Bullies and Scapegoats

Name: Dr. Toby Feinson
Grade Level: All
State: NJ
Date: 3/10/2002
Time: 12:24:12 AM

In our workshops and seminars for educators one of the most frequent questions that gets asked is: “How do we stop bullying in the classroom?” Let’s be Enemies, a classic children’s story by Janice May Urdy, tells us that from early childhood on, children are in the process of identifying peers who are enemies and peers who are allies.

It is apparent from reading the daily newspapers that bullies and scapegoats exist on a national and international level and that the most serious bullying is perpetrated by adults. Bullies abound! As do the victims of bullying- scapegoats.

If we think back to our own school experiences, we might remember school as a place where you would be shunned if you were from the “wrong” race or “wrong” ethnic group, came from the “wrong” side of the tracks, wore the “wrong kind of clothes, were too short or too fat. The social atmosphere in school was often competitive, cliquish and exclusionary. The film “Welcome to the Dollhouse” demonstrates the misery, intense stress and pain of school children who are mocked, taunted and excluded.

From my own experiences as a public school teacher and counselor, and as a coach of educators, I have accumulated thousands of anecdotes about children who find school a humiliating experience.

Children from 5-18 years who are my clients agonize over the fact that there is a general atmosphere of taunting and rejection among their peers that makes their school experience a living hell. They see themselves as being in the out-group and feel insecure, unpopular, put-down and picked on.

According to Laura Hess Olson, assistant professor of child development at Purdue University, “….everybody is a player in creating the atmosphere in which bullying occurs.” Bullying is not a manifestation of an individual personality problem, but a natural phenomenon in groups.

In support of her notion, here are some truths that are often overlooked in addressing the problem of bullies and scapegoats in school settings: 1) Children learn in groups and group dynamics contribute to the development of bullies and scapegoats; 2) Children come to school unprepared for the demands of group learning; 3) By addressing the bully and scapegoat individually, we overlook the subtle dynamics that occur between them; and 4) Learning is concurrently cognitive, social and emotional AT ALL TIMES.

WHAT’S BEHIND BULLYING AND SCAPEGOATING?

There cannot be a bully without a scapegoat. In Dostoevsky’s The Double, a man encounters another man who is his physical double but has all his hated aspects. In simple terms, we split off a part of our human nature and hate in others what we hate in ourselves. This part of human nature is voiced in Leviticus 16:21-22: Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over him all the inequities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon him all their inequities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

The family is the first group in which we see the creation of bullies and scapegoats. Let’s look at sibling rivalry. It has long been understood that the source of sibling rivalry is anger that cannot be directed at the parents because children are afraid of losing their parents’ love. But the message is clear when siblings fight, bully and tattle on each other: “He is no good. I am wonderful. I should be your favorite.”

Parents and teachers often unconsciously contribute to children stifling or redirecting their ambivalent feelings to their siblings and peers by being either “nice”, or aloof, or subtly taking sides (as did Joseph’s father in the biblical story of Joseph and His Brothers). Had Joseph’s father been trained through Adventures in Teaching and Counseling, he would have asked his quarreling sons: “What have I done to cause so much anger amongst you?” The teacher (and parent) who withstands the expression of a student’s anger without being either destroyed or destructively retaliatory, but instead responds by attempting to understand and work through the sources and effects of the verbal attack, demonstrates to the whole class (and family) that aggression need not be lethal and can be expressed and understood.

Dr. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University has done research with primates which provides support for the phenomenon of redirecting anger to peers rather than to the teacher or parent. He points out that when a group is under strain, or its hierarchy (leadership) is in doubt, high-ranking primates take their anxiety out on scapegoats. The scapegoat gives higher-ranking individuals in a group a common enemy, a unifier. In moments of tension within the group, the group unites against the scapegoat, creating a bond, and most importantly protects the leader of the group from their rage. In a sense, the scapegoat is a “fall person”. The real message that is being sent by bullies is to the leader of the group.

WHAT DO WE UNDERSTAND ABOUT BULLIES?

1) They have a wish to degrade and humiliate others through scorn, disdain and arrogance. This is a their defense against deep feelings of shame; 2) Many were bullied themselves; 3) Many had a weak same sex parent;

As a result: 1) They are out to defeat and humiliate the teacher; 2) They vie with the teacher for control of the group.

Interventions we have devised with the bully are founded on the belief that: 1) the teacher needs to take on the bully, providing temporary insulation for the weaker ego of the scapegoat; and 2) send a message to the whole class that this behavior is not allowed. Exs: Jim, how do you want Johnny to feel right now? (creating awareness of impact of bully’s behavior on others)

Jim, it might be fun to boss Johnny around and scare him, but this is not a boxing gym. We’re here to benefit each other. (setting limits)

Other interventions with the bully: Jim, I totally disagree. I think what Johnny has to say has a lot of merit. (redirecting Jim’s anger from Johnny to the teacher).

