What do you think of when you picture a school bully?
A pudgy kid a bit larger with a baseball hat? A kid pushing kids down and saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry” when you know they did it on purpose? Someone stealing other kid’s lunch money?
Perhaps you think about the high school jock who terrorizes any boy who catches the eye of the girl he is interested in. Or the girl who acts sweet around boys but would ruin the reputation of girls who she sees as competition.
But What About Faculty?
What about teachers, principals, school board members, and rich parents?
We expect most faculty to care about children almost sacrificially, to work for a modest income out of love for teachings and for future generations. Do you have a favorite teacher? Can you remember all your teachers in your youth?
I imagine most of us have many teachers we remember very fondly–teachers we would love to see again. Teachers who influenced our lives and helped us to become better people.
And many teachers may have stood by us and protected us from schoolyard bullies. In fact, many schools have strict no-tolerance policies on bullying today.
But is There a Dark Side, a School Bully Perhaps?
There is. Isn’t there? At least I feel I have experienced it first hand. How about you? Can you first make a list of great faculty members you remember first before going into the dark side and listing the hurtful memories? It would be sad to remember the bad but not the good. And when remembering the bad, it is good to remember what blessings come out of those trials and tribulations.
Here’s my list:
Mrs. Clatworthy – Kindergarten.
Bullied and insulted kids for failing to get her point and follow instructions immediately. A rather harsh teacher.
Mrs. Niehoff – First Grade.
A beautiful soul and a great teacher. At six years old, reading groups were assigned arbitrarily initially, and I was in the second group but wished to be in Carrie Selby’s group–the top reading group. So, I wrote her a letter, and she felt that letter was all the evidence she needed to move me up.
Mrs. Daniels – Second Grade.
More gregarious than Mrs. Clatworthy, but mocked children who attempted to learn beyond her teaching. However, she noted my size and had an upper-grader desk brought in for me, and when I had some medical issues and went to the hospital, she had the children write me get well notes..
Mrs. Hagen – Third Grade.
Academically interesting and challenging, but overly strict. The reason I say she was overly strict is that she shook me and punished me for trying to cheer her with a joke I learned on the schoolyard and did not know was inappropriate
Mrs. Culp – Fourth Grade.
This lady had a strange smile like Chuckie’s smile. I do not have any complaint about her teaching. However, some boys in our class learned they could falsely accuse another kid of cussing and get that child punished. After some undeserved punishments, my parents had me transferred out of her class into another one.
Mrs. Moretti – Fifth Grade.
She was an old, strict teacher who liked to fight with Mr. Eskender over the friendly and fun way he led his class. I hoped my parents would transfer me out of her classroom, but she actually was not a bad teacher. I just noticed that another teacher, a Mr. Riley, seemed much more fun, and my sister later had him as her teacher for choir.
Mr. Eskender. Sixth Grade.
And, yes, that is the same Mr. Eskender. Mr. Eskender knew my parents from their school days, and he was a holy terror to his teachers. So, he knew all the tricks of the pranksters well.
Mr. Eskender taught us with stories of Rasputin and military shenanigans and when we got our schoolwork done, he would give us a special recess time and organize a baseball game or have us engage in jump rope as he loved physical education.
Junior High
Mr. Hosford – Seventh Grade Math and Advanced Band.
One of my favorite teachers to this day, Mr. Hosford’s love for both math and music were infectious.
He took time to teach us music theory and test us on it. We came away with almost a university degree worth of knowledge in music, and some of us were mid eleventh grade in our standardized math scores.
Mr. Pettit – 8th grade Algebra.
He was hilarious. Determined to swat a fly off the ceiling above his desk, he fell off, fortunately without injury.
He showed off to impress the class with advanced math, and sometimes he made mistakes that I would catch. The class would laugh at his expressions as he looked at me then at the board and back at me. Then he would go to the board, correct the error and continue, and look back at me again with a funny look.
