Is It Possible?

Here it is: I think it’s possible to teach kindness. Yes, there may be children that can’t be reached—little psychopaths that kill goldfish and kittens and eventually other people. But I’m talking about the majority of children.
I think it’s possible to reach them. And if I could accomplish just one thing, in my future teaching career, it would be to find a way of reaching a large group of children and stopping them from becoming bullies.

Bullying isn’t something that happens occasionally. It happens every day in every school throughout the country. These days, people pay more attention to bullying. After all, it’s hard to ignore the suicides and the Columbines and the carnage being reported in one school after another.

I remember a few incidences from my youth—things that happened to me and things that happened to others. All in all, I wasn’t made to suffer much or often. But I think it’s safe to say that I remember every single time someone was mean to me. And what I remember most about those experiences was how they shook my sense of self and how they made me feel stupid and ugly.

Here’s another memory: I’m a senior in the high school cafeteria and a couple of severely disabled girls walk by a group of popular boys. The boys laugh at the girls and call them “retards.” I tell the guys they’re a bunch of jerks and I silently wish I could just SMASH them. It stops them until the next time and there’s always a next time. I wonder if the girls understand? I hope their brains are so damaged that they’ll never know about or cry over this tremendous injustice and indignity.

Fast forward and I’m an adult on a field trip with a bunch of kids and parents. During a meal I sit with two other moms who are obviously distressed and talking in low tones. Both of them have boys who are the victims of merciless teasing and bullying. One boy is smart, overweight and a little awkward. The other two boys—twins, are extremely intelligent but socially inept. The mothers don’t know what to do. Though the boys try to ignore the attacks, their mothers know how much they suffer. The moms have talked to the teachers, the principal and anyone else who will listen. But no one helps and nothing changes. And here is the amazing thing: This is a school that requires parent participation—two hours a week, every week, in the classroom. So the mothers of the bullies know what is going on. But I’ve never once heard one censure their nasty, obnoxious vicious little boys.

When my daughter first went to preschool, I made two demands: 1) No matter what, don’t lie to me. In order to defend you, I must know the truth. 2) Don’t ever let me hear that you were unkind or mean to someone. She was so little, that I wondered if she understood. I never repeated these demands but all through school the same pattern was repeated: She befriended the underdog—the fat kid, the strange one, the one who talked funny, the one that everyone else rejected. And over and over again, the mothers of these kids told me how much that meant to them. “She’s the only thing that kept my daughter from being totally miserable this year,” or “I can’t even begin to tell you what her friendship meant to my son.” Even now I wonder: Was she simply born with a (wonderful) bleeding heart? Or did we teach her this, and if so, how? Was it my demand to be kind?

I think about the way the employees at Home Depot were taught to be nice and to act like they want to help you. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But regardless, they ACT nice and they DO help you. What did it take? One 4-hour class on being nice? What would happen if, as teachers, we spent one hour a week talking about being a decent human being?

I think it’s possible to teach kindness.