Yeah, Sure
Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario, addressed Canada's Conference on Bullying last Tuesday, and emphasized his commitment to eradicating bullying behaviour from the school system. He has a son who went through the experience of being a victim of bullying, and this has become part of his pledging $9 million in provincial funding to the effort, as well as a promise to have bullying prevention programs in all schools by the end of the year. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll believe this will work when I see it.
When I was little, I was victimized. Eyeglasses, you know. "Four-eyes" and a lot more than that. When my one daughter was younger, she went through the experience too. Painfully so. None of my teachers helped me. None of her teachers helped either. As a teacher myself, I have seen the experience being played out year after year with each new group of kids I taught, and I have struggled against it.
I have seen anti-bullying programs brought into the schools before. I have seen them succeed, but rarely. Mostly I have seen them fail. I have little to no faith in all the new miracle-programs because each and every one of them needs to be brought to effectiveness by the staff at the schools, and there are just too many teachers who don't buy into the programs. They cop out of giving it any effort with the usual whining about how much curricuclum they already have to teach and how they will need a 25-hour day to squeeze in even one more item. There are too many principals who are more concerned with saving face than with really caring about the kids. They cop out of it by buying off the bullies and their parents, and not calling the police when they should. There is just way too much "don't get me involved" attitude out there. So many staff, and parents too, refuse to acknowledge the problem, and get down to dealing with it. They prefer to keep their heads safely buried in the sand and hope it will all go away, without inconveniencing them too much before it does.
Mr. McGuinty, do you really want to solve the problem? Give me a call and spend some time in conversation with me. Talk to others like me. Those of us who have been on the front lines have stories to tell, stories that you need to hear, if you are serious about what you say.
When I was little, I was victimized. Eyeglasses, you know. "Four-eyes" and a lot more than that. When my one daughter was younger, she went through the experience too. Painfully so. None of my teachers helped me. None of her teachers helped either. As a teacher myself, I have seen the experience being played out year after year with each new group of kids I taught, and I have struggled against it.
I have seen anti-bullying programs brought into the schools before. I have seen them succeed, but rarely. Mostly I have seen them fail. I have little to no faith in all the new miracle-programs because each and every one of them needs to be brought to effectiveness by the staff at the schools, and there are just too many teachers who don't buy into the programs. They cop out of giving it any effort with the usual whining about how much curricuclum they already have to teach and how they will need a 25-hour day to squeeze in even one more item. There are too many principals who are more concerned with saving face than with really caring about the kids. They cop out of it by buying off the bullies and their parents, and not calling the police when they should. There is just way too much "don't get me involved" attitude out there. So many staff, and parents too, refuse to acknowledge the problem, and get down to dealing with it. They prefer to keep their heads safely buried in the sand and hope it will all go away, without inconveniencing them too much before it does.
Mr. McGuinty, do you really want to solve the problem? Give me a call and spend some time in conversation with me. Talk to others like me. Those of us who have been on the front lines have stories to tell, stories that you need to hear, if you are serious about what you say.
1 Comments:
If an adult bullies someone, it's harassment ... a criminal offence.
Hmmm ..
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