Jim, what’s the big deal. Johnny has a big nose, I have big feet. My sister has big hands. My brother has a big head…or Jimmy Durante had a big nose and he was a huge success. (universalizing the attack)

Jim, you’re not moving things along here. You’re just finding fault and hurting feelings. Either you are going to cooperate or you need to leave until you gain some control over your feelings. WHAT DO WE UNDERSTAND ABOUT SCAPEGOATS?

1) The first step is to investigate if the scapegoat is someone who lacks social skills and social intelligence and just needs some “friendship coaching”. 2) If the coaching doesn’t work then the following unconscious dynamics might be at work: a) they believe that everyone is out to get them; b) they feel unlovable; c) they provoke another member of the group to take on the role of the punisher or excluder to reinforce their feelings of unloveableness and provoke guilt (“see what you’ve done to me”); d) many were trained to get negative attention; e) they are out to get the sympathy of the teacher as the wounded child; f) they provoke the teacher/parent to act out against their peers by punishing them; g) they are rewarded by attention for being the beleaguered child; h) they take some perverse pleasure in the punishment administered by the bully; i) they get all the attention of the class on themselves. In effect, the scapegoat is victimizing the entire group. So we might ask the scapegoat:

Johnny, how do you plan to get everyone to hate you today?

Johnny, what feeling do you want Jim to have toward you right now?

AND WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE CLASS?

It is considered a group resistance that the entire group sits silently by and allows the bully to continue his attack on the scapegoat without identifying how they feel. In any group, some silently (as well as loudly) applaud the bully for acting out the contempt they are afraid to voice (letting the bully take the fall) or, they are afraid that the bully will turn on them. The scapegoat becomes a “fall guy” for the group so they do not have to look at their own inadequacies or at the anger they may be feeling toward the teacher. The class often believes that if the scapegoat were not in the class, things would just be fine. This is an unsatisfactory solution for avoiding conflicts in the group. In any case, the entire class can be brought into play: How come this class is letting me (the teacher) be the bad guy and the only one calling Jim on his rude and attacking behavior? (Spotlighting the resistance)

How does Jim want Johnny to feel right now? (Bridging to other children in the class).

These interventions are further addressed in our workshops: “Emotional Education: An Antidote to Violence in Schools”, “Managing Love and Hate in Groups: Intervention Strategies”, “Ghosts in the Classroom: Unseen Forces That Impede Cooperation in School Settings" and “The Dynamics of Learning in Groups: From Isolation, to Competition, to Cooperation”

AND WHAT ABOUT THE TEACHER’S FEELINGS?

To effectively address bullies and scapegoats we must be aware of and understand the feelings each child evokes in us. Our impulse to condemn the bully, if acted upon, may reinforce his notion that adults are bullies and give him justification for continuing his assaults on others. Our impulse to coddle the scapegoat, if acted on, may reinforce his belief that there are benefits to being the wounded child.

We need to keep in mind that our impulses and feelings are NOT directives for action. Instead our impulses and feelings need to be understood as they provide us with important information about the student that is stimulating this feeling in us. Making more effective use of our own feelings is the subject of our seminars: “Behind the Scenes: The Emotional Experience of Teaching and Learning” and ‘The Emotional Health of the Educator: Maintaining Sanity in the Midst of Chaos”. Educators are invited to join our “New Educators Support and Training (NEST) Group” and our “Resilient Educators Support and Training (REST) Group” in which these intense feelings can be understood and effective interventions can be developed based on this understanding.

We are interested in your thoughts and feelings about the above material and look forward to hearing your experiences, feelings questions and concerns about bullies and scapegoats.

Antidotes to Violence in Schools

Name: Dr. Toby Chuah Feinson
Grade Level: All
State: NJ
Date: 10/26/2001
Time: 8:13:57 PM

EMOTIONAL EDUCATION: AN ANTIDOTE TO VIOLENCE IN OUR SCHOOLS by Dr. Toby Chuah Feinson Director, Adventures in Teaching & Counseling

Since September 11th the evidence has multiplied and cannot be denied. This is a world in which it is difficult to express love and hate in words!

Throughout the history of the human race, fighting has seemed a more appealing option than peace and communication. Nations have always vacillated between talking and action….and action has won out most recently in biochemical terrorism, at Ground Zero and at the Pentagon.

