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RE: [xmca] Youth Saving Youth
Hi everyone, a couple of years ago I carried out a very interesting study
(in the Valais in Switzerland) which I have not yet published on stereotypes
and prejudices with young people of 12 to 14. I don't want to go into all
the methodology of this study but part of it was questionnaires and in many
of them the female children stated that they had thought of suicide as a
solution to the name calling that they received. The results were exposed to
the teaching body who were shocked at what they thought to be a normal
everyday activity. They took measures to prevent name calling and harassment
in their school but as mentioned another xmca member it would in my mind be
more conducive to help the youths to have coping strategies. A second part
of the research showed that children that have been harassed make sense of
their world through these concepts thereby inflicting on others similar
behavior.
At the time there was the big suicide story going on in Wales UK and a
second incident in another part of the UK where a young girl committed
suicide due to name calling.
Denise
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
Sent: mardi 12 octobre 2010 17:49
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Youth Saving Youth
Having an international flavor has always appealed to me about XMCA. Could
others from countries not the USA please comment about bullying among
youth in their countries.
just interested
eric
From: Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: 10/12/2010 01:21 AM
Subject: Re: [xmca] Youth Saving Youth
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
Beth, yes, the youth activism and solidarity aspect really struck me,
too. I found it inspiring.
Mike, your question is loaded! - about how are we, whoever we may be,
supposed to behave once we "as a society" see the horrendous effects
that harassment, bullying, violations of privacy rights, etc. can have
on people, including being a direct cause of suicide.
Another recent NY Times article on bullying is attached below.
My first response to your question Mike is to think in terms such
as: the need for a new surge of understanding of the fundamental
concept that "an injury to one is an injury to all" among students and
working people - and a new willingness to act on this basic concept of
human solidarity. Perhaps the video clip Beth pointed us to is a peek
at the beginnings of such a surge among youth. I believe this will
happen, sooner or later. Hope springs eternal.
A less political line of inquiry, but possibly one that is more within
what CHAT can offer, might be questions about **why** harassment and
bullying occur. Why does it occur at all? Is it increasing? If it
is increasing - why? Even if it is just a matter of people becoming
more generally conscious of it - why is that happening? Clearly, gay
students and other students that are "different" (itself a very
peculiar concept) have been and continue to be on the front line of
receiving this kind of awful treatment. But why does this bullying,
harassment violations of privacy rights, (not to mention violence)
occur in the first place? Why does bullying exist?
I'm attaching a Word file of a recent NY Times article on bullying
among 5 to 8 year old girls. The editors classified this article
under "Cultural Studies." The article explains that this particular
phenomenon was not formally studied until the mid-1990's, so it is not
empirically clear what is new in terms of bullying among young girls
and whether it has actually been there all along. The article talks
about a Stop Bullying Now! campaign being organized by the government,
and a Bullying Prevention Summit, which was sponsored by the Dept of
Education in April 2010. Bullying is clearly becoming a major media
issue, and in some places, an openly discussed school issue. But is
anything really changing?
At the level of research on "why does bullying exist," my intuitions
lead me toward an approach that starts with how broadly, deeply and
pervasively the **competition between workers** for jobs and places in
society has historically impacted social relations. This is not a new
idea, but it is often buried under many others. (The article I am
attaching on bullying among young girls, for example, suggests
possible reasons such as: an increase in TV shows with "socially
aggressive" females, reality TV, and other media; hormones kicking in
at younger ages; mean girls coming from mean mothers; bullying
reflecting the larger society; and maybe parents are just more hyper-
aware of it these days.) I would lean toward examining the
competition between workers as a central cause, both as a permanent
feature of modern society, and also as something that keeps changing,
sometimes rapidly, such as in the current economy. I am including as
"workers" here all layers of the workforce, present and past - that
is, the unemployed, the retired, those with fixed incomes, the
unskilled, semiskilled, skilled, semiprofessional, professional, self-
employed, farmers, owners of small businesses, etc. etc. - in other
words, essentially, everyone but those in the upper classes. As is
now commonly acknowledged by most thinking people, especially since
the Black civil rights movement and the women's movement, this
competition (whatever its causes, which people disagree over - is it
human nature, or education, or culture, or the social system? etc.)
