Bullying
I am slowly, very, very slowly (I wish it would go faster, but there are limits to everything, I am learning), working on forgiving the bullying that I faced with my administrators and colleagues here at Eisenhower. My colleagues I forgave a long time ago, since their bullying gave way to better (not ideal, but better) behavior. My administrators, on the other hand, bullied me, slowed me down, and then cut me loose when their bullying had yielded counterproductive results - not to mention really treating me badly - and took no responsibility. Ever. I've never heard an apology. And I don't expect to. It's too popular and easy to escape responsibility for bullying, these days. I am responsible for being slow on the uptake with my work and getting my head and heart wrapped around my responsibilities this year, and learning how to be more freely committed to my work. But my heart is working on letting go of all of the bullying that I have faced in the meantime.
For whatever reasons, largely because I cared about them and about living in a world where there were less bullies, I chose to work with kids many of whom, on one hand, seriously struggle with school and all of the abilities that it takes to get good at school and all of the professional responsibilities that this preparation offers people. On the other hand, I work with a lot of kids with very serious behavior issues. Generally these kids are the same kids as those with more serious academic struggles. Some of my kids are bullies. But I care about them, anyway, generally far more genuinely than any of my colleagues.
So I chose to work with bullies.
But that doesn't make bullying ok. Ever. And certainly doesn't make it ok to come from the people who have authority and responsibility.
I will forgive my administrators. It will take time.
I have been in good faith with them, generally, the entire time I've worked with them and generally honest. I have not been completely honest always (for reasons I think have been understandable) but I have been in good faith always. They have been in good faith insofar as they have believed that the bullying did some good. It did not. It undermined me. I said so. They ignored me and bullied me more. And I will forgive that fact soon enough, I'm sure. I don't want this shit on my heart for any more of a length of time as I have to have it there.
But I have to say that now and for the entirety of my life, as someone who grew up among rougher folks, in rougher neighborhoods, with a rougher family than usual, probably, and who works with some of the roughest kids that teachers encounter: I hate bullying. I hate it with a passion unparalleled by likely anything I can feel that kind of feeling for something in my life. I hate bullying for bad reasons. And I hate bullying for good reasons. Of course bullying for good reasons, is understandable. It is also corrupting insofar as it makes us arrogant with power. And it makes for a very cynical world that I am ready to see put behind liberal democratic and not-so-liberal-democratic societies.
Bullying, in its broadest sense, is the most profound scurge of the world that humanity has witnessed in its history. It is responsible, in one form or another, for the ugliest and most deeply disturbing crimes against humanity committed by people upon one another. It is genocide, repression, authoritarianism, political imprisonment, patriarchy, racial oppression, discrimination and repression based on religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and every other form of repression and oppression known to humanity. Bullying is the basis by which all other repression and ugliness occurs.
And, right now, we are rationalizing it as the philosophy of governance best suited to the liberal democratic world, after a century of challenging it as the best means of governing humanity and putting behind us a century of bullying and force as the central organizing principle of Soviet, Nazi, Communist, Fascist, theocratic, despotic, and all other forms of the worlds most serious ills of the 20th century.
Too far, so many cynics rationalize. The problem with Naziism was not that it was an ugly, corrupt philosophy of people and governing that built on genocide, imperialism, and all of the worst human impulses. The problem was that the Nazis went too far. The problem with Communism was not that it is was built on a philosophy hostile to humanity's freedom and built on the premise that enslaving, imprisoning, and murdering people for the ends of equity was preferable to allowing people to freely settle their own affairs, including affairs of equity, freely. The problem was that Communists went too far. Had they only stayed within the confines of moderate hostility to people who were judged inferior or unworthy or had they only stayed within the confines of the moderate hostility to people and their freedom, then they would have been more civilized. I'm quite sure that many moderates of this era and past eras have thought such ugly things. I've know people who have done so openly with me.
The problem with those philosophies is that they bullied too far, too much for their ends, people reason.
Not that the bullying is wrong. But that those particular bullies were wrong.
And hence the rationalization of all of the worst behavior in liberal democratic and not-so-liberal-democratic countries at the beginning of the 21st century.
I hate bullying. All of it. I understand that people with authority often inadvertantly bully. I do, I know, often because I am supporting colleagues who are bullying when it is unnecessary and, often, an incursion into a legitimate freedom for a kid to exercise. But I back teachers up, generally, both because they often have reasonable enough requests, and because I want to be backed up too, when I really do need someone. Also, often, because I have been pressured to do so by administrators. And often enough because I am so used to a bad habit.
When I think about it, I've given as well as I've taken on this one. I've been bullied by colleagues and administrators. And I've bullied kids, as all of us have and as all teachers do. Often and generally for reasons that are completely understandable. But, like I said, it doesn't make it feel any better when it happens.
And that is how Naziism succeeded for a time, sadly. Because the Nazis were smart enough to know that is they could capture legal authority, they could impose all sorts of ugliness and the German population would, often and generally, feel compelled to carry it out. Some people had more courage and challenged, circumvented, blunted, covertly disobeyed, and otherwise found ways to stop some of the ugliness of Naziism. Many, if not most, others complied.
And that is what a compliant society that sacrafices liberal democratic values to a governing philosophy built on force and compliance looks like.
And I cannot think of anything sadder than the idea that this is where the growth of liberal democratic countries and values would be stunted at the beginning of the 21st century. With the notion that this kind of force and compliance, bullying for every political cause, is the fulfillment of our most cherished liberal values. It makes no sense at all. But worse it undermines all of our most serious and important cultural values. It is most definitely not the most honest way to engage. And it undermines more honest engagement because it silences critics and those who might express problems or reservations with its consequences in their lives. It is all of the problems with more repressive regimes, just less pronounced in less repressive liberal democratic regimes.
And I hate bullies of ever stripe and always have, long before I started studying policy and governance more formally. Bullying is not about honest engagement or reasoning. It is getting what we want. At the societal level, it is a forced consensus that must, if we are honest, give way to a more genuine means of engaging one another. It does much damage. And does not nearly the good that it presumes. By the logic of the current period, the repression of every government that has ever existed could likely be rationalized. As long as we have good intentions and a good goal in mind, then we can legislate, pressure, force, and bully as we will to get whatever ends we wish. Laws against adultery, homosexuality, pornography, alcohol, gambling, usery and all of the like were all based on similar premises. And they have all done much harm to individuals and to humanity, generally. And I am tired of this kind of reasoning dominating me and the rest of the liberal democratic and the not-so-liberal democratic world.
I am tired of the bullying. I hate bullying. I love the bullies. All of them. Including Kim Jong Il (though I have to admit that I wouldn't cry if he encountered a tragic fate) and all of his ilk. But I hate the bullying. I hate it with a passion. And that hate for bullying will never go away, no matter who is doing the bullying or for what cause.
That makes me human, I hope. It doesn't make any of us weak. It makes us decent.
And decent is what I want to remain. So I have no use for rationalizing something less than decent so I can have things I want.
What I want is a world where we treat each other decently. That's what I want. More than anything else. And I want to see it as much as possible before I die.
But, right now, I just want to forgive this bullying I've encountered this year.
And I don't ever want to face it again.
And if someone asks me what my most important lesson was my first year at Eisenhower, it will be:
I will never ever let people treat or bully me like that ever again.
Love,
Ben
