Logical Extremes

Let's face it, children can be nasty.  To one another, in particular.  Not all children, of course, but enough of them to represent an ongoing problem that has plagued one generation after another from time immemorial and no one has yet been able to come up with any workable solution.  For the fact of the matter is, some people, even as children, have a mean and cruel streak and enjoy harassing others. 

These same children will grow into adulthood remaining mean and cruel, their character pathology making life miserable for others.

And, often enough, this type of character formation does not grow out of a vacuum.  Children model themselves, for the most part, on what they see around them in their most intimate surroundings; their family environment.  If the parents have no compunction over being anti-social or critical of others, or expressing their contempt and acting on it toward others, their offspring are fairly quick to pick up the clues that this is an acceptable mode of behaviour.

Threatening others feels empowering to some, it leaves them with a sense of having achieved a certain type of mastery over others.  It can be intoxicating to those personalities to respond to that kind of stimulus.  When young people have been raised in such environments they feel justified in continuing to express themselves as bullies. 

And, even when the parents are notified, for example, by other parents whose children have been targeted, or by school authorities, very little changes.

For one thing, the parents of bullies, most often themselves beyond assertive of their right to behave as they feel suits them, do not really respond positively to criticism of their children's social behaviour.  They can generally find some reason to point out why their children legitimately 'respond' to others' provocations, denying that their own are the source of those provocations, not those whom they victimize.

Unless they can adequately point out in a reasonable manner that when other children are shy, reserved, overweight, gender-confused, nerdy or fearful, they are by their very nature, a provocation toward those who are self-assured, egotistical and mean-spirited.  The latest defence in a New Brunswick school system in defence of a 12-year-old boy who is gay and overweight, appears to be assigning a staff member to shadow the boy.

"I don't really like it because I'm losing a lot of friends because she's there.  She has to know whatever anybody tells me or whatever I say.  I can't keep anything from her", the boy complained, despite that the teacher's aide's purpose is to keep him from harm.  The result is, however, that the boy is effectively isolated and being babysat continually, leaving him completely friendless, and still a target for bullying.

The child that is a victim is stigmatized further, and separated even from those of his peers who might be his friends.  Teacher's aides are paid $16.48 an hour in New Brunswick, no less so when they are assigned to act as part of a "personal intervention plan".  If that personal intervention plan proves not to work then specialists such as psychiatrists are called upon to assist.

The student being assisted has little privacy, being followed during recess, lunchtime, and accompanied to bathroom breaks. 

What would happen if the teacher's aide was assigned to closely monitor the bully, not the victim, and apprehend the bully's acts of aggression and threats and intimidation?  Furthermore, paying for the teacher's aide's salary not out of public taxes but directly from the offending parents' bank account?