Tag: bullying

Golden Rule Pledge releases bullying prevention lesson plans for church youth groups

News Release

For immediate release – 10.20.10

Golden Rule Pledge releases bullying prevention lesson plans for church youth groups

Free downloads help church groups prevent bullying, speak against anti-gay harassment

On a day when many people are speaking out against bullying, the Golden Rule Pledge is releasing materials which can be used by churches to help prevent youth bullying.  Available for free download on the Golden Rule Pledge website, these lesson plans and class activities can help churches become part of the solution to youth bullying.

A national partner of the National Bullying Prevention Month, the Golden Rule Pledge was created in 2008 in order to advocate for the application of the Golden Rule in schools and especially to speak out against anti-gay bullying.

“People of faith need to minimize ideological worries and become part of the solution to bullying in schools,” said Warren Throckmorton, co-leader of the Golden Rule Pledge. “A middle school student who is bullied every day doesn’t care about religious differences. He needs help.” In September, three young teens ended their lives after prolonged anti-gay harassment. Churches can play a vital role in partnering with schools and other community groups to model the Golden Rule – treat others the way I want to be treated.

“I hope youth leaders can use these resources to raise awareness about the need to treat all people with respect – even if you have differences of opinion,” said Throckmorton.

Andrew Marin, Founder of the Marin Foundation and author of Love is an Orientation has endorsed this effort saying, “With such drastic consequences that have been proven time and again, it saddens my heart to see so many in the Christian world avoid a bold front-running stand to cut off all bullying in our schools, churches and communities. This curriculum is an easy and productive way to not only start the conversation, but show Jesus’ biblical mandate for His followers to stand up and live differently. The time is now. The time has to be now. Download this curriculum. Implement it. And continue to be serious about sprinting towards what so many sprint away from. Bullying is never an option.” 

Bob Finch, Director of Missions of the Pike (KY) Association of Southern Baptists agrees saying, “Recent headlines with regards to students taking or attempting to take their lives should be a wake-up call to all Christians to train our youth to not only stand against all forms of bullying, but to equip them to be used of God in putting an end to it in the schools where they attend.  I believe this program can be used to equip and empower them to do just that in a way that will also show their classmates the love of Christ as well.”

The Golden Rule Pledge (www.goldenrulepledge.com) is co-led by Warren Throckmorton, Associate Professor of Psychology at Grove City College and Michael Frey, Western PA Director of Campus Ministry for Campus Crusade for Christ. The resources can be accessed at no cost at www.goldenrulepledge.com/grpresources. For more information, contact Dr. Throckmorton at [email protected].

CNN: A Christian’s response to anti-gay bullying

Dan Gilgoff’s CNN Belief Blog published my article on anti-gay bias involved in recent bullying related suicides. I am allowed to print a little bit and then link to the rest. I hope you’ll read, recommend, and discuss it at both places…

This week marks the beginning of the 5th annual National Bullying Prevention Month. Tragically, this comes just at the time when the nation is mourning the recent suicides of three young teens, Billy Lucas, Asher Brown and Seth Walsh. Although each situation was a little different, a common denominator was that a central feature of the harassment the boys experienced was anti-gay name-calling.

 

Sadly, these boys join a string of other suicide victims who’d been subjected to anti-gay bias.

These tragedies have heightened the attention of the public on an already contentious debate about how to prevent anti-gay harassment. While everyone agrees that such bullying is harmful and must be addressed, not all agree about the means to that end.

…..

My view is that evangelicals need to put ideological worries aside and become part of the solution.

I go on to describe how churches and schools in Grove City are working together to combat bullying and recommend that adults put the culture war aside for the good of children.

By the way, I am not ignoring Tyler Clementi. I wanted to focus in this article on young teens in public schools.

Previous related articles:

Broken arm, unbroken spirit; Ohio boy wants to keep cheering despite bullying

An Ohio boy who loves gymnastics joined a cheerleading squad. Some other, older boys broke his arm over it. Roll the tape:

An Ohio mom is disappointed that her son’s school didn’t do more to stop at least two boys who allegedly picked on her 11-year-old cheerleader son until the bullies beat him so bad they broke his arm.

An 11-year-old says classmates attacked him for cheerleading.

She says the beating didn’t break his spirit however. Tyler Wilson has vowed to continue cheering with hopes it helps him get into college some day.

“I’m going to keep going. I’m going to make a lifestyle out of it,” Tyler told ABC News affiliate WTVG.

According to the mother, the incident where Tyler’s arm was broken was the culmination of previous assaults.

“When I went to the school, about two days after it happened to discuss Tyler’s story, the principal said there was an incident Monday and the Friday before, that the boy who started the fight had jumped on Tyler’s back and tried to start a fight,” she said.

Kristy Wilson said if she had known that Tyler was being physically targeted said she would have certainly stepped in to stop the situation, going as far as removing him from the school.

“I really wish the school would have let me know a lot sooner, so I could have dealt with it sooner,” she said.

I bet now the school folks wish they would have dealt with it sooner.

Bullying prevention on CNN: FOF and GLSEN square off

Timothy Kincaid posted the link to this Anderson Cooper 360 segment on bullying prevention. Here is Candi Cushman and Eliza Byard discussing bullying policy along with author Rosalind Wiseman.

