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Bullying: A Problem Sometimes Used as a Tool
In teaching our kids not to bully, are we actually creating more bullies and more victims?
Bullying is a big enough deal to have its own .gov website: stopbullying.gov.
There, readers will find that bullying has a definition that seems to become less rigid when applied to various targets of those who either possess the power to intervene or those self-anointed to judge. Bullying should not be condoned, justified, or encouraged, but it seems the approach to dealing with such unwanted behavior is resulting in more victims rather than empowered individuals.
Bullying, per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, involves “unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time.”
There’s no federal law that specifically applies to bullying, but most states have measures in place to define it, identify protected groups, specify reporting requirements, create safeguards, implement education and training, and establish consequences. A key in the resources and guides offered include creating a safe environment that would prevent and prohibit such behavior. Simply, the aim is to guarantee either no or limited exposure to unwanted behavior, particularly in a school environment.
The downside? School psychologist and author Israel Kalman posits that “anti-bullying education teaches kids that they are entitled to a life without bullying” and that society has a duty to protect them from potentially negative behaviors. Kalman argues that the move to create such a sterile environment free from any conflict is actually successful in creating more victims rather than dealing with the culprits or empowering others to deal with conflict resolution.
Kalman identifies three roles all are assigned in bullying, in the current approach embraced by academia and social activists: the bully who carries sole responsibility, the victim who is held completely harmless, and the bystander that either actively or passively enables bullying. Institutions of learning are held legally responsible to address bullying and, with this construct, adapt a “law enforcement” approach where all negative behavior is practically criminal. Each interaction — verbal and physical, along with even intentions — are monitored and analyzed by those in charge, who are employing a program created in the 1970s by Norwegian psychology researcher Professor Dan Olweus. The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) is considered the gold standard and, as such, is the most widely used in the world.
But social science has a problem living up to the true framework of being a system of knowledge that can be tested and replicated. In the case of OBPP, analysis shows that even when employed for a two-year span, the failure rate, when measuring a reduction in children’s reports of being bullied more than twice monthly, is 88%. Meaning that only a 12% reduction was documented in the 24-month study. Additional research duplicates this result and even records an increase in bullying. Kalman writes that the pathologies of perceived victimhood are actually as or more dangerous than the actual trauma or threat of a negative event.
It’s worrisome to understand that a generation, if not two, was raised to expect little to no exposure to some type of interpersonal conflict, seeking some hermetically sealed bubble of life that is isolated from the reality of humanity. Without exposure and experience in dealing with actual conflict, the need for “adulting” classes will continue to rise because we’re not raising fully developed humans. Instead, we’re seeing men and women of adult ages struggle mightily with responsibility, stress, group dynamics, and the typical unexpected events that pop up in life.
While bullying is criticized among academia and progressives, it’s often a tool used in their efforts to obtain the “moral high ground,” or to simply muzzle those deemed as the bully when it’s more like a difference of opinion. Look no further than last weekend’s monumental mischaracterization of events around the Covington Catholic School young men who were first described as disrespectful, aggressive, hostile, and racist. Why? Because it fit the narrative of the Presstitutes covering the March for Life.
Just as school roles are defined as either bully, victim, or enabler, leftists always mark their opponents as the racist, the bigot, or the whatever while they stand as the victim. The guise of victimhood is a powerful tool to silence critics, censor opponents, and marginalize those who challenge failed assertions.
Say no to the bullying of the truly innocent. Disarm those who use the premise as their own weapon.
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Mass.: Education bill would expand state’s power to intervene in struggling schools
Governor Charlie Baker’s new education proposal would expand the power of the state to intervene in struggling schools, opening up a major front in the coming Beacon Hill debate over how best to revamp the state’s troubled school funding formula.
Teachers and other education advocates slammed Baker’s plan, which includes enabling the commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to withhold some state aid from school districts if the department determines they aren’t making necessary changes to improve student performance.
“We find that appalling, to withhold funds from some of our neediest districts . . . in order to impose whatever plan the commissioner feels [is] best,” said Max Page, vice president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
“His proposal to take resources away from K-12 students whose schools are struggling, when those are clearly the communities that need the most help, is simply nonsensical,” said Lisa Guisbond, a member of the Fund Our Future coalition, which includes teachers unions and other advocacy organizations.
Baker administration officials describe the expanded powers for the commissioner, a position currently held by Jeffrey Riley, as another tool to close the achievement gap that has opened up between students in the state’s poorer districts and those in richer suburban areas.
Baker, a Republican who campaigned on not raising taxes, also tucked a series of new levy proposals into his budget plan.
“We’re talking here about giving the commissioner the ability to withhold central office funds from school districts that have schools that for three years in a row have underperformed,” Baker said as he unveiled his spending plans on Wednesday. “Now how long are we supposed to wait? Until a third-grader’s a ninth-grader, by which time they’re six years behind their peers?”
“What we tried to do here was create an appropriate way for the commissioner — a guy who really knows how to turn around these kind of schools and districts and has proven it for the past 25 years — to create a process that can bring both his knowledge and the knowledge of others, as well as some focus and urgency, into dealing with” schools that continue to stumble, Baker continued.
Baker’s education bill would give the commissioner more power to approve and shape certain measures in the schools’ formal turnaround plans — which are three-year road maps officials at underperforming schools must formulate to improve performance.
The Baker bill also proposes that if the commissioner finds at the end of that first three-year plan a school hasn’t taken key steps it was supposed to, he can withhold some state aid until the school follows through.
