Tormenting at Hellgate Middle School
When Bullies Win at School, Who’s to Blame?
It's not okay to dismiss bullying by saying "children are cruel." And losing the fight against it can be tragic.By Amy Linn, 10-26-09
Bullies are everywhere—that’s no surprise to anyone who’s ever been a kid. Bullying is a leading problem in the nation’s schools, hurting grades, lowering attendance levels, and wreaking emotional havoc that reverberates for a lifetime. At its extreme edge, bullying can end in violence or suicide. The common victims are people with disabilities, who are disproportionately targeted for violence across all age levels in this country.
Those are just a few of the serious and sad truths behind an extraordinarily sad and important story yesterday by Missoulian reporter Michael Moore.
Moore wrote about Pat Fuglei, an eighth grade boy with autism who was so tormented and humiliated by fellow students at Hellgate Middle School that his parents removed him from school several weeks ago and will send him to a private school in Arizona. Fuglei was mocked, mimicked, called “retard,” and sexually taunted, Moore reported. In the wake of this ugliness, it’s easy to feel outrage and blame the obvious target: the school. How could Hellgate allow a student to be so violated? How could teachers or administrators not know that Fuglei was being victimized? Why didn’t someone do something about it?
The answers, a local expert says, aren’t as simple as they might seem. Yes, schools need to do everything they can to prevent bullying, starting in preschool. Administrators need to give teachers the training and tools they need to identify bullies, respond to them, and create safe and respectful environments for learning, said Matt Taylor, associate director of the University of Montana’s Institute for Educational Research and Service, which includes the Montana Safe Schools Center (MSSC).
Parents also have to model respectful behavior at home. And students have to buy in, too.
“Students have to take responsibility for the school culture that they create themselves,” Taylor said. “We have to have students stand up and take responsibility for the safety of their school, as well.”
Students already know that bullying is huge problem—they’re living with it. According to a statewide annual survey conducted by the MSSC, “bullying consistently ranks as the number one self-reported safety concern among Montana’s middle and high school students.”
The only entity that’s in the dark about this, apparently, is the state. Montana (why are we not surprised?) is one of just 10 states in the nation without an anti-bullying law on the books.
In the meantime:
-- The U.S. Department of Education cites victimization from bullying as one of the few common traits among students who open fire on classmates in deadly school shootings.
-- Bullying can predispose students to attempt suicide. “This is of particular concern in states like Montana where suicide rates are exceptionally high,” the MSSC says. “Suicide is the leading cause of preventable death for Montana children between ages 10-14; 12 percent of Montana’s middle school students and 10 percent of high schools students report having recently attempted suicide,” the MSSC reports.
-- Nonprofits like the MSSC can train teachers and give technical assistance to help schools boost safety and reduce bullying and suicide. And although these programs cost a bit of money, they’re not as costly as high teacher turnover rates, bad grades, poor attendance and lawsuits, all of which can occur when bullying takes place.
-- Pat Fuglei had every right to be at Hellgate Middle School, including a legal one. Public schools are required to provide safe and accommodating learning experiences for disabled students under the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which demands that children with disabilities be placed in the “least restrictive environment appropriate.”
-- Bullies need help: they’re often the victims of abuse themselves.
So what can be done, right now? The Hellgate School District has a disciplinary policy for students who bully, haze or use physical violence against other students. But no matter how good a policy is on paper, it can’t be perfect. It can’t prevent bullying in a bathroom, at a bus stop, or in any place where teachers are out of earshot. “There is no single system that can eliminate all potential for bullying,” Taylor notes. “It’s a pervasive problem.”
He’s optimistic that the battle can be won—eventually. But everyone’s got to care about it. “Bullying is like a giant freighter ship—it can’t turn around quickly,” Taylor said.
It certainly can’t turn around quickly enough for Pat Fuglei.
For kid-friendly information about bullying, check out the Stop Bullying Now campaign by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For other information and help, go to Safeyouth.org or the Committee for Children’s Steps to Respect bullying prevention program.
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Love this expert bit: “Administrators need to give teachers the training and tools they need to identify bullies…”
How hard is it for an educator to identify bullying when your blog further states: “an eighth grade boy with autism who was so tormented and humiliated by fellow students….” If it was THAT obvious to EVERYONE else BUT the teachers then THE PROBLEM "IS" the teachers and more likely the administration.
I have taught kindergarteners who know what bullying is yet somehow we are to believe educators need more help? Gimme a break!
“How could teachers or administrators not know that Fuglei was being victimized? Why didn’t someone do something about it?”
ANS: Because your so called expert gives those that should be blamed and especially the admin a free pass on circumventing their responsibilities as educators in a school setting.
Blaming the parents for how they raise their kids outside the school has nothing to do with how the school is ignoring their duty to provide a safe, secure learning environment inside the school. Have your expert look up the term "In loco parentis" which means "in place of the parents" which applies to public schools and means the school has a duty to act in such a manner with ALL their students. The bullying is taking place INSIDE the school and on school time (yes-bus time counts). Matters not what is happening outside the school in this instance.
