Bullying

I'll admit it. As a high school teacher, I wasn't always a model of sweetness. I sometimes said things to kids that were edgy at best, even a little cutting. I remember a time when my wife told me that I needed to be careful because words she felt were unnecessarily biting could wound a kid in a way I might never see or understand. 

She was right, but I was more than a little arrogant. I told her I knew which students could take a little verbal abuse and which couldn't. I told her some kids rather liked the attention, even it came in smart-ass remarks. I told her I understood what would wound and what wouldn't. 

I know that a good dose of lip can be weaponized for good. But I also knew that kids can be belittled by even a quick, passing shot. I told my wife I knew what I was doing. Whether or not that was always true is something I'll never know.

For the last five years of my life, this time of year has been little more than a continuing summer vacation. When people ask me, "Well, how was your summer?" the context is of an end because once upon a time "summer" came in a container. Today, August 15, I'd be shaky, scrambling to print out syllabi, angry at myself for being, once again, Prof. Procrastinator. Right about now, I'd be fearfully imagining what a classroom full of students was going to look like, my students, locked in for four months. How's it gonna go?

Right now, moms and dads are making sure all the knapsacks in the U.S. of A. are filled with the required goods. Right about now, teachers are hoping and dreaming about how they're going to wring sweet order from the ever-present danger of chaos, administrators doing the same. 

With all of that going on right now, it just strikes me as helpful to consider this: all of us--parents, principals, students, teachers, even proud grandparents--simply wouldn't tolerate anyone saying outright mean things. If Miss or Mr. Teacher called a kid a dog, we'd report it, even if the kid wasn't ours. We'd consider him or her an abuser, maybe even a criminal. A parental posse would form in a fortnight. There's no room for such behavior in a classroom. 

Once upon a time, I used sarcasm, sometimes so heavily that my wife told me to beware. I'm not without sin. 

But now we tolerate it from the President of the United States. If my son or daughter called someone else's child a dog, I wouldn't stand for it. But our President does it with seeming impunity from his adoring family. 

Does his belittling others, using the language of dehumanization, excuse such behavior when we do it? Might our doing nothing spread the contagion he daily spews on his Twitter page?

There is more jobs around since he walked into the Oval Office, more money spewing from the stock market, more bills in people's wallets. The economy is booming. We've got money coming out of our ears. Maybe that's what's made us deaf. 

But virtue, of infinitely more value, is dying.