Bullying

“ If you could stand coolly by, and see the cruelty you could check, or the wrong you could right, and move no finger to do it, you are not the reader I want, nor the human being I choose to know. I hold the cautious and sagacious man, who can look on at an act of bullying without stopping it and punishing it, as a worse and more despicable animal than the bully himself. ”

“ Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his “mug.” ”

“ It is curious to note that in the matter of bullying and cruelty, which used to be so rife at schools, public opinion among boys does seem to have undergone a change. The vice has practically disappeared, and the good feeling of a school would be generally against any case of gross bullying; but the far more deadly and insidious temptation of impurity has, as far as one can learn, increased. One hears of simply heart-rending cases where a boy dare not even tell his parents of what he endures. ”

“ Most of us leave school with the impression that there was a good deal of bullying when we were little, but that the institution has died out. The truth is that we have grown too big to be bullied, and too good-natured to bully ourselves. ”

“ It's very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally—you youngsters, mind that. You'll be all the better football players for learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through. But depend on it, there's nothing breaks up a house like bullying. Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying gets ahead here. (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) ”

“ It would be truer to say that every house contains one boy who is bullied. Most boys go through their schooldays without being subjected to any bullying, but most boys indulge in a little spasmodic bullying themselves. ”

“ This is a step in the right direction. The bully, whether in school, in the street, in business, or among nations, should be taught that his bullying is unsafe, and that if he must fight he must choose a "fellow of his own size." ”

“ I therefore add a few extracts from the letter of an old friend and school-fellow, than whom no man in England is better able to speak on the subject:—
"What's the use of sorting the boys by ages, unless you do so by strength: and who are often the real bullies? The strong young dog of fourteen, while the victim may be one year or two years older. . . . I deny the fact about the bedrooms: there is trouble at times, and always will be; but so there is in nurseries;—my little girl, who looks like an angel, was bullying the smallest twice to-day. ”

“ MR. ROBERT BELCHER: I have been informed of the shameful manner in which you treated a member of my family this morning—Master Harry Benedict. The bullying of a small boy is not accounted a dignified business for a man in the city which I learn you have chosen for your home, however it may be regarded in the little town from which you came. ”

“ I know a young man of twenty-eight, who told me, that, when at school in a certain large city in Peru, (let us say,) he never went into his class any day without feeling quite sick with nervous terror. The entire class of boys lived in that state of cowed submission to a vulgar, stupid, bullying, flogging barbarian. If it prevents the manners from becoming brutal diligently to study the ingenuous arts, it appears certain that diligently to teach them sometimes leads to a directly contrary result. The bullying schoolmaster has now become an almost extinct animal ”

“ A groom who tried to cure a shying horse by roughness and violence would be discharged as a brute and a fool. A man who would regulate his watch with a crowbar would be considered an ass. But the person who thinks a child of delicate and nervous organization can be made bold by bullying is no better. ”

“ How his cowardice worries him, meets him at every turn, torments him, lest some incautious word be repeated, lest he say or do the wrong thing. And so long as there are cowards to employ, bully employers will exist. Nay, the cowardice seems to call out bullying qualities. ”

“ If he saw a big boy bullying me, he wasted no words in useless remonstrances, but instead, off with his jacket and fought him at once. You must not think him a quarrelsome boy, who always wanted to be fighting ”

“ The chapter of bullying among boys is one on which a man enters with reluctance. Boys are, on the whole, such good fellows, and so full of fine unsophisticated qualities, that the mature mind would gladly turn away its eyes from beholding their iniquities. ”

“ But it seems to me to interpret perfectly the attitude towards bullying that exists in most houses. No doubt there was a great deal of bullying fifty years ago. And people think that what was true of the Rugby of Tom Brown's Schooldays is true [Pg 65] of the Shrewsbury of to-day. ”

“ A boy that can bear malice, and refuse quarter to a fallen foe, is very little different from a bully himself.
Rather be careful to show yourselves Christians and gentlemen, even in the way you rid yourselves of bullies. It is one thing, in self-defence, to right yourself, and it is another to return evil for evil. The best revenge you can have is, instead of dancing on his prostrate body, to set him an example of forbearance and self-control in your own conduct, which shall point him out a surer road to respect and authority than all the bullying in the world could ever give him. ”

“ Student bullying refers to the behavior happening among students, where one party deliberately or maliciously bullies or insults the other party through body, language, network and other means, causing personal injury, property loss or mental damage to the other party. ”

“ To organize a recognized subordination of lesser boys to bigger ones must unquestionably tend to cut the ground from under the feet of the unrecognized, unauthorized, private bully. But I know that at large schools, where there is no fagging, bullying on the part of youthful tyrants prevails to a great degree. Human nature is beyond doubt fallen. The systematic cruelty of a school-bully to a little boy is proof enough of that, and presents one of the very hatefullest phases of human character. ”

“ But you must be informed that a rabble of shell and fourth-form boys do not constitute the school in any sense of the word. And understand too, that even if the majority of the school had been against us, we monitors are not quite so ignorant of our solemn duty as to make that any reason for letting a brutal and cowardly act of bullying go unpunished. You have been very silly, Kenrick, and have been just misled by conceit. ”

“ Boys who want to understand what real bullying is, should call to mind that parable about the servant who, having quailed and cringed and implored before his lord until he was forgiven his huge debt, forthwith pounced on a poor fellow-servant who happened to owe him a few shillings, and, deaf to the very entreaties which he himself had but a minute before used, haled him off to gaol till the last farthing should be paid. ”