And teachers like Mr. Pettit, Mr. Eskender, and Mr. Hosford were perhaps why I became a math major in my university studies.
Mrs. Hanson – Eighth Grade English.
I liked Mrs. Hanson, but her class was the beginning of my downfall in writing. With her course began a writers block that would last through Junior High, High School, and my university studies delaying my degree in math by about five years.
Let’s Stop Here and Examine This History
If you have read this far, congratulations on your endurance! What did you observe from this?
Most of us likely experienced the following:
- Some teachers build you up and some tear you down..
- Risk taking is encouraged by some, discouraged by others.
- Some teachers teach concepts. Some punish you for not knowing them.
- Many teachers show unfair bias scoring nonsequiturs harshly for those who do not agree with their preferred perspectives.
- Grades have inconsistent meaning. Some grade on compliance or agreement. Some grade on obedience. Some average scores. Some score on what competence was gained by the end of the semester. Some grade to open doors to teachers’ pets while shutting the door to other students with great potential.
- Grades can be a bully pulpit for propagandizing, brainwashing, programming, and teaching students what to believe rather than how to learn.
The Bully in Small Tech and Big Tech
Tech today has suffered great injury from what people call “Cancel Culture”.
Perhaps you have heard people speak of “Career Limiting Opinions”. While some say, “Go Woke, Go Broke”, most people know extremely well that this is a severe backlash from that culture that for decades has found conservatives and Christians and white people to be hated, distrusted, dragged into manager’s offices, denied jobs, fired, discriminated against, audited by the IRS, perhaps falsely listed on terrorist lists by the FBI, and such.
While most people do not experience the most severe of these problems, they are common problems just as the problems I mentioned earlier in schools and universities.
How to Deal With School Bullies
Nobody has a legitimate right to coerce you into believing anything.
A person may present their beliefs or argue their case. And a boss may have a right to choose who to hire if they own the business, and if they wish to hire someone to promote a belief or perspective.
However, when a boss is hiring for a government position paid for by the citizens’ taxes, that hiring is done to serve the public–not the boss’s pet biases. And this goes for schools and universities.
How is it. that universities and schools have allowed faculty to force woke ideologies onto students using their money or their parents’ money?
Furthermore, when somebody raises an objection, why do the abusers turn aside from the question to contend for the importance of promoting those values when the people are not only offended by those beliefs, but are offended at the arrogance of depriving students of their right to an engineering degree or a nursing degree simply because they don’t support transgenderism or abortion or secular humanism?
Since when do these non-religion religions have legitimate superiority over all other religious religions? Since someone called them a “non-religion” to escape the scrutiny and equal protection of the law?
Fight The School Bully and Fight Clean
It almost seems unfair to ask anyone to fight clean when the left clearly does not appear to fight clean. But take some time to make a list of the techniques you have seen them using. Especially note the unfair ones, the disingenuous ones, the ones that absolutely insult your intelligence, the ones that stand out as obvious lies, the gaslighting, the name calling, the straw man arguments, the nonsequiturs, the false statistics, the false accusations, the cheating in the elections, the discrimination in government, in schools, in universities, in workplaces.
Take note of them and consider honorable ways to fight back for each thing that comes to mind.
- What have others done in the past?
- What failed?
- What brought intense shame?
- When did you see great victories and what was done?
- Who are great heroes who had answers ready–people like Kayleigh MacEnany, Ted Cruz, Trey Gowdy, Martin Luther King, and yes, even Donald Trump.
Consider Training in Negotiation or Emotional Intelligence
Today, there is excellent training in emotional intelligence and negotiation skills. Two excellent courses are from
These may help you to negotiate a better situation for yourself in school with the school bully, in the workplace, or among a circle of friends.
These two courses are helping me greatly, though I am still learning.
It’s funny how you can appreciate a course like these more greatly after living a life of doing it all wrong. 🙂
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