Catholic Schools Week

As a product of 17 years of Catholic schooling, this article caught my interest. It's basically what the Catholic church, in its very mission, should do to dissuade bullying.

Catholic schools are charged with creating conditions and fostering values that lead to the full intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual development of every child.  This demands creating safe communities that protect girls from indirect, covert forms of aggression that prey on their insecurities (and make them more insecure) and teaching values that are currently countercultural, particularly among teenage girls.

One remedy:

A second step might be confronting the adolescent obsession with popularity.  Simmons notes that “popularity changes girls, causes a great many of them to lie and cheat and steal.  They lie to be accepted, cheat their friends by using them, steal people’s secrets to resell at a higher social price.”  This race for popularity is “as dangerous an issue for girls as weight, appearance, or sexuality.”  A key step is to build authentic community in the classroom, something for which Catholic schools should be particularly well-suited.  Catholic classrooms should seek to build a family-like environment where caring about others is a shared norm, even if students will not always be able to live up to that standard.  Not everyone will be best friends with everyone else, but in this type of environment, friendships will be more likely to have a foundation in compatibility rather than being the product of social ambitions.

There needs to be a constant emphasis that the only close friends worth having are ones around whom each girl can be herself and who share her inclination to keep it real.  By developing real relationships, instead of ones where they use others or are used instrumentally, girls can see the benefits of friendship and trust, instead of losing their ability to trust those close them. 

It should be stressed that Catholicism contains the important message that each person’s worth is innate, rooted in the fact that each person is made in the image of God, entirely unique and infinitely valuable.  This is a hard concept to grasp, but if this message is taught, constantly reinforced, and seen to shape the behavior of teachers, administrators, and others, girls will be able to increasingly disconnect their sense of self-worth from their popularity or coolness.  Given the type of behavior that is inspired by the quest to be cool or popular, this is a very worthy goal.

Now I applaud these concepts. I really do. But I don't think Catholic schools do an innately better job of addressing these issues. They can emphasize a commitment to dignity and love for others, but it all starts at home. If anything, parents need to be educated in this respect. Adolescent popularity contests extend to the generation beforehand, and values like respect, honor, and generosity aren't going to be extended to others if superficiality, cheating, lying, and disrespect are what is exhibited at home. And it is more than that-it is genuine concern about the day, genuine interest so parents know their children are not cheating  on homework, know who their children's friends are, and recognize when those friends disappear due to adolescent cruelty.

It is a tough subject, and angst of these years will exist regardless of what one attempts to remedy it. But the Catholic Church can only do so much, and really, not very much at all. At least it did not in my experience.

That Was Then

So I read a lot of blogs, but this particular entry really touched me.

You know, it's been twenty years since junior high, and I think at least once or twice a week I think about those days. Maybe it is seeing everyone on facebook, and seeing their relationships that are so tight after so long, or the fact they have changed or have not changed or whatever. It is amazing at how you lose judgment of some of those people who tortured you on the softball field, or ridiculed you for getting straight As, or excluded you from a pool party even after they "pretended" to be friends with you for a while, at least until the popular crowd came calling. I will never forget the feeling of shame and unhappiness every June when all of the "cool kids" got invited to Julie's pool party, and I was one of a handful left out. The facebook friends even remember that when it was her birthday! I still remember being taunted by parents playing softball, or people calling me ugly and reminding me of the reasons I'd "never have a boyfriend." It is so relentless, and so difficult.

And twenty years later, I have great friends and a great husband and a great job and money and luxuries I didn't have then. And yet a part of it remains. And I described it in my comment as bittersweet, because it is. Those feelings resonate with me so many years later. And I won't justify it as silly, because it wasn't. It was not funny. It was hurtful. And one of my core beliefs is that we are responsible for our own actions, and our own reactions, ultimately. And at 14, you know the meaning of right from wrong, good from bad, hurtful and kind. And you can be brave or be a coward, or you can be generous or be selfish.

I would NEVER go back to being 12 or 13 or 14 again. I know there were kids, like Maria A., who had it so much worse than me. And all of these years later, I worry and wonder how she is. I know there were kids who escaped a lot of it, and who were neither teased not teasers. And I know some who were vicious, and I wouldn't friend them without any kind of apology. Or without one.

I do worry, if I have children and especially a daughter, how I would feel if they received the same level or any level of harassment or teasing. It would break my heart. And it is so easy to tell her you grow up, you move on, you make friends, you meet boys, you become liked and loved and happy and social. But at 12, when being lonely and without friends is one of the worst things imaginable, you can't offer that kind of reassurance because 34 or 24 or 19 are SO far off.

Yes, it does get better. But patience is demanded. I will always regret, with a feeling of bittersweet, not having happier memories from those years. Thank God for my family, because that really is the most important thing. But to a 12 or 13 or 14 year old girl, you still need more, as selfish as it is.

Breaks My Heart

These stories of teens being bullied break my heart.

Alex had been harassed and ostracized at school, mostly by a small group of students.

Among other things, his parents say Falan's report detailed eyewitness reports of a lunchroom incident that happened the day before their son died.

They say Alex had approached a table of popular students when one of the girls at the table used an expletive to tell him to him to go away.

Then she added, "Don't you know everyone hates you?"

There were reports of other incidents, his parents say, with a small group of students surrounding and taunting him in a secluded hallway with no cameras when no one else was around. Some also frequently chanted "Creeper, Creeper," using a nickname they'd given him.

His parents say yet another student spread a rumor that Alex was looking in her windows at night, which his parents insist wasn't true.

Still, Alex remained stoic.

"Is it the total reason he took his life? That is unknown," Falan says. But he does believe "it is part of the 'why.'"

He learned it was "not cool to be smart." He was teased and bullied while playing tennis. He was harassed. And today with facebook and social networking, kids can take this bullying even further out. They can make someone's life miserable.

Not much changes between generations of children.