Troubled 1/3 of Chinese children, this kind of hidden evil behavior is on the hot search again

Recently, the news of school bullying has once again detonated attention.

Assaults, sexual assaults, and even premeditated murders are the most vicious incidents that occur repeatedly.

From "Young You" to "Dark Glory", "school bullying" has also become a common theme in film and television dramas, and alarm bells have sounded again and again in the underage world.

▲ School bullying incidents are frequent

In the past five years, they have traveled to more than 10 provinces and cities and discussed the phenomenon of "school bullying" with more than 6,000 teachers.

From their personal experience and research cases, they summarized some patterns and appealed: "Don't miss every tiny malice. ”

Here's what she had to say.

Editor: Lu Yuhan

Editor-in-charge: Ni Chujiao

▲ Zhong Xinle, the manager of "Youle Youth Education Studio".

When many people become adults, they project a particularly beautiful imagination about their childhood, and feel that children are very innocent. So every time there is an extreme school bullying incident, everyone will feel very shocked and shocked.

Our team has been doing education and science popularization related to "school bullying" since 2019, and for us, every time we see related incidents, we feel more powerless.

Because most of the extreme events we see are small frictions, small contradictions, and some small malice start to grow, and there are many opportunities to intervene in advance, but unfortunately they are all missed.

▲ The boy Irie in the movie "Monster" was bullied by his classmates because he was "not manly enough".

We have encountered an example, the protagonist is called Xiaoguang, because his temperament is more "feminine", and his classmates call him "sissy". Xiaoguang was very troubled and went to the teacher, but the teacher just said, "The classmates should be just joking, you don't have to pay too much attention to it." ”

In the eyes of other students, the teacher's behavior is a tacit acquiescence. As a result, they slowly developed into taking his things at will, destroying his belongings, throwing garbage on his bed, and then escalating into some physical beatings, and finally instigating suicide, saying "why don't you die" on QQ, and so on.

During this period, Xiaoguang also reported to the school and teachers many times, and most of the replies he received were "everyone is classmates", advising him to be more tolerant. In the long-term bullying, Xiaoguang suffered from severe depression and anxiety, self-harm and suicide, and finally dropped out of school.

In Xiaoguang's story, the malice of the bullies is escalated little by little, largely because no one tells them that it is not okay.

▲ Data source (2019-2020 Central China Normal University Education Governance Modernization Research Group)

In our team's research and some official statistics, there are also some shocking statistics: about 32.4% of children in primary and secondary schools, that is, nearly one-third of children have experienced school bullying. Only 21% of them would voluntarily report to teachers and schools.

Everyone is more familiar with bullying related to physical violence, in fact, the largest proportion of verbal bullying in schools, such as nicknames, ridicule, sarcasm, and insults.

▲ Zhong Xinle gave a lecture to students, and many students have been ostracized

We once received a request for help from a 13-year-old girl, because she was more outgoing and cheerful, other girls said that she was "green tea", "likes to seduce others", and some boys directly called her "bus", which is very excessive verbal bullying.

There is also a category of relationship bullying, such as exclusion, small groups. A colleague from our team, who transferred to a new school in sixth grade, became good friends with two girls. But it didn't take long for her to discover that the two friends were privately circulating notes complaining about her. But because she is a transfer student, she is afraid of being lonely, so she can only continue to be friends with them.

It wasn't until she joined our team that she realized, "It turned out that what I was experiencing back then was a form of relationship bullying. ”

▲ The movie "Young You" is one of the few domestic films that tells about school violence

In recent years, we have also been exposed to more and more cyberbullying, which is characterized by uncontrollable behavior, and the person has no control over where the video or photo will go and what kind of harm it will eventually cause.

We met a boy who loved ballet. Once a video of him dancing was recorded by a classmate and uploaded to the Internet. The classmate originally just wanted to make a joke, but the boy suffered a very serious cyberbullying.

These so-called "little jokes" are what many vicious and extreme bullying incidents look like at the beginning. There are also smaller, more ambiguous forms of bullying that plague more people, and the damage can be longer-lasting, with many people still living with their injuries as adults, and some children not moving over.

▲ The image of the leading bully in film and television dramas

At work, we try to avoid labelling a certain type of child as a bully or a bullied person, who may be a person with any characteristic.

We met a teacher who was very distressed when he found us. He found that a good student who he thought was first-class would privately instigate other classmates to help him buy things and let other classmates do things for him. So when he heard the complaints from other students, he felt particularly shocked.

The same characteristics will trigger different reactions in different environments.

For example, in everyone's stereotype, girls with better grades and more beautiful are likely to be bullies. But on the other hand, they are also more likely to be gossip, pornography, and slut-shaming.

We may imagine that if one classmate bullies others, other students will turn away from him. In fact, some very subtle bullying behaviors are precisely a way for them to gain more recognition and status.

For example, a child who has been bullied may also turn into a bully at some point, bullying a boy who looks weaker than him, so as to gain a sense of belonging to the group, which is one of his survival strategies.

▲ The movie "Young You" has repeatedly shown the connivance of students and the school to campus violence

We met an adolescent girl who was stealing money from someone else at school, and the teachers and parents were so distressed that they were going to send her to a vocational school for education.