Your article adds: "So what can be done, right now? The Hellgate School District has a disciplinary policy for students who bully, haze or use physical violence against other students."
No where did you mention what disciplinary actions were ever handed out by this school and administration for the bullies of this autistic child who was so obviously tormented and abused AT SCHOOL that he had to transfer.
I would love to see ANY records of bullies being properly disciplined per school conduct violations etc. I assure those reports will be far and few between even while research and stats show significant rates of bullying at schools all over the country.
Which is why so many states have enacted anti-bully (A-B) laws. It sure is not because it ain't happenin'!!!
Here are the more likely facts of this matter you failed to investigate and for which your "expert" tip-toed around like they all do because nobody dares talk about the 800 pound gorilla central to the bullying problems in school across the country. Most A-B experts ignore that problem because somehow it will effect who ultimately pays them for their expert opinions (admin).
The teachers and staff KNOW the admin wants nothing to do with getting a bad rep and poor school image that will show they are to cowardly to stand-up to the bullies and more so the bullying parents of same so the admin has (and now because of your article)- will continue to sweep the problem under the proverbial rug as if it does not exist or worse- as if it is not their problem. All while putting the onus on parents and the kids to "stand-up and stop bullying" even while those with the most power to enforce and discipline bullies are to chicken to stand-up to them on their own! Your expert also failed to mention schools may lose federal funding if they "report" a certain % of violent acts (bullying applies) in their year end school reports they must submit to the state/federal level for review. NCLB plays a big part in this as well.
Again- another BIG motive (money always is) as to why school admin choose to ignore bullying taking place under their noses and send same message to their staff. I know this all too well!!!
Your Taylor expert had this beauty: “Bullying is like a giant freighter ship—it can’t turn around quickly,” Taylor said.
I'll add- that freightliner gains more momentum and power every time a teacher or administrator ignores their duties in protecting the children in their charges. Even more when A-B experts ignore the same problem. They are the fuel adding to the fire powering that bully filled freightliner. Fix them and THAT problem -make them accountable for their actions (inactions) and you begin to minimize the bullying problem. A problem I agree is pervasive and will never be stopped but for more obvious reasons than blaming the kids for not doing enough to stand-up to bullies...blame the adults INSIDE the school taxpayers pay 6 figures to protect their children, for being the real cowards.
There are a lot of well meaning blind folks groping the elephant and offering their pet solutions.
The criminal justice system promotes zero tolerance, more surveillance and stiffer punishments.
The mental health system promotes medication and therapy for bullies and their victims.
The religious community thinks prayer, Bible reading, and extracting promises of abstinence from drugs and sex will do it.
Some blame the media for desensitizing us to gratuitous violence and explicit sex. Their solution is to censure sex and violence in the media, and in the video game industry.
Many think better gun control will prevent school violence.
Victims are encouraged to seek help from adults and bullies are scolded into obedience.
Problems of violence and bullying however are more pervasively entrenched in our society than any of these potential solutions or even all of them combined can solve.
The damage we do to each other is a predictable outcome of a violently competitive culture and a litigious system of justice that take problem solving out of the hands of those who are most affected by it.
Ours is one of the most competitive societies on earth, one where competition is laced with violence, coercion, and cheating.
The competition upon which our free enterprise system is based is not intrinsically harmful. However when competition is laced with violence and our kids are raised to condone violence as a means of winning, we have in our midst an insidious illness whose symptoms we don’t even recognize.
For example, we seem to think it’s harmless to promote violence as a means for winning at the level of games school children play. However when winners who use physical force are worshipped, as they are, we infect our children with a kind of mental illness. We ask them to deny their perceptions of reality. We tell our kids to solve problems non-violently while we show them how much we love football and worship the “gladiators” who compete in a game that cannot possibly be won without engaging in physical combat.
Football is not the only team sport where the importance of winning trumps the value of playing fair, and the winners are worshipped. It is, to my knowledge however, the only team sport that mimics warfare, a game where combat is required.
We encourage cooperation with members of our own team as a strategy for winning. However, cooperation shouldn’t be reserved exclusively for the creation and maintenance of winning teams.
We need to teach our kids the skills with which to get along with each other even when they don’t agree or when they don’t like each other and when there is no prize other than a fair and safe environment within which to learn, to work, and to play.
How we deal with what happens after there has been a violent altercation is equally important. In our current system, as with violence prevention, we typically take problem solving out of the hands of those most affected by the violence.
Our litigious society supports adversarial, read competitive, relationships. Perpetrators are whisked away from the victims of their wrongdoing and plunked into a justice system that focuses on proving guilt and doling out punishment. This system leaves the victims of crimes to fend for themselves and the perpetrators with no way out of the corner into which they have been painted. Is it really so hard to understand why offenders go on to offend in more and more vicious attacks on a society that literally throws them away? Victims and perpetrators are denied the opportunity and lack the skills to cooperate with each other in structuring the conditions under which perpetrators can be reintegrated into the community and victims can find satisfactory closure for their grief.
