One of the most powerful messages throughout Linda Christensen’s book, Reading Writing and Rising Up, is a curriculum of empathy and forgiveness for kids who are caught up in violence. In a New York Times regional special from Greenwich Connecticut, “Pushing Back at Bullying,” Gerri Hirshey tells of an exciting program with similar goals.
Over the last 11 years, some 65,600
Connecticut high school students have participated in “Names,” which is sponsored and supervised by the Connecticut Office of the Anti-Defamation League. Guided by teachers, trained student volunteers and league facilitators, students talk with the unflinching candor of children about topics most adults would prefer to avoid: gossip, rumor, physical harassment, racism, homophobia, depression, eating disorders, self-mutilation, drinking, drugs, suicide — the full range of bullying behavior and its consequences.
Marji Lipshez-Shapiro, the Anti-Defamation League’s Connecticut regional director of education, created “Names” in 1995. In one part of the program, students have the opportunity to voice their experiences with bullying whether they have been bullied, have helped someone who was being made fun of, or are repentant bullies themselves.
“A lot of kids hurt,” [Lipshez-Shapiro} said. “In a forum like this, they can hear their own voices, they can make a difference. Like ‘Wow, my little story is going to impact people.’ ”
And these stories certainly do impact people. As the forum provides an opportunity for perpetrators to gain empathy for the people they have victimized, and even publicly apologize to those they have mistreated, it also gives all involved a real audience to whom they can voice their concerns about social injustice right in their own school. I see this type of program as a large-scale version of the critical pedagogy practices and empathy awareness activities that go on in Linda Christensen’s classroom. While some of Christensen’s kids might not be willing to get up in front of an auditorium to proclaim some of these stories after just two months of “training,” the two venues get at the same underlying themes of discrimination, hate, and injustice.
In a darkened school auditorium, Ms. Lipshez-Shapiro’s eyes welled up when a boy explained how he had to ask his best friends to stop calling him D. J. “Some of them didn’t even get it, that D.J. was short for dirty Jew,” he said. “They apologized. They really didn’t understand how it hurt.” It is rare that anti-Semitism comes up in “Names,” but Ms. Lipshez-Shapiro explained why an organization devoted to combating that ancient transgression got into the bully business. “At A.D.L., we look at the consequences of being different, at prejudices and stereotyping and discrimination,” she said. “The main reason people are bullied is because they’re different or perceived to be. Our programs are really anti-bias more than anti-bully. Our goal is to teach empathy to perpetrators. A lot of times they have no idea of the power of what they’re doing.”
“Names” assemblies are full of success stories and apologies as well as stories of regret and pleas for understanding: ““…if you see somebody alone all the time, just remember, they’re not necessarily freaky. There’s a story there — a life. And they could probably use a friend.”
So are these assemblies simply emotion ridden rallies that are full of promises, but short lived? The follow-up research seems to show otherwise:
A pioneering 1988 study done in Norway by Dan Olweus, a social researcher, found that the incidence of bullying in Norwegian schools fell by 50 percent or more in the two years after an anti-bullying campaign; truancy, theft and vandalism also dropped markedly. A follow-up survey of the “Names” program in San Diego in 2000 found that 60 percent of students said that after the session they would be less likely to call someone a name; nearly half reported positive changes in other students’ behavior.
Clearly the program works to create empathy and a more friendly atmosphere in schools, but it is costly and time consuming to employ, and as one teacher in the article points out,
Trying to change the hearts and minds of bullies can be a risky business. Not all schools opt for the open-mike segment of “Names,” when audience members line up to speak their minds, though it is very popular with students. League facilitators are at the speakers’ elbows, ready to intervene should matters get too emotional. Guidance counselors are on hand for especially fragile speakers.
It is always a risky endeavor to “pull back the curtain’ and talk about controversial things honestly, but as Professor Rozema says, “conflict is often the midwife of social awareness, understanding, good writing, interesting discussion, and critical pedagogy on a whole.” Sorry I can’t actually remember which one of those he said, but I’m sure all of them apply. I also think that a point brought up in class here is important. In a writing classroom, it might not be a worthy use of time to have a cry and share forum for apologies and activism. Obviously the media are different in a Critical pedagogy classroom and involve purposeful writing to a real audience, and activities to help students develop a strong voice in their writing which does not neglect their backgrounds.
Although school budgets and differing goals may make it impossible for programs like this to function in all school settings, I find it exciting that so many schools are making “anti-bias and anti-bully” rallies and education a priority. I think it just goes to show that such values as forgiveness and empathy can indeed be included in coarse goals.
Pushing Back at Bullyingby GERRI HIRSHEY
January 28, 2007
New York Times
GREENWICH, Conn.
Reading Writing and Rising Up
by Linda Christensen
a Rethinking Schools Publication 2000
