Yesterday, Australians were horrified when footage surfaced of a fight between Melbourne schoolgirls. The clip was a reminder at just how ugly bullying can be, from the violent actions of the perpetrators to the feeble and gutless innaction of the bystanders.
To watch the clip please follow this link.
To add salt to the wounds, the response by professionals, ministers and educators have been extremely disappointing. Take this uninspiring comment from State Education Minister, Martin Dixon:
He said the department also has a zero-tolerance approach to bullying.
All schools are required to have anti-bullying and cyber bullying policies in place that students are made aware of and expected to adhere to.
This extends to appropriate mobile phone use, he said.
Government ministers often coin the expression “zero-tolerance” because it sounds good. But what does it really mean? I looked up the department’s so-called “zero tolerance” approach on their website. This is what it said:
All Victorian government schools are required to include anti-bullying strategies in their Student Engagement Policy (or their Student Code of Conduct).
Schools have a duty of care to take reasonable measures to prevent foreseeable risks of injury to their students.
Does that sound like “zero-tolerance” to you?
And the standard line of schools requiring anti-bullying policies is predictable, but ultimately, it’s just pure spin. An anti-bullying policy, as I’ve argued here countless times, is just a piece of paper designed to ward off lawsuits. It’s to show that schools have a plan. The plan is usually quite vague, so as to avoid instances where they might be caught out not following their plan. It is also useless in cases where teachers and principals are unaware that bullying is taking place. Recent incidents have shown how blind schools have been to the bullying that pervades within its walls.
And if that’s not bad enough, psychologists and the media have decided to blame Facebook for this incident. But Facebook doesn’t pull a girls hair or drag them on the ground. Bullies create bullying behaviours, not social media. The medium is not the real issue here. The real issue is that bullying exists, it is absolutely unnaceptable and must be seriously dealt with. Not by programs or policies, but by a change of mindset and culture.
The very worst response we could have garnered from this awful exhibition of bullying is, “Oh, that’s just because of Facebook.”, or “That’s as a result of an ineffective anti-bullying policy.”
How many more incidents do we need to watch before we dispense with the spin and blame game and start to see this for what it is – a complex and delicate problem that requires much more attention.
Topical Teaching 
