A few questions worth sitting with:
- What does it mean to bully?
- How do you identify bullying versus conflict?
- What's the difference between conflict and contention?
- What's the difference between struggle and suffering?
- What scenario actually creates a victim at school?
- Who do "bullies" choose to pick on?
Some argue today that children are being protected too much, that the word safety is getting exaggerated, and that coddling children and young people creates worse circumstances for them later on. (See The Coddling of the American Mind.)
Are we too quick to identify a tense or tough scenario at school as bullying?
Are we "protecting" our children too much?
Can too much protection actually hurt children's growth and progress?
Dan Olweus, one of the world's leading authorities on the problems of bullying and victimization, describes it in more detail. He defines bullying or victimization as:
"a student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students."
He goes on to define "negative action" to mean:
"when someone intentionally inflicts, or attempts to inflict, injury or discomfort upon another. This can be with words verbally, or physical (hitting, pushing, kicking, or pinching). Lastly, it can also be with neither words nor physical contact, by making faces or dirty gestures, or intentionally excluding someone from a group."
Pretty self-explanatory so far for most of us, I would assume.
But for me, there was new insight when Olweus further discusses:
"It must be stressed that the term bullying is not (or should not be) used when two students of approximately the same strength (physical or psychological) are fighting or quarreling. In order to use the term bullying, there should be an imbalance in strength (an asymmetric power relationship), or imbalance in power or age."
Bullying only happens when there is an imbalance of power?
This was a new thought to me. Previously, I had interpreted any time one child or one person is mean to another as bullying. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
And this made sense to me: bullying happens when there is an imbalance of power and one party is abusing that imbalance.
The Passive or Submissive Victim
The behavior and attitude of passive victims signal to others that they believe they are insecure and worthless individuals who will not retaliate if they are attacked or insulted.
Children's resilience matters here. When a child is anxious, insecure, fearful of being assertive, and physically vulnerable, those tendencies can become both a cause and a consequence of bullying.
Boys and girls also tend to bully in slightly different ways. Boys are more likely to bully with physical strength, while girls more often bully in subtle ways — through gossip, back-biting, exclusion, and social harm.
Conflict vs. Contention
For us, conflict is a wonderful, good thing, and something to be expected on a regular basis. Conflict arises when two individuals are speaking honestly and with good intentions to do what is right and good, but see things from a different perspective or hold different values or beliefs. Conflict is something we work through. It can be uncomfortable, challenging, and difficult, but it's something we square our shoulders to, face, and do. We believe that with practice we improve and get better — so facing conflict is something to be practiced!
Contention, on the other hand, might look very similar to conflict, but it's different in one fundamental way. Instead of both parties intending and desiring to dialogue and figure something out (because both want to do what's right and what's best), contention is when one or both members turn negative and want to harm the other party — by shaming, name-calling, manipulating, bulldozing, or any number of other tactics, ultimately to get what they want instead of listening and trying to "figure it out" with the other party.
Conflict often gets better collective results (conflict can lead to win-win scenarios) for the group, while contention often gets worse collective results (win-lose scenarios).
Conflict and contention can be hard to disentangle, because a large amount of the difference comes from the intention of the heart and the direction each party is facing.
We believe conflict is healthy and something we can get better at. We believe how we each face and "do" conflict can lead to more trust and better relationships. On the other hand, we believe that contention often can be harmful and unhealthy, leading to strained relationships and more distrust.
Struggle vs. Suffering
It's inevitable that you will experience some amount of suffering in life — it's one of the realities of being a self-aware, conscious human being. But could there be a way to reduce the amount of suffering one experiences by voluntarily choosing to do something to turn suffering into struggle?
There is power in choice and power in the ability to decide — and lucky for us humans, that's something we possess.
We believe there's a difference between suffering and struggling. While suffering is something negative that happens to you, struggle is something one voluntarily chooses to face and do that is challenging, difficult, or hard.
The differences in attitude, biology, and response can be tremendous.
So at Acton we welcome and encourage struggle — in fact, we think it's an important teacher. We look for ways to practice struggle, because as we practice we get better and stronger. Plus, we learn. And that's different from suffering, which we don't proactively try to add more of to the studio or to learners. But that begs some interesting questions:
- Can some children interpret a challenge as suffering while others interpret it as struggle?
- To the extreme, is it possible to live a life 100% completely free of suffering? Should one choose to turn any and all suffering into struggle?
- How can we practice turning suffering into struggle?