In the past I have favored laws which do not enumerate traits (e.g., race, religion, sexual orientation) because the context of bullying can be so diverse that a category could be left out (e.g., gifted kids). However, I think that enumerated laws are better than no laws at all and certainly understand advocates who believe listing is the way to go. I do favor numeration of categories for statistical purposes as bullying prevention programs are implemented. This approach provides a way to know where the problems are and if a district is improving.

Furthermore, I think implementation of bullying prevention often requires directly addressing various social issues, such as race and sexual orientation. If the school-wide assessment finds that gays are being harassed and disrespected, then you have to address the worth and dignity of sexual minorities. Wiseman and Byard are correct to note that silence on the issue sends a loud message – some disrespect is ok, while other disrespect will not be tolerated. Simply saying, ‘all people deserve respect and a safe learning environment’ is not enough and often does not generalize. Human nature being what it is, it is easy to allow bias to convince us that our prejudices are ok, as long as we don’t generalize them. Where a problem exists, it has to be named.

At the same time, I do think that school personnel have a responsibility to avoid stigmatizing religious people who do not approve of homosexuality. This is a difficult challenge and one which mirrors the problem we have finding ways to live together in a society polarized over many issues. However, we have to try.

Lessons from the True Tolerance website: Discuss sexual orientation

Titles are meant to grab attenion and perhaps that one will for those who have followed the worries of Focus on the Family about bullying prevention programs. Essentially, FOF is concerned that gay activists are using anti-bullying programs to infiltrate schools with political messages. To counter that perceived threat, FOF placed a list of bullying facts on their True Tolerance website. Given my interest and current involvement in bullying prevention, I checked it out. I will have a more extensive look at it next week but for now I wanted to post something I was surprised to see there.

As a reference for the contention that bullying of kids who are gay and perceived to be gay is not a big problem, the fact sheet lists an article from the Newsweek blog. First here is one of the FOF bullet points:

Statistics also indicate that race, ethnicity issues, and even opposite-sex harassment actually account for more bullying problems, than do homosexual-related issues.

As a reference for that factoid, the author of the sheet lists a Newsweek blog article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, titled, “Does Labeling Bias as “Bullying” Hide the Real Problem?” The authors first describe the case of a young man, Alex Merritt, who allegedly suffered sexual orientation related harassment and then report the research of Stephen Russell on reasons kids report being bullied.

Russell went to public and private schools in California, surveying 235,000 kids in 7th, 9th, and 11th grades. Russell asked each student if he had been bullied within the past 12 months, and if they answer was yes, to describe the incident.

37.4% of the kids said that they had been bullied. 

Then Russell broke that data down by category.

14% of the kids had been bullied because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin. 9.1% of the kids said they’d been bullied because of their religious beliefs, while 10.3% said the bullying was gender-based. Like Alex Merritt, 7.5% said that the torments had been about their sexual-orientation – that includes kids who were actually homosexual, and those just perceived to be gay. Another 4.9% said that they were bullied because of they had a physical or mental disability.

By the end of his data analysis, Russell had concluded that 75% of all bullying came from some type of bias – racial, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

This article is apparently a reference designed to prove that anti-gay bullying is down the list of reasons why kids are picked on. I assume the reason for that point is to make a case that sexual orientation should not be discussed as a means of preventing bullying. However, that is not the message of the article referenced. Based  on the data, the Newsweek authors point out that bias is involved in the lion’s share of the bullying. The authors then raise the possibility that school personnel should be promoting discussions of the factors involved, including sexual orientation.

Dorothy Espelage has been analyzing the curriculum of the anti-bullying programs most commonly used in schools. She found that hardly any of the programs even addressed bullying relating to sexual orientation.

If the majority of bullying is bias-related, and yet we don’t even acknowledge this in anti-bullying programs, what does this mean? In the chapter of our book, excerpted in Newsweek, we presented evidence that demonstrated how many of us have assumed kids are race/color-blind, and thus we don’t need to talk about race with them – however, that leaves kids to their own devices on how they respond to racial and ethnic differences. Perhaps the same pattern is going on in other forms of bias. We think that we as a society are past making fun of people with disabilities, people of different religion or gender, etc. – and thus we don’t actively talk about these issues with our children. And that has inadvertently left the door open for kids to use these differences as the basis of torment. 

The implication is clear: at least in some schools, maybe most, we need to discuss the hidden elephants in the rooms, whether they be race, religion or sexuality. 

Looking again at the numbers, the 7.5% who were bullied due to sexual orientation is staggering. The prevalence of students who are gay or perceived to be gay is probably not much higher than 10-15%. That means a very high percentage of such children are getting harassed. In evaluating the meaning of the numbers it is not sufficient to simply rank order the reasons as FOF has done. One must also consider the prevalence of harassment in that population.

Schools differ and in some ethnicity might be the largest elephant in the room, but I suspect in many districts around the country and probably the corner, kids are being subjected to regular harassment based on real or perceived sexual minority status. In those situations, as this FOF referenced article reminds us, we need to talk about it.