In an article on the recent Santana High shooting, Attorney General John Ashcroft made a statement about the bullying at Santana High that shocked me by demonstrating how clueless even this relatively sane politician is regarding the situation in our government schools. "It takes more than what the government can do," Ashcroft said. "It's going to take some response on the part of our culture to say that we don't want to promote the idea that violence is the way to solve all our problems."
While I certainly agree that dealing with this problem is going to take more than government, (if indeed government has anything useful to offer at all), I strongly disagree with the analysis implied in the rest of his comment. I'll go out on a limb and make this claim: Even if we removed all hints that "violence is the way to solve our problems" from our culture, removed all violent video games and movies, banned guns and made kids sing "Peace Train" every day there would still be boys beating up other boys at government schools. The problem is not, or at least not primarily, "culture".
Allow me to share some of my own experience. Being a scrawny boy, a bit eccentric and a pacifist I was an ideal target for "bullying". This "bullying" in my case meant about 8 years of physical abuse through elementary, junior high and high school. One incident I remember in particular from junior high involved two boys. One held my arms behind my back while the other slapped my face repeatedly as hard as he could. The sense of violation was far worse than the pain. I had done nothing in particular to get this treatment, merely been someone they perceived as vulnerable. I remember the sense of dread throughout this period of my life as I approached the especially dangerous parts of my school day: the bus stop, the hallway between classes, the locker room.
For myself this nightmare did not come to an end through adult authority. While I was in high school, my family took in a black inner city youth, (to this day a beloved "foster" brother), and he started attending my high school. He was decidedly not scrawny and a lot scarier than I was. He made it clear to the other boys that I was under his protection and that stopped the abuse and made for a much happier time in my childhood. It should be noted that all this occurred in one of the richest and best government school districts in my state over 15 years ago. By all accounts, the situation in government schools is even worse now.
How could all this happen with adults supposedly in charge? Let us assume, as economists are wont to do, that I was a rational child weighing the costs and benefits of my actions. If I "snitched" on one of my abusers to my parents or school authorities, the most I could hope for was a slap on the hand: perhaps a stern lecture or, if they were really serious, a week-long vacation, (i.e. suspension), for the bully. So perhaps I would have a break from that particular bully for a week. But then, having broken the schoolyard code, I would be subject to revenge. And the kids would have a thousand ways of making my life miserable that the adults wouldn't catch. With a ratio of 20 or 30 prisoners to every guard, I'm sorry, students to teachers combined with the adult's inability to exercise any substantive discipline there was little chance that adults would be able to protect me from the wrath sure to follow my breaking of the unwritten code. So I lumped it.
William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies has helped me to understand what I experienced. In that novel, a group of children find themselves stranded on an island without adult supervision and quickly revert to their natural savagery. For children are savage, even the girls in their own way. They do not need a "culture of violence" to teach them this. It is a civilized culture that teaches children to restrain their natural violence. We are born barbarians. It is the job of responsible adults to train their little barbarians into people who know how to respect the person and property of others.
Our government schools have been failing more and more in this essential task. These are not the schools that my parents experienced. These are not even the schools I experienced. The Lord of the Flies mentality that rules the government schools is now being revealed in the most tragic manner possible.
I have a question for you from my younger self: Where are the adults?
March 16, 2001
Stephen W. Carson is a working software engineer and a graduate student in political economy at Washington University in St. Louis.
