The Square Peg
By Jill Jenkins
Imagine being in high school, the most socially and emotionally charged period in a person’s life, and all of the other students
talk to other students around you, but no one talks to you. You hear about parties, but you are never
invited. In fact, you are similar to
the girl in Janis Ian’s classic hit, “At Seventeen:”
“To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were
never called
When choosing sides for
basketball
It was long ago and far away
the world was younger than
today
when dreams were all they gave
for free
to ugly duckling girls like
me...”
Teenagers
accept only those that fit their perception of the perfect teenage image. You are the square peg. You feel loneliness and you wonder if there
is something wrong with you because you are different from the others. Maybe you are different because you have a
different religion, a different race, a different skin color, or even a
different sexual preference. Maybe you
are different because you aren’t pretty, you aren’t thin, and you can’t afford
designer clothing. Because you are
square peg in many schools, you are shunned. Now, you have a good idea of what a child feels when he/she is the victim of bullying.
Isolation is another form of bullying.
As a teacher it is sometimes easy to
spot the child who verbally abuses other students. As a teacher, it is sometimes easy to spot
the child who physically abuses other students, but as a teacher it is harder
to identify students who use the psychological abuse of shunning or isolation
to abuse their victims. Those who abuse others in this way often continue to abuse their
co-workers by making decisions behind their backs and leaving them out of the
loop of communication, ignoring their co-worker and talking behind their
co-workers back. Likewise, these are tactics
often used by female students to bully another student. I have seen students who eat every day in the counseling office because they don't want to face the embarrassment of eating alone. Some schools have made it a policy that no student eat lunch alone, but aren't there still those who are alone even in a forced social situation? Social media and the internet create even a larger arena for these bullies to thrive. The results of this abuse can be devastating
to an insecure teenager.
Research actually indicates that
students who bully often come from home where they are bullied by a parent and
their victims are often students with low self-esteem.
In my own family, my father used to taunt and tease us. He had belittling names for each of us
identifying whatever weakness he perceived.
He believed that this behavior made us more resilient to others. He wanted to toughen us up. My father’s
taunting was imitated by my brothers who called me “Pizza Face” because I had
acne, “Thunder Thighs” because my legs were not thin, and often smacked my
elbow as I ate pie so they could be amused as pie smashed up my nose. Belittling children does not make them more
resilient. It destroys their self-image. A child with a strong
self-image does not feel the need to taunt and tease others who are weaker and
they rarely become the victims of bullying because their healthy self-image
makes them a more difficult target for would be aggressors. In fact, children who are belittled and
bullied by a parent often bully other students at school or bully their own
children when they grow up.
Stopping the cycle of bullying,
means we need to educate both parents and children. Changing both the parents’ and child’s
attitude toward bullying and helping to identify what behavior is harmful to
others will help stop this behavior at schools.
Knowledge is power. Not only
knowing what behavior is inappropriate and harmful, but getting to know the
square pegs is another way to build bridges.
As long as the other person is some unknown stereotype (oh, those Goth
students) they will bully them, but getting to know each child as an individual is one way of
stopping bullying. Group work where
students do not just select their own friends, but are placed in groups with
students who are different from them helps students gain skills in working with
all types of people, but it also helps them recognize the similarities between
them and those that they perceive as differ.
Bullying like child abuse is not
an easy problem to stop, but as a teacher you need to create an atmosphere of
caring, where students feel like they are all members of a community. You need to identify all types of bullying:
physical, verbal and psychological and never tolerate it in your
classroom. Act to educate students and
parents about the effects of even social isolation. Let’s give the square pegs a chance to fit
in.
