Policy Proposal for schools/workplace - Bullying
As a career teacher, I know that bullying is an unspoken, barely addressed, and normally overlooked and dismissed problem, but it is still a major problem in the US. Part of the problem is that bullies that are bullies as children rarely tell their children they were bullies, and normally bully people as adults.
Workplace bullying by supervisors is just as normal and odious as children bullying each other. Nothing stops it because the supervisor is always believed.
No adult, no parent, will ever be honest and say to their children "when I was your age, I bullied other classmates and children because I was a thoughtless, immature, nihilistic, sociopath and because I had things about me I didn't like, I tried to make others as miserable as me." Parents are never honest with their children about anything from their past, unless they are confronted face-to-face with their past and the wreckage they leave behind.
But since most bullies have no sense of remorse or self-reflection, they can justify in their own warped minds that things they did to rob their victim of any sense of self-worth and belief in themselves has nothing to do with how that person turned out.
After all, remember that logical fallacy from childhood: "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Except they do hurt you. . .over a long time. And those scars never heal because when you are torn down day in and day out over a span of years, you tend to accept what people say as truth. You aren't good enough. You are disgusting, ugly, fat, and worthless. You are everything everyone claims, because as a principal once told me "the common factor in all of this is you. You make it happen."
I would propose laws treating bullying the same as hazing and sexual harassment if elected. Hazing can be emotional and psychological as well as physical. When will principal and teacher certification be revoked for enabling, encouraging, or doing nothing about bullying? When will parents be held financially and possibly criminally liable for the bullying their children do? Here in Arizona, parents can be arrested if their children are truant, and held financially responsible? When will supervisors get fired for being work place bullies, as there are countless horror stories of supervisors bullying employees they don't like and want to leave?
For this to be effective, there must be a massive cultural shift in perception. All we have now in lip service followed by "I feel your pain."
This epidemic must end.
