Because surveillance and authoritarianism model kindness and respect

Just in time for Martin Luther King Day, the Governor has proposed to make our anti-bullying statute even more sweepingly authoritarian. As usual, the bill exhibits zero concern for whether schools might use it in ways that would violate students’ civil liberties.

If there had been a statute prohibiting people from creating a “hostile environment” by discussing someone’s “political belief,” can anyone doubt that King would have been prosecuted under it?

More in the comments here.
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Freedom of association for me but not for you

Our governor has endorsed a bill that would increase the power of schools to intervene in bullying, even if it occurs off school grounds or on social media. According to the governor’s office, the bill would define bullying to include instances, for example, in which “a group of girls shun another girl”—even, apparently, if it occurs outside of school.

Last year I wrote about how our elementary school surveyed the kids about whether they had seen or experienced bullying. Its list of what would count as bullying included the item, “left out on purpose.” The list made no attempt to distinguish between a kid who maliciously talks his or her friends into shunning another person and a kid who just wants to be able to choose whom to play with in what little free time the school day offers. Instead, the survey left the kids with the impression that they’re “bullies”—and thus can be disciplined—whenever they choose not to play with someone “on purpose.”

Don’t these examples go too far? As adults, there are many acts that we see as morally commendable—caring for elderly parents, giving to charity, reporting crimes and emergencies—but which we nonetheless choose not to legally require, and instead leave to each person’s conscience. When it comes to “leaving people out on purpose” from social interactions, we not only don’t penalize that conduct, but we have an amendment to our constitution (the First) protecting it. Just as there are certain people I enjoy associating with, there are others I prefer to avoid. I suspect everyone on the staff of our elementary school is guilty of this particular form of “bullying.” If you hold a party at your house, is there anything wrong with purposely not inviting certain people? Even outright intentional shunning, at least in the religious context, has been held to be protected by the First Amendment.

I don’t mean to minimize the very real pain of kids (or adults) who have trouble finding friends or are socially ostracized, or to say that the school should do nothing to help them. But coercion by the authorities is not the solution to every problem. As I’ve written before, I’d like to see a guidance program that got the kids imagining themselves in other people’s shoes and thinking for themselves about right and wrong, rather than one that just dictates what is or isn’t good behavior and then enforces it with rules. It’s possible to encourage kids to be kind and inclusive and still preserve some realm of personal freedom from adult scrutiny and state intervention. How can we hold our kids to standards from which we exempt ourselves?

Related post here.
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Defining bullying up

As I’ve written before, I’m ambivalent about the recent trend toward “bullying prevention education.” I’m all in favor of getting kids to put themselves in other kids’ shoes and to think about right and wrong ways of treating other people. I also think it’s great to make sure that kids know what they can do if they are being mistreated or if they see someone else being mistreated. But I can’t help but sense a kind of mission creep. The term “bullying” is increasingly applied to a larger and larger sphere of conduct, and is used to justify a particularly authoritarian and punitive approach to behavior management. Instead of talking about how to help kids develop their own consciences, we end up talking about whether certain acts count as “bullying,” and if so, what we should do to the bullies.

Our elementary school recently surveyed the kids about bullying as part of its “Steps to Respect” program. The survey asked the kids to “Check the kinds of bullying you’ve seen or had happen to you at school,” and then offered the following choices:

Teased
Called names
Threatened
Rumors spread
Left out on purpose
Hit, pushed, or kicked
Belongings damaged or taken

I can imagine bullying occurring through any of those means, but won’t that list catch many things that none of us would consider bullying? Friends can tease each other, and may even sometimes call each other names. When does talking about one’s classmates become “spreading rumors”? Where is the line between “leaving someone out on purpose” and simply wanting to choose which kids to play with during what little free time the school offers? I wouldn’t want to have my belongings taken, but is all theft a form of bullying? Pushing and even hitting aren’t that uncommon in certain types of play – our most popular sports are “contact sports” – but not every foul is an act of bullying.

What is gained by simplifying the issue in this way? If the kids take the survey literally, they will come away with a distorted and trivialized sense of what “bullying” means. (If you’re anything less than an angel, you’re a bully.) If the kids understand that only some things in those categories really qualify as bullying (as I suspect they do), then they are already more sophisticated than these teaching materials give them credit for. The survey seems designed to inflate the rate of reported bullying, and thus to justify yet more behavioral interventions and harsher discipline.

More thoughts on bullying here, here, and here.
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There is no good indoctrination

Well, I didn’t have much luck getting the panelists on bullying to respond to my concerns about the potential for anti-bullying interventions to be counterproductive and to model some of the same traits they are trying to discourage. The goal of reducing bullying is a good one, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that every proposal to address it is a good one. Discussions about bullying are always well-meaning, but they often seem to proceed from an unexamined and very questionable premise: that we can mold kids’ values to order simply by telling them, in a sufficiently elaborate and pervasive way, what to think.

At some level, I think everyone perceives the word “indoctrination” to have a negative connotation – that it’s something a free society shouldn’t do, and that it’s the opposite of real education. But many people seem to make an exception when the message that is being indoctrinated is a commendable one (for example, that bullying is bad). That exception, of course, would entirely swallow the rule: people never think the message they are pushing on others is a bad one. The idea is similar to the idea that freedom of speech is great as long the speech isn’t really offensive.

There are good reasons to think that indoctrinatory approaches to behavior and bullying are likely to backfire. First, people naturally resist being told what to think. Second, indoctrination models a dehumanizing way of interacting with people. Our school’s approach to behavior, for example, treats kids as if they are incapable of reaching their own moral conclusions – as if they’re not fully people. I’d be worried about using an approach like that to discourage bullying, which is also a form of dehumanizing people.

