Good citizenship taught

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically because the students, faculty and parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance; it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to bullying. Schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Here’s what I originally sent them:

Standing up to bullies is not enough

The terrible tragedy of Phoebe Prince’s suicide, following months of relentless bullying by other students, has triggered yet another wave of calls for schools to enforce strict anti-bullying policies. Such policies are important, but if they were enough, then the bullying problem would have been eliminated long ago. Bullying is the symptom, not the disease, and the time for stronger medicine is long overdue.

When bullying is pushed into the spotlight, it is always because of a tragedy. The rarity of these leads us to believe that the bullying which caused them is also rare, a belief to which we cling because it absolves us of communal responsibility. But in fact, bullying and meanness have become the norm: a 2001 study estimated that 30% of students in the U.S. were involved in bullying.

The academic subjects taught in school are intended to give our children the skills and knowledge they need to grow into happy, successful adults. Respectful, polite, and thoughtful behavior, which in our parents’ day was referred to as “good citizenship,” is just as critical as reading, writing or arithmetic, and it, too, needs to be taught continuously.

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically from the others because the students, faculty, and even the other parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance. Rather, it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to the bullying problem. Our schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

My children attend JCDS, Boston’s Jewish Community Day School.  Students at all academic levels are admitted to the school.  JCDS is less concerned about intellect than about whether the student, and his or her parents, are compatible with the school’s culture.

In the 6½ years I’ve had children at JCDS, only a few families have chosen to leave.  Some of those departures were due to academic needs the school could not fulfill, but others were because their kids simply didn’t fit in.

I’m sure many of you just cringed.  We all know what “didn’t fit in” means, right?  Kids that are brainy, nerdy, funny-looking, or too fat.  Kids who do their homework and care about getting good grades.  Kids who would rather play D&D than football.  Right?

Nope.  At JCDS, fitting in isn’t about any of those things.  Rather, it’s almost entirely about one thing and one thing only: treating others with respect.  Kids with an “attitude” just don’t fit in at JCDS.  What’s most interesting is that usually, their parents don’t either.

For example, one girl who entered the school in first grade left with her family two years later.  During those years, my wife and I saw and heard of countless incidents in which this girl was mean to other kids.  We weren’t surprised by her behavior, because, frankly, she was just like her mother.  Is it any surprise that a woman who adorned her car with a “mean girl” bumper sticker, who seemed to take pride in being pushy, demanding, and self-centered, would have a daughter who had trouble treating her peers with respect?

Bullies are made, not born.  Not every bully has mean parents, but the odds are that when you look at the adults in a bully’s life, you will find people who at best failed to actively model and teach respect, and at worst did the opposite.

Parents are the biggest influence in their children’s lives, but the second biggest influence is, of course, school.  Our schools share responsibility for teaching and modeling respect.  They are, by and large, falling short.

Having a “zero tolerance” policy about bullying isn’t good enough.  Teaching kids why bullying is bad isn’t good enough.  Even empowering kids to step in when they see someone else being bullied isn’t good enough.  People always fall short of the ideal, so if the ideal you’re teaching is “don’t bully,” then guess what — the bullying isn’t going to stop.

Stop teaching students what not to do, and start teaching them what they should do.  Teach them to be nice to their peers.  Teach them to be respectful to their peers.  Teach them that meanness and disrespect, even when they fall short of what one might consider “bullying,” will simply not be tolerated.  And then don’t tolerate it.

A major part of the JCDS curriculum, in every class in every grade, is middot v’derekh eretz.  There is no good translation for these terms, but a loose translation is “character traits and civil, polite, and thoughtful behavior.”  JCDS doesn’t merely teach its students not to be bad.  It teaches them to be good. The results are obvious: the two things remarked upon most often by visitors to the school are that the students are nice and happy.

I challenge the principal of any school with a bullying problem to visit JCDS and learn from their approach.