“ The present writer knows of instances in which these young children have valiantly suffered at the hands of dull, bullying classmates, protecting themselves as best they might by agility and wit, since, of course, they could not possibly compete in size and strength. The gross indignities and tortures thus suffered are directly a penalty of being gifted; for little boys of like age, in the grade proper to their age, do not come into classroom contact with these over-age bullies to anything like the same extent, and hence do not become targets for the latter. ”

“ To such an extent did the bullying extend in some institutions at the date to which we refer that it is stated, and on good authority, that a boy was once roasted by his seniors to such an extent that he died from his exposure to the fire, whilst there are men now living who bear on their bodies the scars received by them when fags. ”

“ Bullying is essentially vulgar, and stamps the person who indulges in it as ill-conditioned and stupid. He tries to pass off his lack of brains with bluster, and to make up by tyranny for the contempt which his ill-bred manners would naturally secure for him. ”

“ It is worthy of notice, that, as a general rule, the higher you ascend in the social scale among boys, the less of bullying there is to be found. Something of the chivalrous and the magnanimous comes out in the case of the sons of gentlemen: it is only among such that you will ever find a boy, not personally interested in the matter, standing up against the bully in the interest of right and justice. ”

“ If a teacher finds a bully imposing on a small child, even although he may know that a good 363example to the bully is the means for his ultimate conversion to kindness and justice, he should stop the bullying first by the best means at hand, and afterward set about the character conversion of the bully.
Moreover, with very young children, in whom habitforming is largely a matter of pleasure and pain in the reactions of their deeds, punishment that is swift, sure and wise should follow the imitation of a bad act after its evil nature has been made clear. ”

“ Bullying must be fought with in other ways—by getting not only the Sixth to put it down, but the lower fellows to scorn it, and by eradicating mercilessly the incorrigible; and a master who really cares for his fellows is pretty sure to know instinctively who in his house are likely to be bullied, and, knowing a fellow to be really victimized and harassed, I am sure that he can stop it if he is resolved. ”

“ Not blind following where instinct leads, but modification, must be the watchword.
On the other hand, there are equally few tendencies that could be spared, could be absolutely voted out without loss to the individual or the race. Bullying as an original tendency seems to add nothing to the possibilities of development, but every other inborn tendency has its value. Jealousy, anger, fighting, rivalry, possessiveness, fear, each has its quota to contribute to valuable manhood and womanhood. Again, not suppression but a wise control must be the attitude of the educator. ”

“ If parents and schoolmasters, who are both judges and executioners, allow their own rule to be fortuitous, indulge their own irritable moods, punish severely a trifling fault, and sentimentalise or condone a serious one, a child is utterly confused. I know several people who have had their lives blighted, have been made suspicious, cynical, crafty, and timid, by severe usage and bullying and open contempt in childhood. ”

“ Fighting has gone out in schools, and none but decayed clubmen dare to deplore it: corporal punishment has diminished, and isn't needed, because children don't do savage things; bullying is extinct in decent schools; crimes of violence are much more rare ”

“ It is a desire to superimpose my own will upon another person. Sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. What is more dangerous is ideal bullying. Bullying people into what is ideally good for them. ”

“ Men of middle age, rather early middle age, remember the two following species of bullying to which they were subjected, and which, perhaps, are obsolescent. Tall stools were piled up in a pyramid, and the victim was seated on the top, near the roof of the room. ”

“ Broussais [285] {370} says, “There is hardly a lad who will not intentionally abuse weaker boys. This is his first impulse. His victim’s cries of pain restrain him for a moment from further maltreatment, if the love of bullying is not native with him. But at the first offered opportunity he again follows his instinctive impulse.”
Even the power of training is reduced and is expressed in the proverb, that children and nations take note only of their last beating. ”

“ Perhaps that pale, quiet friend of yours, who looks as though he had scarcely strength enough to lift his heavy satchel full of books, and who always turns and walks meekly away whenever the great, hulking bully of the school says a harsh word to him, would, if placed in a situation of extreme danger, stand his ground and show the greatest coolness and courage, while that same bully would run for his life. ”

“ A classmate of mine at school excelled in strength nearly all his fellows. His strength indeed possessed him as it were a devil. He was as willing to exhibit it by hectoring the weak as by tussling with those who could put up a defense. It is fallacious to assert that the bully is always a coward. This boy was in many respects an egregious bully, but he was without fear. ”

“ But these things do not flourish in the full daylight and common consciousness of the school, and no more does cruelty. A tiny trio of sullen-looking boys gather in corners and seem to have some ugly business always; it may be indecent literature, it may be the beginning of drink, it may occasionally be cruelty to little boys. But on this stage the bully is not a braggart. The proverb says that bullies are always cowardly, but these bullies are more than cowardly; they are shy. ”

“ It was perfectly impossible to explain them, so I said a bully was the worst name I could call him, and that a coward was the meanest thing a man could be. Then the provoking boy said, "Is bully a worse name than devil?" ”

“ I have watched a big boy thrashing a little one, in the presence of half a dozen other big boys, not one of whom interfered on behalf of the oppressed little fellow. You may be sure I did not watch the transaction longer than was necessary to ascertain whether there was a grain of generosity in the hulking boors; and you may be sure, too, that that thrashing of the little boy was, to the big bully, one of the most unfortunate transactions in which he had engaged in his bestial and blackguard, though brief, life. ”