By Lisa Rayner
Tea Party Publisher  

It’s no accident that school bullying is so pervasive. School, like our society, is composed of a dominance hierarchy among staff and students. The system of rankings is backed by force and fear of force, as in all dominance hierarchies.

Within this climate of dominance and submission, the warped “socialization” process fosters the formation of cliques that exhibit predatory behavior. Large same-age peer groups create intense peer pressure on individual students. Social bonding within the “in-groups” is partly derived from shared power over the “out-groups.” Higher-ranking individuals and cliques maintain their dominance through the bullying of those in lower-ranking cliques, and those not accepted by any group, at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Jaana Juvonen, UCLA Adjunct Professor of Psychology, contends that Americans do not take bullying seriously because our culture of competition and dominance makes intimidation and ridicule acceptable, even normal. Her research shows that beginning in middle school, students tend to view bullies as “cool,” and reject bullying victims from the social milieu.

A study of bullying by Maria Bartini of the University of Georgia and psychologist Anthony Pellegrini of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities found that bullying increases with the transition from elementary to middle school as students seek to establish their dominance in new peer groups.

“Once the dominance is established and their place with their new friends is secure,” said the researchers, “the aggression subsides. But some students bully throughout their school years, never feeling secure in their peer alliances.”

In line with our culture’s reliance on violence and coercion to maintain order, many of the responses to school violence have consisted of more domination and violence. School surveillance systems, stationing police in schools, metal detectors, FBI profiling software and other methods increase the climate of coercion and fear, rather than transform the social structure to become more respectful and cooperative.

In an ultimate example of such an approach, Arizona State Representative Barbara Blewster, R-Dewey suggested in 1999 that teachers should be permitted to carry concealed weapons on school grounds. Teachers could then fire back in the event of a shooting. She believed this would deter potential shooters and encourage students to have better manners, saying, “An armed society is a polite society.”

In fact, it’s the other way around: Violence elsewhere in society contributes to school bullying. For example, a newly published study by the British nonprofit Young Voice found that domestic violence contributes to a child becoming either a victim or a bully:

·         42 percent of severely bullied boys had been victims of violence at home.

·         33 percent of male bullies had been victims of violence at home.

·         28 percent of female bullies reported violence at home.

There is another way to construct our society: Early 20th century anthropologist Ruth Benedict noticed that more peaceful cultures have a high degree of mutually beneficial arrangements, while more violent cultures make it difficult for people to meet their needs without negatively impacting someone else. Benedict described “high synergy” cultures as those with “social-institutional conditions which fuse selfishness and unselfishness, by arranging it so that when I pursue ‘selfish’ gratifications, I automatically help others, and when I try to be altruistic, I automatically reward and gratify myself.”

Author Riane Eisler explains in her books  The Chalice and the Blade and Sacred Pleasure how human and other primate societies have the potential to be based on either dominance hierarchies with rankings backed by force and fear or on cooperation and mutual gratification, with shades of gray in between. Her cultural transformation theory demonstrates how societies tend to gravitate towards high synergy “partnership” societies or low synergy “dominator” societies. Partnership societies incorporate equality, democracy and nonviolence into all aspects of daily life, from personal relations between genders to larger social, religious, governmental and economic arrangements.

Ultimately, only a complete social transformation of our entire culture, from the most narrowly personal to the most broad political levels will banish bullying from society.