The stunning pervasiveness and sophistication of both modern and old-fashioned schoolyard bullying were on vivid display last night when several dozen Culver City parents gathered in a wide circle at El Rincon School to issue poignant individual pleas to the third-year parent-and-professional Anti-Bullying Task Force for relief.
They came in quest of solutions so that when they returned home they could begin to work their way through a labyrinth of intimidation that has, in the words of moderator Tom Horn, been dogging schoolchildren for centuries.
Even though Task Force Co-Chair Gwenis Laura, an assistant superintendent in the School District, and several others in the spacious El Rincon cafetorium did not recall bullying as a major presence in their school days, there can be no doubting it is a constant, if not always visible, presence in these times.
Almost in defiance of belief, bullying’s ugly wings span from pre-school to the end of school days.
Stories Hungering for Answers
Scary random samples flooded the room. No culture, no class, no gender was spared. All Culver City public schools were represented, and bullying is a headache on every campus.
One of the reasons for bullying’s increasing complexity is the sensitive, possibly radioactive, need to deal — in the home and on campus — with the concept of what is pejoratively known as snitching. Many children learn quickly, some parents said, they do not want to be known as a snitch.
Parents spoke of how their child’s lives remained on tenterhooks long after they had informed school authorities because “all students know what is going on. There are no secrets. They know who the bullies are and they know who is most vulnerable prospective victim. If a bystander snitches, no matter how surreptitiously, students know who told. That is why it is so difficult to get bystanders to tell the office what is happening.”
“My son would have loved to be anonymous,” said another mom. “But kids know. They just know what is going on and who is being picked on.”
Cyberbullying has become enormously hot for school children of all ages, and parents were encouraged to regularly monitor the cell phones and the email correspondence of their children.
As for the Culver City Policy
Perhaps the most distressing information to emerge, unofficially, on an otherwise upbeat evening was that each school and evidently each teacher is on its and his own when confronted by a bullying scenario. There is not a blanket District-wide policy for comforting victims, confronting and penalizing perpetrators.
A mother said that when her first-grade son saw two mean third-graders push a helpless wheelchaired girl with special needs into the boys restroom, the blowback against him was so powerful he missed two weeks of classes. The school’s advice to the chastened informer: “Stay away from those boys.”
One desirable dose of therapy was for parents with matching problems to gather in a common setting, hear others recite their problems, frustrations and sparse resolutions. No one came to last night’s meeting because bullying had been eluded or had been beaten back by his child.
They came for help. But as Co-Chair Hank Linderman, El Rincon Principal Ellen Craig, Ms. Laura and Mr. Horn told them, the issue is far too complicated to merely hand over a single-step, worry-free resolution. Years in the making, the unraveling will require diligence, the will, patience and creativity. At the end of the 75-minute meeting, the concerned parents filing out felt better, but no one was triumphant.
A Reminder from the AVPA
After several brief presentations, Ms. Laura introduced two student actors from Culver City High School’s Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, who will be staging the final four days of “The Laramie Project,” on campus starting Wednesday evening at 7 at the Sony Black Box Theatre. The play is about the tragic death of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, murdered with particular ferocity because of his orientation.
Ms. Craig and others indicated that while bullying is a hulking presence in the upper grades, middle school and beyond, it also is a dire threat to vulnerable students just beginning their educational experience. Accompanied by two of her children, a mother said that her second-grade daughter had been hounded and set upon by a couple of classmates who thought she weighed more than was acceptable to their discerning eyes.