Closer to home, none of us has escaped the experience of attending school and all of us can probably remember the tumultuous feelings of love and hate that just being in school evoked. Feelings toward teachers, toward peers and toward our various subjects. Schools seem to be a microcosm of the rest of society and the same battles between acting out love and hate and expressing feelings in words erupts in classrooms, playgrounds, gymnasiums, and lunchrooms. There is evidence all around us of love and hate gone awry in relationships between teachers and students, students and other students, and among colleagues.

In recent years, prior to September 11th, we were horrified by the shootings and murders of both students and teachers in schools in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado. Kentucky, Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Ohio. These, in retrospect, were "cries for help" from children who had not learned how to work constructively in school groups and express feelings in constructive words only.

In a 1999 issue of the newspaper "Education Week" in a series titled "A Trust Betrayed", numerous cases of sexual misconduct with students by school employees were reviewed, all pointing to serious shortcomings in the educational system regarding the preference for words over actions. Many of these cases began with teachers giving into certain emotional currents of feeling which operate in both group and classroom settings: of wanting to adopt a student, take the student home, have a baby with the student.

We are overlooking a hotbed of emotional experiences that teachers and students have, that simmers and boils over, inevitably spilling out into the hallways of schools where students and teachers violate each other through murders, assaults, and robberies, and quietly through academic failure and premature job and school leaving. As hostile impulses are felt by everyone in a classroom setting, havoc is set in motion when there is no setting in which students and teachers can verbalize them when they are felt, understand them and channel them in constructive ways. It is urgent that we add classes in emotional education for students where they can learn the difference between feelings, thoughts and actions and master the tensions of group living.

When students walk into class an emotional transformation takes place. They are suddenly beset by needs, desires and fears, all accompanied by a myriad of feelings toward teachers and peers. Suicides, homicides, assaults, pregnancies, dropping out and drug use among children are some of the end results, in part, of an accumulation of frustration and aggression from the day to day group living that goes on in each classroom.

What is more often overlooked is that the classroom experience generates a constellation of intense emotional experiences for teachers as well. We know that the presence of emotions in one individual may significantly influence the emotional state of another. In a typical high school class in New York City, one teacher is bombarded with input from 35 youngsters during each 40-minute period in front of the classroom. The lack of attention to a teacher's overload increases that teacher's level of anxiety and fosters feelings of neglect and abandonment, spilling over into teacher-student interactions.

Hostility and aggression induced by a class of students present a major problem for the teacher who may not only resent or deny the hostility directed toward him, but who may be reluctant to feel and talk about the hostility he feels toward his students. The hostility arises from many quarters including the frustration of the teacher's expectations and efforts with his or her students. Not being immune from destructive feelings and impulses, the teacher may enact his own aggressive impulses in giving difficult exams, permitting destructive behavior, avoiding setting a group agreement on what constitutes desirable and cooperative behavior, being repeatedly absent or late, losing homework and test papers, humiliating students and even sexually abusing them.

There is an urgent need to work with people to help them manage feelings and move from distancing and alienating operations to behaviors which create closeness, intimacy and richness in their lives. An emotional educator attempts to do this and impart the idea that we can love and hate and not run away. Emotional education helps teachers, and through them, students, struggle with two complex concepts: that love and hate can exist side by side in a relationship, an emotional reality that many adults have difficulty grasping; and that while all thoughts and feelings are acceptable, one says and does what is helpful to one's life. Rechanneling feelings into words is the hub of any program in emotional education

Teachers who attempt to be emotional educators need emotional insulation. One way to provide this for educators who are under emotional bombardment is to provide NEST (New Educators Support and Training) groups and REST (Resilient Educators Support and Training) groups in which educators are provided with the experiences that they need to provide for their students. Here teachers can present anecdotes of their classes and students and use the group's impressions, intuitions, speculations, fantasies and feelings to assess what is going on in their class. Teachers in these groups move through stages of denying their feelings, particularly their hatred or sexual feelings toward a child, to then accepting their feelings, becoming comfortable with them, and finding a way to use their feelings in a controlled and constructive way.

NEST and REST groups for educators are an integral part of programs in emotional education sponsored by Adventures in Teaching and Counseling. These groups have provided teachers and guidance counselors with the skills needed to handle their intense feelings and the reluctances to learning that students evidence each day. These skills are taught didactically and experientially, where the group leader, by his attitudes and behaviors is a model and demonstrator of self control and self awareness, and a facilitator of maturational experiences between fellow teachers in the group. Sustained support is provided to enable the teacher to understand the feelings stimulated on the job and to make the most effective use of those feelings to further teaching/learning goals. Educators are encouraged to work with each class from a group perspective and with the understanding that learning is cognitive, social and emotional SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Our NEST and REST groups for educators have demonstrated that when teachers are provided with a maturational experience, they have been able to provide their students with maturational experiences in the classroom, removing obstacles to learning. This work needs to be done in every classroom whether the course be in mathematics, social studies, English, science, art, music or physical education. Teachers need to be trained in modern group skills and principles and in the use of their own feelings. This will enable teachers to diagnose, prescribe and administer the emotional experiences needed by their students that will in turn ease the students' resistances to learning and cooperation with teachers and peers and make teaching a less impossible profession.

