Can We Change the Bullying Climate?

Bullying is a hot topic. A majority of people have opened their eyes and recognized the prevalence of bullying and its devastating effects. Surely a tipping point has come when even popular television sitcoms like “The Big Bang Theory” take on the Goliath of bullying in our society. School Boards and teachers everywhere have instituted policies of no tolerance for bullying.

Zero Tolerance

Permissiveness and undefined limits create a climate in which bullying thrives. A bully who experiences no clear consequences for antisocial behaviour will continue it and escalate it. I applaud the “zero tolerance” initiatives emerging in the education system. Perhaps zero tolerance will one day expand into society at large, because bullying is just as prevalent in the adult world as it is among children, and it’s just as destructive.

In a few weeks, I will be speaking to a conference of women teachers on “Empathy and Empowerment: How Teaching Public Speaking Skills Can Reduce Bullying”. Zero tolerance programs with severe consequences for bullying can at least provide protection for victims. That’s dealing with the problem at one end, where bullying tendencies have already manifested. I would like to explore the possibility of doing complementary work at the other end, of changing the mindsets that allow a climate of bullying to exist in the first place.

Empowering the Victim Consciousness

Boiled down to its essence, I see the bullying climate as a product of two mindsets: a lack of empathy on the part of the bully and a lack of empowerment on the part of the victim. I’m going to address these two mindsets in reverse order, and save empathy for my next article.

Whether or not the Old Testament confrontation between David and Goliath ever really took place, the story provides us with a fascinating study in archetypes. Goliath was a classic bully – huge, strong and loud, deriving enjoyment from doing violence, physically and emotionally, to others. Yet short, willowy David, possessed of unshakeable assurance of his own worth and skill with a sling, and secure in his support system (belief in his god) was not intimidated. A bully dominates through disempowerment of the victim, yet David clearly did not feel at a disadvantage. In fact, he seems to have felt the scales were tipped in his favour. He had no need to protect himself with armour (he was offered physical armour, but we could interpret that as the emotional armour of fear and defensiveness.) He knew that who he was, was enough. He didn’t have a victim consciousness. Goliath, the bully, had no victim.

Not Intimidated

People who fear (or even dislike) public speaking have some degree of a victim consciousness. They assume the audience is full of bullies who will judge, criticize and disempower them, doing violence to their feeling of self-worth. They are caught in a mindset that gives other people the power to dictate how good they feel about themselves. No wonder they’re intimidated! That’s a completely false premise! No one has the ability to reduce another’s value or worthiness. A person’s opinion is almost entirely a product of their own habits of thought, and has nothing to do with what and who another person is. Great speakers have a noticeably strong sense of self, and are not intimidated by other people’s opinions. I believe that good public speaking training addresses this issue.

Not Victim Material  

I think we draw to ourselves people and situations that match our own inner state. What if we used public speaking training to help school children develop an inner state of self assurance? I don’t mean the usual memorizing a written composition and then reciting it. That’s a human tape recorder, and it merely adds to the fear. I mean the real public speaking skills of authenticity, eye contact and the development of a speaker-listener relationship. What if we proactively provided kids with a classroom support system that gave them the assurance of the right to speak and the right to be heard? Could we help them develop a ship of consciousness whose sails wouldn’t even attract a bully’s wind?