We need to talk about bullying – as a nation

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/20/bullying-nation-unhappiness-children-schools

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Related: English children among the unhappiest in the world at school due to bullying

England is among the world leaders in bullying. Today, the Children’s Society released its annual Good Childhood Report. In an international comparison of children’s happiness in 15 countries, the report found that England ranked bottom “for a number of aspects of children’s wellbeing, including those relating to school life, bullying and, especially for teenage girls, feelings about themselves”. Half of children in England say they “have been left out by other children in the last month”. This means that England ranks at the bottom of a 15-country table for emotional bullying. Children in Ethiopia, Algeria and South Korea are subject to far less emotional bullying than children in England.

The report’s authors say that their research has highlighted that children who have been bullied are much more likely to be unhappy than other children. As Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, told me: “Children with low wellbeing are far more at risk of having mental health problems. The research we are releasing today shows that bullying is one of the key drivers of this.” Reed’s collaborator Jonathan Bradshaw, from the department of social policy and social work at York, says that for English girls emotional bullying is a more “important determinant of their wellbeing than anything else”. Bradshaw adds that being bullied is the “most important factor – the one that explains most of the variation in happiness”.

If inequality is part of the structure of our society, then bullying is what powers it

I know from personal experience the effect bullying has on your mental health. And I know too that, while schools make more of an effort to tackle bullying these days, there is still a tacit acceptance in our society that bullying is a natural part of life and that it is, in fact, something that “shapes character”. But what kind of character does it shape? A character that is often disgusted and frightened of the vulnerability it finds within itself and seeks to destroy that weakness by punishing others.

At school, I felt unable to say anything about what was happening to me. I wasn’t even sure that what was happening to me could be called bullying – it just seemed like ordinary life. Even when, one afternoon, I found myself barricaded into a toilet stall for what felt like hours, cries of “freak, freak, freak” filling the urine-flecked air, I thought to myself: “Sure, this is normal.” Even when I ripped the metal toilet-roll holder off the cubicle wall and started wildly, futilely digging it into my side of the barricaded door I thought: “Just another Tuesday afternoon.” Even when, after the group had jeered, “Calm down freak, we’re only joking”, and I was left sitting on the floor of the bathroom, I thought: “This is what life is like.”

And life, for more than two years, was like that; a daily pageant of pain and humiliation. I was a weird, talkative kid who needed – like every other kid – to be loved. My need to be loved had been exposed by the group, and the group, hating that weakness in me and in them, had tried to bully it out of existence. At the time, my school didn’t seem to care. Exam results and sporting success were the priorities. There was no one you could talk to about bullying and I was too embarrassed to say anything. Even today, I had to get in touch with two friends from those days to ask them if they thought what had happened to me was bullying. “I would call it bullying, and there was a culture of that stuff there,” said one. “Yes I would,” said the other.

Related: Children who are bullied feel traumatised and isolated. I know – it almost killed me | Hope Whitmore

When I left school, I began to realise that life didn’t have to be like that. I began to realise how depressed the bullying had made me. How it destroyed me to the point where I had no idea who I was, beyond being someone desperate to just fit in. How it had had a significant impact on my exam results, my choice of university, my relationship with my family – who I could not talk to about it – and with the way I interacted with absolutely everyone I met.

Once I began to understand what had happened, I became very angry. I hated the people who had done it to me. I hated their conformity. I hated their narrow-mindedness and I saw these things – and still see these things – in the society around me. I am less angry now but I know that being bullied has made it hard for me to get close to people. It’s made it hard for me to accept wholeheartedness and vulnerability in others because when I see it, I see a bullied teenage boy desperate to be liked.

After I left school, I was lucky enough to have the kind of economic and societal resources that allow people to make a life for themselves. Others are not so lucky. The Good Childhood Report finds that children in the care system and from low-income families are particularly likely to be bullied. This is hardly surprising. We cannot stand the vulnerability of others and these are our society’s most vulnerable people. The language our politicians use only exacerbates and entrenches this. As Reed says: “Most children who live in poverty are in working families … if the message you are constantly picking up is that you are somehow a drain on society, then that will have an insidious affect.”

If inequality is part of the structure of our society, then bullying is what powers it. It’s a way of explaining why some people have more and some people have less. This explanation becomes about the weak and the strong. Some people are just stronger and therefore deserve more. Other people are just weaker and therefore deserve less. Our society – and particularly our current government – doesn’t care about inequality and so it relies on the logic of bullying.

Reed alludes to this when he tells me: “Every year, the Children’s Society produces this report and every year we say that children are unhappy. There is some hand-wringing and then everyone forgets about it. We think the wellbeing of children should bother us a great deal. Is the education system really concerned about developing the whole child?”

As it stands, what the education system is concerned about is exam results. We know that unhappier people are less productive people, but we pay little attention to their happiness. We are a society of: “Keep calm and carry on.” We just want to get by without complaining too much, but the fact that bullying rates are significantly lower in other countries tells us that it is something present and even encouraged in our culture, and we could and should do something about it.

We also know that bullies are just as unhappy as those they bully. The tired response to this is that those who are bullied should just rise above their bullies, but anyone who has been bullied knows that this is not always possible. There’s nothing cool about parroting “you’re the one with the real problem” back at a bully. Only when we have an honest discussion about the weakness and vulnerability in our society will we make progress on bullying.