A THEORY OF BULLYING

by Harry Valentine
Le Qubcois Libre, November 15, 2010, No 283.

Link: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/10/101115-8.html

The new school year had barely begun when stories of bullying started to circulate once again. TV host
Dr. Phil McGraw, for example, hosted a televised discussion on the problem of bullying in public schools.
While bullying behavior has existed in various forms throughout human history, earlier societies and
religious authorities developed means by which to discourage such behavior. The published works of
French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville and Dr. Helmut Shoeck provide insight into envy and
bullying. In his treatise entitled Theory of Envy, Shoeck advised that envy is at its most intense when
people are almost equal. In The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Tocqueville theorized that the
French revolutionaries who rebelled against the nobles were almost equal to the nobles. Much of the
female bullying that occurs in schools almost consistently involves a girl or a group of girls attacking a
peer who has more in common with her attackers than she has differences. Competition for the attention
of boys or significant adults is often at the root of much school-age female bullying.

The Pack Mentality

Female bullying is by no means exclusive to people. It often happens in the wolf compounds at large zoos
where the alpha female regularly bullies subordinate females. In the wild, the alpha female wolf will often
bully subordinate females that have reached sexual maturity to the point where they leave the pack. In
defining envy, Shoeck advised that an envious person does not want the attributes or possessions of
another person; they want to ensure that other people do not enjoy their possessions or get to use their
abilities or attributes.

In a wolf pack, the alpha female ensures through bullying subordinate females that potential competitors
that are practically her equals will not use their reproductive capacity to attract the attention of the alpha
male. Research into teenage female peer bullying suggests that the bullying females are often the popular
girls who are well liked by most of their peers of both genders and by significant adults. Interviews with
teachers indicate that female bullying is rampant in mixed gender schools and mixed gender classrooms,
with less bullying of peers occurring in single gender schools and classrooms.

The state is no innocent bystander in the phenomenon of peer bullying involving school-aged children.
With rare exceptions, school attendance laws compel children to attend schools where they are likely to
be bullied. Quite often, students learn ways by which to bully teachers to the point where 1 out of 3
teachers would likely leave the profession after five years.

State involvement in the food and drug industries may also be contributing to the epidemic of bullying
among school-aged children. State law in many jurisdictions often requires compulsory vaccination and
immunization of children. The web page of Dr Joseph Mercola and several of his contemporaries
regularly reports on problems involving various vaccines and other drugs. State law in many jurisdictions
allows farmers to inject a host of growth hormones and antibiotics into farm animals that are slaughtered
for sale in the supermarkets. Often the same politically well-connected pharmaceutical companies
provide the childhood vaccines, the growth hormones and the antibiotics.
Some 70 years ago, girls entered puberty around age 15, at about the time when most of them had
completed their schooling. At that point, there were no compulsory vaccinations and immunizations,
while most of the
meat sold at butcher shops was free from growth hormones and antibiotics. Also at that time, peer
bullying of pubescent girls was a rare occurrence in schools. Recently, though, there have been news
reports suggesting that increasing numbers of girls are entering puberty as young as 9 and 10-years of
age. It should come as no surprise that girls who become sexually mature at that age may actually engage
in the bullying behavior of the alpha female wolf.

The combination of state control of medicine, drugs, food and education is quite literally an act of
organized bullying that may actually be contributing to the growing epidemic of bullying that is sweeping
schools in many jurisdictions and many nations. Interviews with several teachers of pre-teen students in
one region revealed that up to 75% of their students were products of single parent homes, often with
half-brothers and half-sisters in the same classroom or same grade level. Teachers admitted to spending
most of their classroom time dealing with behavioral problems instead of teaching children the essential
skills of reading, writing and math.

Research undertaken internationally into youth gangs revealed that for most gang members, fathers were
either physically or emotionally absent in their lives. The gang leader and fellow gang members often
provide emotionally what a father and/or older male relatives would otherwise provide in a traditional
or extended family. Gang members who were interviewed individually after participating in a gang
activity such as a group assault or a gang rape admitted to doing so to gain acceptance, approval,
validation, acknowledgement and recognition from their peers. Several gang members even admitted to
not enjoying such acts and even to feeling degraded and dirty for what they had done.

Boys Behaving Badly

Interviews with teenaged boys revealed one of the motivations behind male school-aged bullying. The
bully achieved recognition and validation in the eyes of his peers and other onlookers. During an earlier
era, nobody else joined into schoolyard fights between two protagonists. In the modern era, friends of the
bully join in the attack against another child, for the same reasons as participants in a gang rape. They do
it to look good in front of their peers. Research indicates that young boys who attend single gender
classrooms that are taught by male teachers for several successive years have a very low propensity for
gang membership and low incidence of engaging in bullying behavior. At one time many years ago, all-
boys schoolsprivate schools with all-male staffexisted in many countries including parts of Canada.
Then came the affirmative action laws that encouraged feminist women teachers to challenge the hiring
practices of the all-boys private schools. Never mind that the parents who paid tuition fees wanted their
sons to be taught by male teachers. The state intruded in what should have been a private matter
between a private provider of services and its paying customers and ignored the fact that the boys who
attended these schools had mothers capable of providing a feminine perspective in their lives.

For boys who are compelled to attend government schools where the male teacher is a vanishing breed,
the only remaining institution capable of providing male leadership happens to be organized gangs.
Police departments are becoming alarmed that gang membership is increasing in many large cities. State
welfare policies that undermined the traditional family structure has increased the population of
fatherless boys who will forcibly be vaccinated and immunized with drugs of questionable efficacy after
which many will be prescribed anti-depressants that may come from the same companies that provide
the vaccines, the animal growth hormones and the antibiotics. Many of them are potential gang members
in waiting.

Much of their diet will include foods laced with growth hormones and antibiotics and they will be forced
to attend state schools. Retired award winning teacher John Taylor Gatto authored a book entitled
Dumbing Down in which he detailed the deficiencies of state schools, state schooling and the state
curricula that ultimately undermines students' abilities to think critically. Given the nature of state
involvement in the numerous aspects of children's lives, it should come as no surprise that there is an
epidemic of bullying underway in state schools.

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* Harry Valentine is a free-marketeer living in Eastern Ontario.