Teachers require and deserve regular emotional educational and maturational experiences over a significant period of time in a setting that fosters healthy interactions with others. The sooner we help teachers navigate the torrential emotional currents unleashed in classrooms, the sooner we will enable this generation of youngsters to do the same.

In short, we need to evaluate whether it is possible to promote academic standards without regard to the emotional development of our students, the quality of the social relationships in the classroom or our own growth as human beings.

Cooperation in the Classroom

Name: Toby Chuah Feinson, Director
Grade Level: All
State: NJ
Date: 8/5/2001
Time: 11:27:44 AM

COOPERATION IN THE CLASSROOM Toby Chuah Feinson, Director, Adventures in Teaching & Counseling

"SKILLFUL GROUP MEMBERS ARE MADE- NOT BORN" Johnson & Johnson

Life is in groups. Those successful in group living are successful in life. If we were born skillful group members it would be easier. Unfortunately we are not! We are born unaware of others, greedy and narcissistic.

Most children come to school unprepared for the demands of cooperative group living, yet without cooperative group functioning, a teacher cannot make progress with the academic and cognitive objectives of a class, nor a counselor or social worker with the emotional and social objectives of a group. Our current generation of young people, so many of whom suffer with problems of identity, impulse control, alienation and inability to sustain meaningful relationships, has been poorly prepared for school/group life.

From the day children enter school, they give up the comforts of a one-to-one relationship and face the demands of class/group living. From kindergarten on, children enter a classroom/group where they have to compete for time, space, materials and most importantly, attention. A tremendous amount of aggression is aroused. The way a child has learned to cope with group living and aggression in his family is the way he copes in school. Typical fight-flight reactions emerge. As teachers, counselors and social workers, we see children who become silent or withdraw in the face of aggression or those who simply comply with authority (flight). We also see children put others down, snitch on peers, defy authority, or compete to become the teacher's/group leader's pet (fight).

Student's attitudes toward adults and peers in a class/group setting are based on their prior experiences and formulated views of parents and siblings. They come to a class/group and expect adults and peers to either be: 1) generous or withholding; 2) burdensome or supportive; 3) trusting or deceitful.

Introducing group structures in the classroom/group arouses intense feelings that show in lack of cooperation and teamwork. Uncooperative behaviors (verbal and nonverbal) are students' attempts to communicate to us their fears and anxieties about working cooperatively with their peers and us. If their resistances are appreciated as communications (rather than acts of defiance) and responded to with the right feelings, the students feel understood and become more available to work toward the academic and social goals of the classroom/group.

The hypothetically "ideal" student can: 1) come to class regularly; 2) feel comfortable in asking and answering questions of fact, feeling or opinion; 3) accept mistakes in himself and others and tolerate differences in nature and opinions; 4) cooperate with the teacher/group leader and peers/group members in making the class/group a meaningful and enjoyable experience; 5) master the cognitive material of the class/group; 6) earn a good grade and move comfortably on to the next grade/group. Admirable as these and other classroom/group goals we set may be, they are generally opposed with energy and in ingenious ways. Although there is a challenge in learning new material and most children are curious and interested, opposing feelings and forces are also awakened which need to be understood and responded to based on our understanding of the fears, hopes and anxieties underlying the students' oppositional stance.

Standard classroom routines starting with coming to class/group, coming on time, coming prepared with a notebook and pen, staying in one's seat, asking and answering questions, responding to other students, completing homework, etc. arouse tremendous opposition. These routines seem reasonable and harmless, even necessary, on the surface, but present formidable social and emotional challenges to each student. They are often experienced as demands and commands and arouse power struggles.

We need to understand the meaning of the routine to each child before we can respond in a way to enable the student to respond more cooperatively with us and his/her peers. This process of understanding requires the support of colleagues in a facilitated professional study/clearness group where we have the opportunity to study the data of the child's/group's behavior as well as the data provided to us from our own feelings, and formulate interventions that will enable the child to engage in progressive, constructive emotional communication to replace the destructive and uncooperative verbal and nonverbal behaviors he is currently using to express his feelings about the class/group routines.