I Find That Offensive!' by Claire Fox

Author:Claire Fox [Fox, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785900556
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2016-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Culprits: the anti-bullying bandwagon

The bastard child of the child protection industry that has done most to inculcate children with the idea that speech causes long-term damage is the anti-bullying bandwagon. It has contributed enormously to frightening today’s kids with stories of the threat posed by their peers, while also pathologising quite normal peer-to-peer tensions.

Anti-bullying has grown exponentially over the past twenty years. Under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, state schools are required to have anti-bullying policies. New forms of bullying and powers to intervene are on the rise. The Education Act 2011 gives teachers stronger powers to tackle cyberbullying by providing a specific power to search for and delete inappropriate images or files on electronic devices and mobile phones. Government-backed bodies now provide special training in spotting sexist, sexual, homophobic and transphobic bullying.

In 2005, when he was the Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green claimed that the one issue ‘every child I have met has been affected by, with virtually no exceptions, is bullying’.55 But that should be no surprise when we look at how bullying is defined today. Fifteen years ago, my ten-year-old niece came home in tears and, after coaxing, told me that she was being bullied at school. Was she being beaten up by nasty older kids? Having her dinner money stolen? Her head pushed down the girls’ toilet? Eventually she revealed that some of her friends had gone to the cinema without her. I was relieved and started to reassure her: this wasn’t bullying, we all fall out with friends and it is part of growing up, she would find better friends etc. However, she indignantly corrected me and quoted her school’s anti-bullying policy on ‘exclusion from friendship groups’ and ‘exclusion at playtime or from social events and networks’.

My niece even seems to have neuroscience on her side. Act Against Bullying, a campaigning charity, gives a scientific explanation for why ‘exclusion bullying’ literally hurts: ‘We have always known that being left out of things on purpose can cause hurt but now science is beginning to prove it. In fact the notion of feeling deliberately excluded causes the same sensation in a pain centre of the brain as an actual physical injury.’56

Helene Guldberg, whose book Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear perceptively exposes so many of the problems with the obsession with bullying, notes how an industry of self-styled anti-bullying experts has increasingly expanded definitions of bullying into the psychological realm. Bullying now includes: ‘teasing and name-calling’; ‘having your stuff messed about with’; ‘spreading rumours’; ‘verbal sexual commentary’; ‘homophobic taunting’; ‘insensitive jokes’; ‘bullying gestures’; and even just being ‘ignored by other kids’.

Children are subjected to an endless stream of anti-bullying assemblies, activities, books, movies, specially written school dramas and, of course, celebrity victims. There seems barely a celebrity who has not publicly spoken out to support the anti-bullying movement. Tom Cruise, Ryan Gosling, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Eminem, Christina Hendricks, Chris Rock, Justin Timberlake, Ellen DeGeneres, Kelly Clarkson, David Guetta,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.