We have all seen these; the commercials, the school rallies, and the posters around schools telling kids they shouldn’t bully. Now if this is all over the place and constantly told to kids, then why is it still going on? Easy, it doesn’t work.
Have you ever told a kid who’s always breaking the rules not to do something? They will do it anyway, it’s the same with these anti-bullying movement. Kids know that it’s not nice to bully others but they do it anyway. So if they already know that and do it anyway, why would an adult telling them not to do it cause them to stop? It doesn’t, and we know it.
If we know it doesn’t work, then why are schools wasting their time talking about it to the kids? Easy again, to make it look like they are actually doing something. They know they can’t fix the problem, so they just make it look like they’re trying so that people can’t get mad at them. I remember the teachers making us watch anti-bullying videos, and the kids in class were constantly making fun of it. Even as kids we realized how ridiculous it all was, and kids still think those kinds of things are ridiculous and it’s not going to get better.
That is why my Silver Dove series does not focus on that, instead it focuses on the bullied kid. It teaches lessons to the kids getting bullied since the kids doing the bullying don’t want to listen. They know that they are doing something wrong and they are doing it anyway, so there is no point directing messages at them. Instead focus on the kids who actually need help and, hopefully, provide them with some kind of guidance so they can have the power to help themselves. That’s what these kids need, the strength to help themselves, so they can realize that perhaps what everyone is saying about them is wrong, to teach them to solve their own problems. We can’t just solve their problems, or else we teach them to be dependent. Give these kids strength and perhaps the problem may stop.