Mr. Wong we took a poem about being in fog, another about a boy amongst conformity who committed suicide, and another about a citizen with a number for a name, which ended, 

“Was he happy?

The question is absurd.

Had anything been wrong,

we most certainly would have heard.”

What we can never hear is the sound of folks collapsing into their default.

For me, the default seems to click in when I am Hungry, “Angsty,” Lonely or Tired. HALT. Self-discipline helps, as does a sense of humor. I suppose typical student angst (unfocused fear of the state of the world) is first cousin to Alienation. As it happens, the “A” in HALT commonly stands for Angry. (HALT can be a warning signal for misuse of gambling, a substance or sex)

How silly I was as I first arrived, alone in Calgary, when I viewed the glass elevators and futuristic elevated glass tunnels as being only for “those real Calgarians,” not me, as I humbly stayed down on the sidewalk. I think if I was a “new Canadian,” then it would be easy to see the community as {(real immigrants + real natives) and little old me.}

That sort of thinking would be both normal and silly. Better to do whatever it takes: Play music, read poems, volunteer with high school students, anything, rather than be so mistaken.

Sean Crawford

Spring

2019

Footnotes:

~The Calgary tunnels, like so many gerbil tubes, are to beat the cold. Called the “plus 15” (elevation) system. In Edmonton they have the “pedway.” In Houston, someone told me, they put their tunnels underground to beat their fierce heat.

~I’m thinking today of “social isolates”: Surely they are conflicted between wanting community and wanting to be alone. Here is a passage about the hero in Lee Child’s mystery-thriller The Hard Way, page 2:

QUOTE

 That put him against the cafe’s outside wall and left him looking east, across the sidewalk and the width of the avenue. He liked to sit outside in the summer, in New York City. Especially at night. He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noisy traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.

UNQUOTE 

~Here’s a link to a warm fuzzy story behind that unhappy Sunday sidewalk song.

~Here’s a link to a fan video for the song I Am a Rock on Youtube.

~Here’s a link to a nice post, inviting the reader to feel “yes” and a sense of community, from February 2019 about how writing on her blog would “hold memories” and “change perception of time” and “extend time.” Well expressed. I couldn’t comment on it myself, because the comment thingy would not take my URL, but you may have better luck.

Update: I FOUND A QUOTE, from the Wall Street Journal bestseller by Cait Flanders, The Year of Less, page 82, regarding the first staff Christmas party she had attended while into sobriety:

QUOTE

I bought a new turquoise dress and a pair of black patent leather heels. This is what twenty-eight-year old women should wear at parties, I thought when I tried the dress on in the store. When I walked into the party, however, I felt like I was the only person pretending to be a grown-up in a room of actual grown-ups. Everyone was drinking and laughing and falling over, and yet looked beautifully put together. I wasn’t drinking and I didn’t feel at all like myself in that outfit. I knew then that I did not fit in here anymore. I spent the majority of the party hanging out in the kitchen with a few friends, looking over their shoulders and feeling jealous about how much fun everyone was having without me.

UNQUOTE

One might tell me she was perfectly correct that year to feel like a minority one, yet the very next year…

QUOTE

…I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being the only sober person in the room, but I was excited to spend time with everyone, especially the core six. I tried to mingle with some of the new members of the team, but it was not my strong suit anymore…

UNQUOTE

My conclusion, dear reader, is that what had changed in the year between the two parties, was not outer reality but her inner attitude at feeling equal and the same… an attitude within everyone’s control.