(Facebook.com/pinkshirtday)
By Lyonel Doherty
Aberdeen Publishing
I was taken aback when a school administrator said that Pink Shirt Day does very little to prevent bullying.
Yes, wearing a pink shirt definitely raises awareness of the problem, but it doesn’t stop bullies from terrorizing others, according to some educational experts.
They say punishing bullies is not effective because it doesn’t address the root cause. Makes sense.
Think about it. Why would wearing a pink shirt stop bullying when the underlying problem is depression or abuse? And really, we shouldn’t need a pink shirt to remind us to step in whenever we see someone being tormented.
It’s less about consequences and more about relationship building.
I had a very interesting talk with a petite Grade 6 student who blew me away with her maturity and intelligence on the matter. Makayla Casorso is a peer mediator at Tuc-el-Nuit Elementary School. She was bullied in Grade 2 and has learned to defend herself (with words) since then. What struck me the most was her approach to dealing with bullies – be nice to them and don’t feed into their toxic playground.
Perhaps Makayla should be an apprentice of renowned school psychologist Israel Kalman who says the same thing.
He contends that Pink Shirt Day is doing more harm than good because it focuses too much on the poor victim, weakening children and reducing their resiliency.
Kalman teaches victims to empower themselves to survive the bully’s wrath. His advice is to treat the bully as a friend and don’t react in anger.
For example, if a bully teases an overweight student by calling him fat, the victim can remain calm and express how difficult it is to lose weight, and then ask the bully for his advice on how to shed those extra pounds.
The bully may continue the insults or just walk away realizing his domination game isn’t working.
In grade school in the 1970s, you wouldn’t have the nerve to use this approach for fear of getting a second black eye (to complement the first one).
Today, bullying is made so much worse by social media, where comments can be more hurtful than a punch in the ear.
I’d like to see the restorative justice program utilized for bullying cases, where the offender, victim and their parents sit down to resolve the conflict.
Parents and counsellors need to delve deeper into the route causes of bullying to find out what drives these youngsters to rule by fear.
But it’s not just the kids who need help; it’s the adults too . . . the co-worker from hell; the boss from the basement dungeon. We all know them.
Until we pull back the festering layers of what compels a bully to torment others, we won’t change anything by wearing a pink shirt and paying lip service to the problem.
