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Does academic failure play a part in bully behavior?
Results so far:
| Yes | 72% | 49 votes | Total: 68 votes | |
| No | 28% | 19 votes |
Yes
by David Balaban
Created on: April 22, 2011 Last Updated: April 23, 2011
I have never known of a colleague with academic excellence to bully someone. Even though there are several examples of students who bully that are performing well in school, the majority of the cases tell otherwise. If it were analyzed yet a little closer, the issue would reveal yet another convincing argument. Most students who are bullied are that of high excellence in school work. They are said to be "nerds". How come it is usually the smart kid that is bullied? Why is it usually the weaker performing kid that is doing the bullying?
It may be an issue of jealousy, though it may not be apparent to the person bullying. Those who are struggling or who don't care are bothered by seeing individuals who do care and who have a good future awaiting them. To balance the issue, a bully will choose one smarter yet weaker than him or her, and bother that individual. That way, the bully will have the shallow satisfaction of showing strength and superiority to the bullied student. In the bully's mind, he/she has brought down someone who is stronger than him/her academically. This allows the bully to believe that he is, in fact, greater than the bullied individual due to the apparent and visible strength used upon the weaker, yet smarter kid.
Bullies have allowed themselves a way to elevate their current position to dominance over a person that has something the bullies don't have. Success on the part of a studious, well-performing student is a safeguard to such drastic measures as picking on other students. Of course, it does still happen, but it's less frequent and usually for other motives not including academic failure. The inverse of the situation allows us to see that a bully picks on people for a reason. One of those reasons is jealousy, or maybe even low self-esteem. Successful students don't bully because they have no personal satisfaction of putting someone down when they are already at a superior position. It is sad, but it is, in many cases, true.
Academic failure doesn't just happen because the person failing is stupid. There are several reasons that could affect the low performance of the individual. Lack of motivation, hopelessness and not studying may be some negative character traits of an unsuccessful student. If a student, however, does study and is hopeful, and begins to have success, the feeling that they experience could be enough to hold them back from continuing the practice of bullying others. Once a person realizes that they can do amazing things and be successful if they actually try, then they will have that gratifying satisfaction of being someone that is capable, smart, and superior. Bullies crave for those feelings, so they try to acheive them. But they take the wrong route to do so.
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No
by Dan Sakuraba
Created on: April 17, 2011 Last Updated: April 18, 2011
I was never a bully, but I could easily have been the victim. I'm a little guy, 5-foot-4 to be exact.
But there was something I noticed early on since I was a child. When I encountered bullies, I wasn't scared. There was something in me that did not trigger a fear emotion, despite the fact it probably should have. So in time I became friends with the bullies.
What was interesting, however, was that I did not realize I was hanging out with the bullies. I saw other little kids like myself getting "punked" by my friends. I would laugh when they told me, yet I felt a sense of betrayal. I was laughing because the story was in fact pretty funny. The way they described it, their animated way of storytelling. I just laughed because, heck, it was funny.
Years later I began meeting new people, and a few I instantly recognized as being the so-called "victims" of these bullies. I knew them well, and I learned of their distaste for my friends who bullied them. It was then I realized I was friends with the bullies, yet I really had more in common with the victims.
Knowing both sides of the issue, I realized something. The bullies simply hated themselves. My friends who were bullies hated themselves. On the outside, they acted like they loved themselves. But I knew them good enough to see their true feelings come out. They had learned to hate themselves due to external circumstances beyond their control - maybe parents, maybe lack of parents or maybe just an unfortunate life experience.
Because they hated themselves, they saw no reason to care about school. Yes, they failed horribly in academics. In fact, they didn't even try. Most dropped out by high school.
I look at it like this. Hating yourself causes bully behavior. Academic failure is a symptom of hating yourself. But academic failure in itself does not lead to bullying. A person who loves themselves yet still fails academically will not prey on the weaker in order to feel better about themselves. They already feel good about themselves. That is the self-love. It is ever present within them, so to bully the weaker would be to feed the full. It becomes unnecessary.
This has been my personal observation. The one thing that convinces me is what I saw in my bully friends before they bullied anyone. A hurt child who learned to hate themselves and do everything possible to protect themselves. Because nobody else would. Until that point, they themselves were the victims. Where they went wrong was that decision: Do I love myself, or do I steal someone else's self-love to fill mine?
Learn more about this author, Dan Sakuraba.
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