“At the end of the day, it’s really designed to never be used but to provide the kind of influence or leverage the commissioner — or for that matter the superintendent — may need in order to get stuff done,” James Peyser, Baker’s education secretary, said in an interview.
Administration officials stress that the money involved is administrative funding for staff, and wouldn’t come out of school budgets or money that directly serves students.
Baker’s bill contains carrots to help struggling schools that Peyser said could be used in conjunction with a threat of withholding funds to push a school to adopt changes the commissioner believes are necessary. These include a new $50 million “school improvement” fund, money the commissioner can give to troubled schools to fund specific performance-boosting initiatives, such as after-school programs.
Page, the teachers union official, contended the provisions are part of a broader effort by the Baker administration “to centralize power over school districts in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.” His group fears Peyser and Riley will use it as a “weapon” to force school districts to accept changes, such as more charter school seats, that the union believes the local communities don’t want.
Other advocates want to see even more strings attached to the new infusion of money pitched in Baker’s proposal.
A final bill should include some mechanism to measure that money is actually being spent to close the achievement gap, said Edward J. Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, which played a key role in the landmark 1993 law that established the state’s current education funding formula.
Calling Baker’s bill “a good step,” Lambert said his group also would like to see provisions aimed at improving the collection and use of data from individual schools as another way to track that “the money is going directly to the schools that need it the most.”
Baker’s education bill, unveiled Wednesday alongside his fiscal 2020 budget proposal, helped define the contours of another central aspect of the funding fight — just how much more money the state should spend.
Baker’s proposal envisions the state and municipalities together spending $1.1 billion more on educating K-12 students at the end of the seven-year ramp-up period. Administration officials said they did not have an estimate of how much the state aid would increase, but historically the state portion of the foundation budget has run about 45 percent, according to Peyser.
By contrast, a bill introduced earlier this year by state Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz and Representative Aaron Vega would increase the state portion alone by more than $1 billion at the end of a multiyear phase-in, according to aides. Numerous players, including the teachers unions, are backing the Chang-Díaz bill and its higher spending levels, and even advocates who haven’t endorsed it believe more funding than Baker has proposed is likely needed .
“Teachers and students have already been doing our part. We’ve been testing and we’re doing all these things that are our accountability measures. Now what we need really is for the state to do their portion . . . and that is our funding,” said Beth Kontos, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Massachusetts.
Another unknown factor is where House leaders will come down on the key questions, including how much state money to commit to struggling schools and what strings to attach to that cash.
Saying he’s yet to look at all the details of the 14-page bill, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo declined Thursday to address Baker’s proposal.
He also was noncommittal on the specific provision to withhold funding earmarked for administrative needs. “At the end of the day, I’m not sure if that will be part of our particular piece of legislation,” DeLeo said, adding he’d have to speak to various players.
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Teaching talent: UK universities recruit more Indian academics, number reaches 5600 in 2017-18
Many of these would have been "diversity" hires
The number of Indian students coming to British higher education institutions showed a minor rise in 2017-18, but the recruitment of ‘British Indian’ academics has continued to grow, reflecting expertise across disciplines: they now number 5,600.
The category includes individuals who are Indian citizens as well as British citizens of Indian origin. Of the 5,600 academics in this group in 2017-18, 2,620 were Indian citizens, new figures provided to Hindustan Times by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) show.
The 5,600 academics now include 450 professors, 105 categorised as ‘other senior academic’, and 5045 employed at ‘other contract level’. Indian academics are among faculty staff in almost every British university, conducting research and teaching a range of subjects. The numbers have steadily gone up from 3930 in 2010-11 to 5245 in 2016-17 before again increasing in 2017-18.
Previous and current Indian academics include economist Amartya Sen, educationist Sugata Mitra, engineer Kumar Bhattacharyya, cultural theorist Bhikhu Parekh, Sumantra Bose at the London School of Economics, and Jaideep Prabhu at the University of Cambridge.
In 2017, two India-born experts, Parveen Kumar (medicine; based at the London School of Medicine) and Pratibha Gai (electron microscopy; University of York) were honoured with damehood, the female equivalent of knighthood, one of Britain’s highest civilian honours.
Universities with the highest number of Indian-origin academics include Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, King’s College London, Manchester, and the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, the figures show.
Disciplines employing the largest number of Indian academics are Clinical Medicine, Biosciences, Business and Management, Mechanical, Aero and Production Engineering, and Information Technology. Many came from India for doctoral study and later took up academic positions.
The HESA figures complement findings of a 2015 study that said Indian academics in research-intensive universities are preferred due to their “single-mindedness, competitiveness, resilience and work centrality”, as well as their links with Indian institutions and knowledge of India.
The study found that Indian academics are “singled out for jobs over other candidates” partly due to their willingness to “play the game” of prioritising research over teaching.
The study by Dulini Fernando of Warwick Business School and Laurie Cohen of Nottingham University Business School said research-intensive universities in science and engineering departments, which recruit high numbers of international staff, found that “cultural, social and domestic capital” can put Indian academics in a more favourable position than home-grown talent.
Fernando said: “The Indian academics in our study used their valuable social connections to India and important cultural knowledge to obtain highly prized symbolic capital in the form of research partnerships with leading academics in the West, thus challenging the assertion that migrants’ networks and resources do not facilitate upward career mobility”.
“These findings show ‘ethnic capital’ advantages such as cultural knowledge and networks can be used to move up the career ladder.”
She added that the Indian academics surveyed were comfortable with “rules which require academics to prioritise research over everything else”. She attributed this quality to “single-mindedness, competitiveness, resilience and work centrality”, influenced by their early experiences of overcoming challenging circumstances and growing up in a society with limited resources.
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