A Time for Change

British Olympic Diver Tom Daley

Britain’s second youngest male athlete has been temporarily removed from his school because of his classmates’ bullying, which became worse after the Olympics.    He’s only 14 and he has had to put up with verbal threats and phycial bullying before the games, it is worse now.  

In an interview with Britiain’s the Guardian, he tried to brush it off to make it appear that he was coping, but clearly the bullying must have been getting to him.

Daley is already plunging towards London 2012 but his exuberance is now bolstered by resilience. And yet, sitting next to him on a Tuesday morning in the school holidays, it’s difficult not to feel sympathy for all he endures in his supposedly ordinary life at Eggbuckland Community College in Plymouth. His delight in an extended Easter break is two-fold. Apart from presenting him with a chance to progress further in the world series this weekend in Sheffield, Daley can escape the taunts that blight his life at school.

“It’s gone on a long time,” he says of the hounding that now resembles bullying, “but it reached a peak after the Olympics and has just stayed there. They’ve been taking the mick for ages, calling me ‘Diver Boy’, but they now spend most of their time throwing stuff at me. I thought it would calm down but it hasn’t.”

Daley shrugs when asked if he is being targeted by a group of kids who resent his celebrity without understanding the dedication and loneliness that dominates his diving life. “It’s even the little kids,” he says. “They copy the older ones. Normally I try not to go out during breaks if I can help it. I just stay in class.”

It sounds sad that a 14-year-old has to be cooped up inside his classroom in order to evade jibes sparked by his fame as a diver. “It is sad and annoying that I can’t have a normal school life. But I put up with it because I’m doing something I love,” Daley says. “And I’m lucky I’ve got four good friends. They either sit in class with me or we try and find a far-off corner of the field where no one can see us.”

Daley is fatalistic when asked if the school is doing anything to help him. “If a teacher sees the kids doing it they’ll tell them to stop, but I’ve got to the point that I really don’t care. I’m away from school a lot anyway.”

Apparently he was having a harder time than he made out because just one week later the 14 year old has been temporarily removed from his school. Now the Guardian reports that the bullying has been far more severe than he let on in the prior article:

Rob Daley, from Plymouth, Devon, said he is considering moving his son from Eggbuckland Community College because of the constant jibes and “childish name-calling and antics” of his fellow students.

Daley said that he had kept Tom at home this week in case the bullying affected a competition in Florida next month.

“The bullying is severe,” he said. “He has been tackled to the floor walking through the school field and in class they throw pens and pencils at him.

“Some of them have even threatened to break his legs. That was the last straw. It has got to the point where enough is enough.”

Daley said that the situation had progressed “way beyond mickey-taking”.

He added: “The school has had plenty of opportunities to sort it out but it hasn’t been done. Unless they can show me that it has stopped I’ll have to move him to another school.

“It’s just jealousy – it can’t be anything else. He just wants to go to school and be educated and he has the right to do that.”

How can a child learn anything in that type of environment?  How can the teachers and staff at the school allow this to go on and on?

The college’s principal, Katrina Borowski, confirmed that Tom’s “extremely high profile” had led to a number of “immature” students being disciplined.

She said: “Meetings have been held between college staff, parents and Tom’s friends in which appropriate strategies were discussed. Certain students have been sanctioned.

“We take the wellbeing of students extremely seriously and have a very clear policy for dealing swiftly and firmly with any incidents of conflict that arise.

“This involves working in close partnership with parents and other agencies where appropriate.”

I’m sorry, but that sounds like the usual garbage that rolls off an administrator’s tongue when they can’t accept failure.  The kid was enduring this prior to the Olympics.

Two eleven year olds have hung themselves within the last month from severe bullying and especially from being called “gay.”

 Jaheem Herrera was the latest child to kill himself from bullying. The child was subjected to repeated bullying, which was both physical and verbal.  The Dekalb County, Georgia District Attorney is reviewing the case to determine whether criminal charges will be filed.  Charges, however, will not bring Jaheem back.  I recently did a post on this and received some email from people who claim that the school did absolutely nothing about this despite the parents’ persistent efforts to get them to take action.  If that is the case, this is just an unbelievably tragic situation for all involved.  The school could have, and should have, taken action and saved this young life.

