Australia’s Largest Christian News Site

Why is bullying getting worse despite new policies and programs? The answer may lie not in our classrooms, but in what we fundamentally believe about children.

As a former leader in schools (including being a principal), I concluded that how our students, parents and staff conduct themselves starts with what we believe education, and thus the classroom, is all about. Thus, bullying is not simply about laws and general culture. It is about what you put your faith in. That is because education is a deeply personal enterprise involving person-to-person engagement. It is a matter of the heart if it is to be more than instruction within the pretence of neutrality.

Therefore, when we teach, we are displaying our view of the world to those in front of us. It does not matter which subject is being taught – the way we contextualise our content, and the way we structure our relationships and learning processes in the classroom, all reflect our beliefs in who we are as human beings and what we are doing together.

It may be explicit (students know if they have a naturalistic evolutionist as a science teacher). It may be implicit (students know if they have a climate alarmist as a teacher). But, as Augustine reminded his readers in the fifth century, when we teach, “We are the message as well as the messenger.”

Why Has Bullying Come to Our Attention Again?

I was reminded again of the importance of understanding the link between teaching and beliefs recently when I heard someone discussing the new proposed laws the New South Wales Premier is suggesting in response to some horrific bullying at a school. The thought seems to be along the lines of “Let’s put in a law, and the thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students will do better!”

Yes, is seems we have an apparent growing difficulty in our classrooms. We also have classrooms that too often seem to lack the kind of authoritative discipline that children and youth need in order to develop their own self-discipline. As a friend of mine says who looks after ten schools, “Students cannot develop self-discipline in an undisciplined classroom.”

But why is that our classroom conduct seems to be deteriorating? Is it that the teachers have somehow jointly decided to become slack, so that they can teach less because there is more disorder in their classrooms? I doubt it. Is it that the school leaders have inevitably become tired of trying to fix all the problems, so don’t care anymore? Perhaps, in a minority of cases. Or perhaps the parents want schools to simply be fun and stress-free for their little darlings? There may be some truth in that.

I am certain that we could find instances of all these dynamics in some classes in some schools. However, there is something deeper at play. We can see it in more advanced stages in the UK and some places in the USA – London, California, and NY city come to mind.

Beliefs About the Child Have Changed

How have beliefs in schools changed in these kinds of places? It is that in many places of teacher training, core beliefs have changed. If you read about the social courses which are being taught in such training colleges and universities, you will see a trend.

The pattern involves dismissing the realistic heritage that is based on Judeo-Christian influence. For example, graduating teachers do not learn from where the concept of universal respect comes. That means they do not understand the utterly unique Biblical teaching that all people, although broken, are made in the image of God.

Instead, as authors such as ED Hirsch have explained, teachers are taught under the sentimental myth that children are basically good and just need redirection and better explanations. This is an unfounded romantic notion promoted by thinkers like Jacques Rousseau.

It is a part-truth that makes using discipline near impossible in a school or classroom. Without such discipline, leaders do not understand the difference between being authoritative (discipline with care) and being authoritarian (discipline without care). Instead, they give up on discipline.

Instead of agreeing we all need to commit to helping each other in learning to live respectfully with each other, students learn that they do not have to take responsibility for their mistakes. It is why your will not currently see the word “punishment” used in school discipline policies. The term punishment was replaced with the concept and word “consequences”. But now some teacher training programs do not even promote that concept. Instead, they use the term “redirection”.

The same struggle – of how we train the young to take responsibility for their actions and to respect others – can be seen in our welfare support systems, and even in our legal system. All these examples reflect a dominant emotivist socialism. We are taught that personal feelings are the basis of our personal conduct, within identities which are focused on self-defining sexuality. Thus, we determine our morality based on our personal desires and not on any agreement about what is the common good.

In a similar manner, the categories of social worth (oppressed or oppressor; my ethnic group or not; my sexual group or not) that are then established become the grounds for disliking others, which can grow into distain, and then into bullying. Within thinking that carries categories of worth towards others, bullying is a logical and valid outcome, because in bullying others I am being loyal to my group.

How Can We Understand and Respond?

So, how do we know the critical beliefs of those running our schools, or country for that matter? We work to understand in what (or who) they put their faith. In our multicultural society where it is expected that a person from one background can never make a judgement about the strengths and weaknesses of another culture, that means we develop a multifaith society with a combination of ethical bases – for example, the pressure to separate Westminster law from Aboriginal law and Sharia law. This diversity of beliefs leads to different sets of values, and thus, different commitments and habits.

How is a local school principal to accommodate different commitments that arise from these different faith perspectives? The only way is to determine their own beliefs of what is good for humanity and thus what is good for their community, including their school.

Once established, those beliefs can be taught and explained to all who wish to come to that school. If the parents want classrooms where, for example, children are treated differently because of their ethnicity or class or sexuality, let them establish that school. But if they want a school that is based on universal respect as per the Judeo-Christian heritage, then let their children come and be trained and nurtured into that way of living and learning. The Michaela Community School in London is an excellent example of how this can be done.

But to pretend a law will clarify this difficulty is genuinely simplistic. Instead, perhaps our leaders could seek to declare what is good in our society, identify from where those good beliefs come, and give school leaders – principals and teachers – the freedom to instruct and teach into that good and its heritage. Otherwise, watch the harshness, pain and futile posturing continue.

___

Image courtesy of Adobe.