I don’t think I’m saying anything very radical. A school can have rules about conduct, and can enforce them. Its administrators and teachers can explain to the students why they have those rules, and they can explain what the school’s values are and why. They can insist that the children follow the rules, but they should stop short of insisting that the children agree with the school on what are, ultimately, value questions. That’s where they cross the line from enforcing rules to indoctrinating minds. And any system of behavioral rules should be accompanied by an effort to get the kids thinking for themselves about right and wrong, without the school dictating right answers, so that the kids aren’t simply learning mindless obedience. (For a thumbnail sketch of what such an approach might look like, see this post.)

If school officials think they can just tell kids what to think about right and wrong, they don’t understand what a conscience is. Unless people are given the freedom to reach their own conclusions about what’s right and wrong, they can’t possibly develop real consciences, since a conscience sometimes requires you to do what’s right even when no one else thinks it’s right. That’s why herding kids into agreeing with the school’s rules and values by subjecting them to pep-rally-like behavior assemblies or having them chant memorized slogans couldn’t be more misguided. If you want people to develop their own moral compasses and to resist peer pressure, you don’t achieve that by appealing to their desire to please authority figures and conform to the crowd.

Bullying is real and has many causes, but many behavior crusaders seem eager to look for sources of bullying everywhere but in their own techniques for addressing it.
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Indoctrination is a counterproductive way to address bullying

The Iowa City Patch has invited its readers to discuss the issue of bullying with a group of panelists. I’ve been chiming in with comments that will sound familiar to readers of this blog – for example:

In addressing the bullying issue, people should be mindful of the difference between persuasion and indoctrination. Trying to use reason to persuade people to a set of values is a respectful way of engaging with people. Indoctrination – telling people what to think – is not. Indoctrination is a form of dehumanization, just like bullying, and is part of the problem, not the solution.

Right now, the approach of the Iowa City schools is indoctrination. The behavioral rewards program used in all the schools (“PBIS”) is entirely about telling the students how to act, and then using material rewards to get them to comply. It has no component designed to get the kids thinking for themselves about right and wrong and how to treat other people. In the end, all it teaches is obedience to authority.

I’m not saying the schools shouldn’t have rules. But simply dictating rules does nothing to help kids develop their own moral and ethical reasoning about how to treat other people. Without more, it just models treating people like objects to be bossed around and manipulated.

If we want kids to treat each other with dignity, we need to treat them with dignity, and engage them in reasoning about what’s right and wrong – not just tell them what to think.

So far, the panelists have had little to say in response to my comments, but the thread is still developing . . .

Update here.
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Some thoughts on “bullying”

Glenn Greenwald has a post up about the use of the word “terrorism.” An excerpt:

This topic is so vital because this meaningless, definition-free word — Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies. Virtually every debate in which I ever participate quickly and prominently includes defenders of government policy invoking the word as some sort of debate-ending, magical elixir: of course President Obama has to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process: they’re Terrorists; of course we have to stay in Afghanistan: we have to stop The Terrorists; President Obama is not only right to kill people (including civilians) using drones, but is justified in boasting and even joking about it, because they’re Terrorists; of course some people should be held in prison without charges: they’re Terrorists, etc. etc. It’s a word that simultaneously means nothing and justifies everything.

I wonder if a similar phenomenon is starting to occur with the word “bullying.” Of course, no one likes a bully, and we’d all like to see less bullying in schools. But when I hear people talk about a “War on Bullying,” and about “crackdowns” and “zero tolerance,” and when I hear the word applied to an increasing range of conduct (see Iowa City’s definition here), I get an uncomfortable sense of deja vu. I can’t help wondering whether the word “bullying” is being used as a rhetorical tool to generate support for – or quell opposition to – the schools’ use of increasingly authoritarian practices to “manage behavior.” Is policing more conduct and punishing more kids the best way to teach kids to treat each other well?

I don’t think we should take the War on Drugs, for example, as our model for how to address a social problem. Bullying, like drug abuse, is a real problem, but it doesn’t automatically follow that a heavy-handed law enforcement approach is the solution.

This is particularly true in the context of bullying, because the more schools use coercion to address bullying, the more they are modeling coercive behavior. The school, after all, is telling the kids how to act, giving them no say in what it demands of them, then policing their behavior and punishing them if they don’t comply – sometimes even casting them out of the community (via suspension or expulsion). Schools can’t avoid doing some of that. But consider how often “bullying” resembles those same actions. Is it possible that some of the bullies are acting out what they see around them? How confident can we be that, if the school intensifies its focus on punitive enforcement, the kids will start to treat each other better instead of worse? And shouldn’t we be concerned about the other values that end up getting taught – even to the “well-behaved” kids – the more the school starts resembling a police state?

Greenwald and others have also written about the double standard that often applies when the words “terrorism” and “torture” are used to refer only to what other people do, and not to what we do. Similarly, it’s hard to come up with a fair definition of “bullying” that wouldn’t apply to some of what schools do to kids in the name of compulsory learning. When one kid coerces and intimidates another, it’s “bullying.” When the school coerces and intimidates the kids, it’s apparently something else – maybe “enhanced education techniques”?

The first step to addressing bullying should be to model humane treatment of other people. Schools, given the power they have over the children who attend them, are in a particularly good position to model humane treatment of those who are weaker and more vulnerable. Wouldn’t that necessarily involve giving them some say over their own treatment? Wouldn’t it involve treating them more gently, and with more understanding, dignity, and compassion, than one could get away with? What else is bullying but a disregard, through superior force, of those principles?
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