Bullies

                                      A bully boy beats up a boy who does not fight back. 

Many young boys and girls are faced with bullies in the school years that traumatize them to the extent that they decide to find another school but bullying in schools is more widespread than you can imagine. In American schools, bullying is done by boys who enjoy tormenting new students just because they are of different skin color or of another ethnic background who may be very smart and consistently get high grades from their teachers.

Bullying is a curse that does not spare even a new teacher until the teacher fights back and expels the bully from his or her class. This sort of behavior is often the subject of many movies or U tube that really makes me think why it happens and why the school authorities do not take strict actions against such people. Do they offer counseling to such boys and girls or try to reform them by other means. 

In the movie Forrest Gump, the boys tormented the young Forrest who had polio and could not walk or run so the young boy started to run away from the bad boys and strengthened his legs. 

There was a bully in our college in India who thought that he could bully anyone anytime without any consequence so one day he got a big dead insect and tried to put it in my shirt pocket. He was very surprised when I put the big insect back in his pocket in return. He said that he did not know that I was in the second year so underestimated me. He never bothered me again. It made me think that most bullies are cowards and back off if someone challenges them.

I also think that a bully does not act alone because he is always seen in the company other bad boys who enjoy his bullying because to them it is just entertainment. They often drop out of high school or expelled by the principal, so they are seen selling hot dogs or cleaning tables in some eateries while the bullied boy or the girl graduates with honor, goes to college and excels there as well to become a doctor or engineer or a scientist in the future. 

Students who do not show respect to their teachers in the classrooms or on campus may come from broken families where the parents fail to teach them good values and moral lessons, so the kid starts to keep the company of bad boys of similar background. In Asia, the teacher is highly respected by his students and in the community where he or she lives but there are also cases of bullying by other students in some colleges. 

It is also known that some girls bully new female students out of jealousy because the new student is very smart, dresses well, is polite to the teachers and always respectful. She does her homework well and spends her time in the library instead of gossiping with other girls. She soaks up knowledge from books and in her classroom like a sponge and is a wide reader on all subjects. She also excels in learning musical instruments and participates in many games like volleyball or badminton where she wins trophies and medals in competition with other schools.

Such students are remembered by their teachers long after they have graduated and moved on to some prestigious colleges on scholarship while the bad bully boys and girls make no progress in their life.

I often see young kids throwing tantrum in a restaurant disturbing everybody while the mother smiles but does not control the kid. I had to call a stewardess in a flight to ask the woman to control her kid who was making a lot of noise and throwing tantrum. Finally, the indifferent mother told the kid to behave and not disturb other passengers. Several people on that flight thanked me for confronting the situation. Such a kid who is not taught good manners and never reprimanded becomes a bully later on in his school and reaps its consequences when he is expelled. Some schools have strict rules and implement them.

There were a Muslim boy and a girl in our college who teamed up to make trouble on campus by calling a strike on some issues that very few understood including myself, so the classes stopped and some kids threw stones on the majestic glass window of the library. After some time, the classes started again but the two miscreants were summarily expelled from the college who could never get a clean transfer certificate, so their studies came to an end. I do not know what happened to them.

The anger, the jealousy and the sense of entitlement in them helps create in them the aggressive attitude they show toward anyone that leads to bullying. I was told by a friend that in his college, there was a bully who tormented others so tired of his bad behavior, some students lured him into a forested area just off campus, where they all beat the devil out of him, so he never bullied anyone again. Perhaps such measures were drastic, but some kids need to learn their lessons in a hard way while other efforts failed. Physical punishment often has desired results. In African villages, the punishment of a kid who is misbehaving becomes a communal responsibility so by and large the rural kids are well behaved.

In some countries where the physical punishment is not allowed, the kids tend to be more aggressive towards others as adult and behave that way to any newcomer later on. You will see it repeated in the cowboy movies that leads to violence and even death. These movies are based on real events played out in hundreds of saloons everywhere.

A man killed a pregnant woman over a parking slot dispute here in the Philippines that led to his arrest and long jail time while the woman and her unborn child died so needlessly over a parking slot dispute. Where does such dangerous aggressiveness come from? Was he a bully growing up and had behaved badly over silly matters in the past?  

In some countries the inherent suspicion shown when they meet a stranger in a public place like a bar or a shopping area often leads to unpleasant situations that can quickly escalate to something no one wants. This suspicion comes from their isolationist attitude because they do not meet new people and their poor knowledge of the outside world where people grow up practicing different faiths, culture, food and social manners. Their poor education, isolation and lack of knowledge about the world makes them aggressive and suspicious. If you want to learn how such people grew up under what situations, you will find the answer. Their behavior is a learned behavior from their parents and other people who live in their communities.

When the time comes for a boy or girl to go to a college, they find out that the bad boys and girls form their fraternities and sororities and constantly seek new recruits. They put pressure on new students to join them, but it ends badly if then join. There are fights between different fraternities over silly issues that have resulted in physical harms and other consequences. The bad girls also gang up on other sororities   to prove their dominance over them because it makes them feel good.