By Mark
The Associated Press recently posted a story about a string of deaths at Mentor High School in Ohio. These deaths were of teenagers: three suicides and one overdose. Families of all four attribute these deaths to the devastating impact of bullying in the schools and what was coined as a "culture of mean" at Mentor High.
Parents and critics were quick to admonish the kids who committed the bullying–and were as quick to attack the teachers and administration. Is that justified? I don't know the situation, so despite my gut reaction, I cannot say that teachers or administration did their damnedest to prevent bullying and I cannot say that they were in fact incompetent and unresponsive.
What I can say, though, is that the "culture of mean" is not just a Mentor High issue. Ironically, all you have to do is peruse the reader comments after any of the articles about Mentor High to see that the "culture of mean" doesn't need a high school hallway or cafeteria to rear its head.
What, then, is the role of a school in a case like this? The culture of mean is all but endorsed by how "freedom of speech" is exercised. One poster under an article played devil's advocate: if it is protected speech for the Westboro Baptist Church to stand at the funeral of a soldier and shout ephithets at his grieving family, then why isn't the bully's right to bully in the halls of a high school likewise protected?
Both scenarios sicken me. But that poster has a point there. And to me, the lesson goes far beyond these tragedies which have seemingly reached epidemic proportion.
Do I think schools have the responsibility–no, the moral obligation–to respond swiftly and severely to bullying? Absolutely. But this issue, like so many issues which schools are both charged to address and vilified for not "fixing," reaches beyond the hallways of a school. Now, many who see the internet as a conveniently anonymous place to exercise their bullying prowess might be quick to jump on that statement and claim that I am disavowing the teachers' responsibility. That is not the case. Where many want to square blame on an individual or group of individuals and absolve ourselves of culpability, such scapegoating only confirms the real culprit.
When I teach Lord of the Flies, I use a "Great Books" literary criticism video which opens by accounting some of the violence perpetrated by young people upon young people. It wasn't until I began writing this post that it crystallized for me: what William Golding represents on the island in Lord of the Flies is humankind's descent into savagery in the absence of moral authority, but even more than this, the violence he ultimately chronicles is merely a metaphor for our "culture of mean." More critically to me as a reader, despite the stranded boys' best efforts to either ascribe or avoid blame for the savage murders which happen near the climax of the novel, there is something in Golding's account of the murder of Simon which resonates deeply with my perception of the "culture of mean":
The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.
I usually read that chapter aloud to my students when I teach this book. After that passage, the shock in the room is heavy and the students sit in stunned silence when they realize what has happened. The crunching and screaming mouth described above is the pack of once-schoolboys descending upon Simon (mistaken for the "beast"). The pack is described itself as a single-minded beast bent on blind destruction. It confirms what the Lord of the Flies had told Simon about his fellow boys–that we are the beast; that the beast is not something that can be hunted and killed because the beast is within all of us.
That book illustrates what has happened to lead to the string of tragedies in Mentor and around the country. Our "culture of mean" is the beast–and it is not something which can be hunted and killed because it is the very worst of us. All of us. It is not the fault of a single school for not "listening hard enough" or "responding fast enough." It is not a beast which can be hunted and killed. Bullying and harassment may be minimized, pushed underground, or become more subtle, but it is not a beast which can be hunted and killed as long as we as a culture continue to permit it from ourselves in even the tiniest, supposedly innocuous ways, and as long as we still allow ourselves to be entertained by a pop culture which minimizes such situations into dramedy.
It is who we have become a culture that is the manifestation of the beast which closes is jaws upon the "other" and tears at their flesh not for survival but for sport. Such prizing of power and superiority is even entrenched in what so many think it even means to be an American: the fierce individuality, the inherent social competition, the absolutism of belief and dismissal of anything "other." Every grown adult American who has ever hidden behind the anonymity of the internet to post a hateful comment on a news article or a blog is keeping the beast alive–and where is the teacher or principal in that situation to correct this behavior? If the schools cannot also be blamed for that face of the beast, then who is to blame?
I’ve wondered in the past about that teaching “tolerance” idea. The use of the word “tolerance” implies a negative judgment of something which ought to then be “endured” rather than accepted. I think tolerance caught on because being tolerant requires much less effort than actually pursuing understanding–and pursuing understanding forces people to bare their own beliefs and examine them closely, which is a very vulnerable position to voluntarily place oneself in.
I find it tough as an adult sometimes to even have the courage to step in with students, let alone other teachers (who I see also at times being mean for no apparent reason). My current crusade in my classroom is the eradication of “retard” and “gay” as adjectives of choice amongst some of the ninth graders. Normalizing that kind of language normalizes a permissive attitude toward progressively more and more damaging words and actions. I think sometimes adults underrate the impact of those “mere words” and the patterns of behavior such language invites.
Thank you for your candor.
“Culture of Mean” is now America. In many respects I believe it stemmed from the movement to teach “tolerance” instead of teaching “acceptance.” Our moral obligation is to exercise our moral courage to call attention to the words and actions that our “Culture of Mean” produces. Failing to do so encourages such behaviors, and may result in our own children being the next victims.
Heart Guard: Thanks for sharing your perspectives. I’ve been thinking about this topic so much, and since I teach Lord of the Flies, I’m tuned in on that right now.
One of Golding’s pleas in a later commentary about the novel is that children (and adults) need a moral authority to guide them–whether that be parents, teachers, a god, or a government. When that guidance is devalued or disappears, then the beast emerges.
Very scary, disturbing commentaries on our culture – but true. I so wish I had the answer.
My run-in with the culture of mean began in my childhood home, a place where I should have been able to feel most loved, protected and safe. My own mother was the primary perpetrator, and she let (and according to one of them, encouraged) my two older sisters tease me mercilessly as far back as I can remember. I wish I could know “why”, and what started it. The same sister above, now a friend, says it was because I have red hair.
I did consider suicide once, thinking it was the only thing that might make them feel sorry for what they did.
The abuse has continued into adulthood. Mom is in her 90’s now and the eldest sister approaches 70 years old. If any thing they are meaner and more aggressive than ever. I steer clear of both of them as much as possible.
I could not love them out of it, ‘good works’ them into friendliness, ignore it to make it stop. I am nearing retirement age and it still affects my life.
School is in many ways an extension of the family. I would have given anything to have a mentor back then; someone, with authority or not, who noticed something not right with me and took precious time to help. I have felt the same helplessness regarding my childhood church family.
I beg all of you: do not ignore it when you witness acts of bullying, aggressiveness or sheer blessed meanness toward another. Do something – if not at that moment, then later at a more opportune time. But do something!
The lessons in that book go even further… we see so much bullying proliferating thanks to the internet. The internet allows us to mask our true selves (even I’ve done so to a degree on this blog by not listing my last name and not giving details of where I live or work). That anonymity, though, can allow the worst to come out. In LOTF, as the boys descend into savagery and allow the beast to come out, one of the first steps takes place when they paint their faces in order to hunt better. However, the mask has a surprising effect: rather than concealing them, it liberates from them something within that is their very worst. Golding writes of Jack’s feeling when he dons his mask: “the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” When we lose the capacity to feel shame, and we lose our self-consciousness, we lose our ability to check and balance our behavior. The internet is our mask.