this competition historically manifests itself in many **overt** ways
- discrimination, class frictions, racism, sexism, heterosexism,
xenophobia, many, many forms of prejudice, etc. Struggling against
these overt forms has become an increasingly prominent theme in US and
other cultures for nearly half a century now. But apparently it is
now beginning to more deeply dawn on people that this competition also
manifests itself in more **covert** ways - not only in the intricate
and hierarchical ways that **adults** can treat each other in
workplaces, neighborhoods, markets, places of gathering, etc. etc. -
(not to mention marriages and relationships) - but also how
**children** and **teens** treat one another in schools, playgrounds,
neighborhoods, malls, sports activities, and families. In other
words, following this line of reasoning, just as fierce competition
exists between **current** workers and adults, it also exists between
**future** workers. And in some ways it may take even more naked
forms. We may learn much more about class society (which in the US is
structurally racist, sexist, etc.) by the time we are 13 - and even 6
- than we fully realize. After all, isn't this indoctrination the
number one purpose of schools? But we don't seem to just **learn**
about the social realities of this world - we also **react to** and
**act upon** them, probably at least since the moment we begin to
talk, and certainly beginning the day we start school. We **live**
these social relations and forms of competition from the very
beginning. As for this relatively new social question of bullying
among 5-8 year old girls, now that US women are not only now half the
workforce but also nearly half of the "breadwinners" - a remarkable
historic change we have been witnessing accumulate for many decades
now - it makes sense to me to look to these same pernicious and
pervasive forms of competition among working people as increasingly
impacting girls in similar kinds of ways that they have
"traditionally" (i.e., in modern capitalist society) impacted boys.
According to this line of inquiry, bullying isn't essentially about
human nature, or puberty, or gender, or even ignorance, per se, it is
about the way working people are forced to compete with one another in
a class system that is organized along racist, sexist, and other
lines. Children and teens are just creatively (and not infrequently,
cruelly) playing out within their daily social relations how the adult
world really works. Following the logic of this line of inquiry,
solutions would be sought in renewed and newly created mass movements
for democratic social change, new kinds of working class consciousness
that would unite working people, and a major restructuring of class
relations. The optimistic singing and solidarity of the Pride Youth
chorus, which has been ringing in my ears the last couple days, adds
to my sense of hope that such solutions are possible.
So that's one research approach - basing oneself on classical Marxist
sociology and combining it with lessons learned from the struggles
associated with the new waves of democratic and humanist consciousness
that emerged in the second half of the 20th Century - which spawned
and rediscovered so many powerful ideas associated with antiracism,
feminism, gay rights, sex-positivity, opposition to prejudice, the
rights of young people, the rights of the differently abled, etc.
etc. And then, for me, further combining these ideas with working
class unionism, solidarity and socialism. These are all my
intuitions, anyway. I realize I may be "different"! LOL
It is good to ask, as you do, Mike - what can we do about bullying and
its disastrous consequences? Damned good question!
My question back to you - and to myself: what can CHAT do to help
explore and penetrate the reasons behind these kinds of social
relations? What specific tools and concepts can CHAT offer, or
perhaps develop?
- Steve
On Oct 10, 2010, at 1:54 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
> I think part of what I was saying in the original email was a
> response to
> this: what struck me about this particular video is that it was a
> youth
> conceived/organized/created response to save youth. Dan Savage (an
> adult)
> started the series of IT GETS BETTER videos to tell suicidal
> teenagers that
> they need to stick around because being a gay adult is better than
> being a
> gay teenager (better than being in a school run by adults -- ).
> THen this
> group of young people created a performance for other young people
> where
> they talk about NOT waiting to either get out of school -- or for
> the adults
> to realize the obvious and figure out how to behave -- but instead
> finding
> queer friends NOW and then trying (as they are doing with this
> video) to
> improve the life of gay teens NOW.
> I was thinking of Yrjo's use of Breaking Away as I wrote the email.
> Beth
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 2:25 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Steve. You perfectly caught a core purpose of our discussions. It
>> is indeed
>> becoming obvious. To me it seems a long time in coming. And it is not
>> bearing a white flag. Its kind of slouching. You wrote:
>>
>> It is becoming more obvious to many that the question of cultural
>> difference and how these differences are socially related to can
>> become a
>> life and death question.
>>
>> Correct. So what, as whoever(s) we are we supposed to behave once
>> we, as a
>> society, reach that state of "its obvious"?
>>
>> ??
>> mike
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