Later, we found out that she stole money to buy cosmetics, because she received a lot of negative comments about her appearance and appearance in her peer relationship, and everyone would laugh at her for being ugly, laughing at her for being fat, and giving her some nicknames.

When we discuss this case with the teachers, we sometimes hear the teachers say that this girl has a strong sense of vanity, is not confident enough, and cares too much about other people's evaluations.

In fact, behind "vanity", everyone wants to be recognized and accepted. But for this girl, she can only be accepted by others if she is more in line with the standards of public aesthetics, and finally takes a more extreme way to meet her needs.

In our upbringing, we were rarely taught to accept and respect those who were different from us. This relatively simple cultural standard can also become a trigger for school bullying.

▲ Japanese drama "Unnatural Death"

For example, we emphasize that boys should look like boys, you have to be strong enough, you have to be powerful. Therefore, some boys who are shorter and more introverted are bullied more often.

In general, the incidence of bullying between boys is higher than that of girls. In juvenile delinquency, the crime rate among boys is more than 90%, and this data also applies to adults.

Men also rarely express their vulnerability, and in some cases, because the boy went to the teacher for help, the man who bullied him felt that he was cowardly and actually asked the teacher to solve the problem, so his bullying behavior further escalated.

The logic behind this is that when I laugh at another guy who is not a boy enough, I just want to prove that I am boy enough.

▲ The popular Korean drama "Dark Glory" shows the bullying behavior between students from different classes

And a good girl should be gentle, if you have a more open and clawed personality, you may be called "tigress" and "female man" by other classmates. We imagine that girls should also be reserved and not interact too much with the opposite sex, and if you have more boys, you may be said to be "indecent".

Relationship bullying is more common among girls, because our expectation for girls is to be a caregiver, pay attention to the feelings of those around them, and manage relationships with others. Therefore, the breakdown of a relationship may also hurt more for girls.

For example, our society as a whole will place more emphasis on having a complete family, so the incidence of school bullying in single-parent families, children growing up in intergenerational families, and left-behind children is also high.

It also has a lot to do with the school environment. In so-called "superschools", bullying is more likely to occur than in schools with very large disparities between teachers and students, or boarding schools. If it is a violent school environment, and the teacher will physically punish, reprimand, and verbally abuse the student, then the child will also internalize this set of ways of getting along.

▲ Japanese drama "Unnatural Death"

The members of our team are all post-90s, post-95s, and post-00s interns. In our teenage years, school bullying has not yet entered the public eye as a specific concept, but all of us have experienced or witnessed school bullying to some extent.

For example, when I was in middle school, there was a boy in my class who was short and a bit stubborn, and the boys in the class especially liked to make jokes about him. This boy actually worked very hard to build a good relationship with his classmates, and he would remember the birthday of every girl in the class and give us gifts. But we girls will also discuss it privately with each other, thinking that his behavior is disgusting, and secretly excluding him.

▲ The Japanese drama "3 Year Class A", the story begins with a girl who committed suicide due to campus bullying

One day in a semester, the student took a leave of absence and never came to school. It took a long time for us to learn from the teacher's mouth that the boy had committed suicide.

When I heard the news, several girls around me were shocked and felt that they were all involved in it and became one of the perpetrators.

Many people do not associate some problems in interpersonal communication with school bullying during adolescence. It is not until we rethink our growth in adulthood that we realize that there is something wrong with it. So we want to do something to help the kids who are still in school.

Early prevention is the least costly and most effective. A lot of bullying is episodic at the beginning, and the bully gets the thrill of power from it, which is a bit like "addiction" behavior. If no one finds out in time, it will gradually escalate.

But even if we try to emphasize the importance of prevention, it seems that in the end it only seems that attention is paid to when something happens. The so-called attention may be a theme class in the school, which is a very one-time education.

Education itself can happen in any situation and at any time, and we encourage teachers to start from the smallest details.

▲ Set up a message board in the class to encourage students who have been bullied to talk about their experiences

First of all, don't treat your classmates differently because of their gender, family background, ability, etc.

For example, snacks are not allowed in the class, and there is a student with particularly good grades who brings snacks to the class to eat, and the teacher does not stop him, he thinks that this is a good child, and he may not have intended it. The teacher's non-intervention, in the eyes of other students, will become a privilege given to him by the teacher, and he is very great, and he may go to him and form a small group.

Some teachers, with our support, put up a small poster in their office that said, "I promise to treat every student fairly." It seems like it's just a slogan, but it's precisely something that sounds too true, but it's ignored to express it.

It has also been proven that when children see such a visible commitment, they will indeed increase their willingness to ask for help.

A lot of change can start with the language. When children ask teachers for help, words such as "you should not be too sensitive" or "you may need to reflect as well" are still very common, which can also affect the child's trust in the teacher.

When there is a conflict between a boy and a girl, the teacher's habitual expression is "you are a boy, you have to let a female classmate", or teach the girl "you are a girl, why do you still beat someone". In fact, it is also solidifying a set of stereotypes that they have received since childhood.

We encourage teachers to ask less reasoning and more questions, which is more conducive to our understanding of children's ideas. Sometimes the most common mistake adults make with their children is to have too many "I think".

The solution to bullying is that there is no "once and for all", it has to return to a lot of daily life, long-term cultivation, to promote a more equal and respectful relationship, in order to create real change.