 Carl Joseph Walker was the other 11 year old.  Why are these children being so severely harrassed and why aren’t schools doing more about this?  According to the  Bostonchannel.com, Carl’s mother said that “in a recent incident, her son was harassed by his classmates after he bumped a TV with his backpack that bumped into a girl. Walker said the girl threatened her son with harm, and administrators did not do enough to stop bullying against Carl.” The school administrators were inept in resolving the problem. “According to Walker, school officials decided to try to mediate the conflict between Carl and the girl by having them eat lunch together for a week. She said the plan was poorly conceived and failed to help her son.”  She called the school every week.  They failed her and Carl.

Seriously, the solution was for the bullier and the bullier to eat lunch?  According to Psychology Matters, Dan Olweus, PhD, of Norway, is “recognized as a pioneer and “founding father” of research on bullying and victimization.”  As the expert,

Olweus defines school bullying in a general way as “repeated negative, ill-intentioned behavior by one or more students directed against a student who has difficulty defending himself or herself. Most bullying occurs without any apparent provocation on the part of the student who is exposed.”

In his 1993 book, Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do, Dr. Olweus identifies characteristics of students who are most likely to be bullies and those that are most likely to be victims of bullying. Bullies tend to exhibit the following characteristics:

• They have a strong need to dominate and subdue other students and to get their own way
• Are impulsive and are easily angered
• Are often defiant and aggressive toward adults, including parents and teachers
• Show little empathy toward students who are victimized
• If they are boys, they are physically stronger than boys in general

The typical passive or submissive victims, according to Olweus’ research, generally have some of the following characteristics:

• Are cautious, sensitive, quiet, withdrawn and shy
• Are often anxious, insecure, unhappy and have low self-esteem
• Are depressed and engage in suicidal ideation much more often than their peers
• Often do not have a single good friend and relate better to adults than to peers
• If they are boys, they may be physically weaker than their peers

These characteristics are likely to be both a partial cause and a consequence of the bullying. There is also another, much smaller group of victims, called provocative victims or bully-victims, with partly different characteristics, including frequent reading and writing problems and ADHD characteristics. The behavior of the bully-victims tends to elicit negative reactions from many students in the classroom, and the teacher often dislikes them also. 

When the teachers and adminsistrators have a negative reaction to those who are bullied, you have the perfect storm for a child to feel helpless, alone and hopeless.  

There are some success stories in how to handle bullying in school.  According to Psychology Today, in 1982, northern Norway experienced a series of incidents where children were severely bullied similar to the above-referenced incidents.  

Three boys between the ages of 10 and 14 killed themselves, one newspaper reported, to avoid continued severe bullying from schoolmates. But the story would not die. Nor would it shrivel into self-pity. An entire nation erupted. The following fall, scarcely nine months later, a campaign against bullying was in full swing in all of Norway’s primary and junior high schools, launched by the minister of education. And its architect, Dan Olweus, Ph.D., a psychologist who, in 1970, had pioneered the systematic study of bullying, became something of a national hero in Sweden.

The difference between the American and the Scandinavian experience could arguably be summed up in four words: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A nation whose toys are given to slashing robots in half seems to have more tolerance for violence as a solution to problems. Most Americans do not take bullying very seriously—not even school personnel, a surprising finding given that most bullying takes place in schools. If Americans think at all about it, they tend to think that bullying is a given of childhood, at most a passing stage, one inhabited largely by boys who will, simply, inevitably, be boys.

That attitude combined with the hate speech directed to gays, or people who are different and referring to them as “gay,” whether they are or not, is no small matter.  We actually have a term “bullycide.”  That should not be a part of our language.  Why can’t we follow Norway’s example?

Last week was the 10th anniversary of Colombine where two kids who were the subject of bullying went on a fatal shooting spree, killing a dozen people and injuring 21 others.

Haven’t enough kids died?  Isn’t it time to take this seriouslyand DO something about it?

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