We could learn some important lessons from ancient tribal practices of the Aborigines in Australia. Their system of justice involves victims, offenders and their families and friends in a face-to-face process, an offense is defined as the harm that is done to a person or the community, the focus is on solving problems and how to repair the harm. The victim’s rights and needs are fully recognized, the offender is encouraged to take responsibility and the stigma of crime is removable through appropriate actions by the offender. * Paraphrased from, Ted Wachtel, Real Justice The Piper’s Press, Pipersville, Pennsylvania, 1997.
Unless we are willing to change our culture, our children will continue to be raised in an atmosphere that promotes adversarial relationships and violent solutions to problems.
program go to:
http://www.restorativejustice.org/leading/ted-wachtel
For information about Marilyn LaCourt’s Bully Prevention
Program through creating cooperative environments go to:
http://www.lacourt-m.com/prevention_prog/index.html
I am aware of restorative justice and practices and won't argue it can be beneficial in minimizing bullying but "ONLY IF" the administration is on board AND abiding by the rules governing the practice. Similarly, if they were doing that now in enforcing their own school policies we wouldn't have the bullying problems we have making front page headlines today! Thirty years ago when school admin were not the cowards they are today, bullies and bad boy behaviors were dealt with swiftly and effectively.
Number of Incidents of bullying have not radically changed since those days it is just magnified today because it is more obvious the admin does nothing to curtail it.
Marilyn, sounds like your basis for success is contingent upon "cooperation across the spectrum" as in students, staff, ADMIN, community etc. This is no different than the Olweus way which is (not that it should be mind you) the gold standard in Anti-Bully initiatives being promoted across the globe. Olweus and the reason his Anti Bully strategies are NOT working to minimize bullying is BECAUSE THEY ARE BASED ON A COMPREHENSIVE COMMITMENT BY STUDENTS, STAFF, COMMUNITY AND ADMIN...
When any one of these fails to contribute to the cause the A-B chain has been broken.
When that ONE happens to be the one with the most authority and power to enforce the program and thereby minimize bullying (either through restorative practices or other means) then clearly the benefits start swinging toward the mis-behaved which is why the bullies keep winning and the A-B movement keeps helping them become more prominent and making headlines.
Simple really....until the problem at the top (the 800 pound gorilla)is "recognized" then discussed and fixed there is no reducing bullying only increasing same.
Marilyn just out of curiosity who and or what entity do you most try and sell your philosophy to??? Would it be schools? If so who makes the decision on whether or not your process/program gets brought into the schools? OK I'll answer that one for you...THE ADMINISTRATORS. But you aren't going to bite the hairy gorilla hand that feeds you though are you? You will sell them your program and they will buy into it because it "looks good on paper" and circumvents their culpability but when they won't put it into practice or when they don't play by your written all cooperative rules, whose fault will that be???
We probably agree more than we disagree.
First though, let me set the record straight. I am not trying to "sell" anything. My bully prevention program is available for free. Anyone can download it from my website.
Also, there is plenty of blame to go around if we want to play the blame game.
The elephant to which I refer in my previous post is all of us.
The point I am trying to make is that it will take more than the kinds of band aid solutions that are currently being applied if we are to curb the bully problem in our society.
The big question is, are we willing, as a society to give up our love affair with competition laced with violence. Competition, by definition is winning at the expense of others. Competition laced with violence is warfare. When winning becomes too important, cheating can be expected.
If I could, football would be the very first thing I would eliminate from our schools. It is to my knowledge the only team sport where violence is required to win. No, maybe hazing, condoned bullying, would be first, then football.
You are to be commended for your professional composure in responding to me which I appreciate.
Seems you recognized perhaps I have been on the inside doing my level best to minimize bullying as the assigned Anti-Bully Coordinator only to get fed-up with an administration that "assigned me that post" and administrators who worked diligently to cover up bullying I officially reported and ignore my pleas to "do their part and their jobs in enforcing the A-B policies they paid me to implement and teach kids to abide by."
I attended a workshop on restorative practices where "buying into it" was clearly part of the program. That you offer something similar for free is again commendable and I apologize for implying otherwise. Still, and I do sense we agree, it won't work minus the admin effectively putting it into practice.
As far as the elimination of football and other such violent sports?
We are worlds apart on that note and sorry but setting such a goal IMO is not only unrealistic but you are only setting yourself up for failure.
Best regards in your A-B endeavors.
Thank you for your kind response, and please be assured that I do
empathize with your position. You are tasked with an impossible goal and very few resources.
I do have some ideas that might be helpful on a small scale at no cost to you or your school system.
If you would like to discuss these, feel free to email me off list.
You can find contact information on my website.
Best Regards,
Marilyn