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here is an extract from an article by Alfie Kohn - Safety from the inside out www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/safety.htm Even in those cases where a student’s actions pose a significant risk to the safety of others, the first question for an educator should not be, “Have we used sufficient force to stamp out this threat?” but “What have we done to address the underlying issues here? How can we transform our schools into places that meet students’ needs so there is less chance that someone will be moved to lash out in fury?”

Here’s a different way to look at it: We need to stop talking primarily about creating peaceful schools, which is not a particularly ambitious or meaningful goal. Schools, after all, are completely peaceful at 3 a.m. Similarly, a classroom full of docile, unquestioning students may be peaceful, even if they aren’t learning much of value, don’t care much about one another, and would rather be someplace else. What we need to work for is the creation of schools that are peaceable – that is, committed to the value of peace and to helping students feel safe, in all senses of that word.(18)

Physical safety, the most obvious kind, has understandably been the top priority, particularly where it seems to be in short supply. But intellectual and emotional safety matter, too – in their own rights and also because they’re related to physical safety. Bullying and other violent acts are less likely to happen in a school that feels like a caring community, a place where children experience a sense of connection to one another and to adults, a place where they come to think in the plural and feel a sense of belonging. That’s the polar opposite of a school where kids are picked on for being different or uncool, to the point that they fear entering certain hallways or sections of the cafeteria. Caring school communities don’t let that happen: They regard any evidence of nasty cliques or hurtful exclusion as serious problems to be addressed. They do everything possible so that no one fears being laughed at, picked on, or humiliated.

These efforts take place in individual classrooms and also as a matter of school policy. Proactive efforts to build community and resolve conflicts are important, but so too must educators focus on what gets in the way of safety and community. Thus, teachers not only hold class meetings on a regular basis so that students can participate in making decisions; they also use these meetings to address troubling things that may be going on. One teacher spoke up after a math lesson, for example, to talk with her students about

something I don’t like and I don’t want to hear because it makes me feel bad, and if it makes me feel bad it probably makes someone else in here feel bad. It’s these two words. (She writes “That’s easy” on the chalkboard and draws a circle around the phrase.) . . . . When I am struggling and trying so hard, [hearing that phrase] makes me feel kind of dumb or stupid. Because I am thinking, gosh, if it’s so easy why am I having so much trouble with it? . . . . And what’s one of our rules in here? It’s to be considerate of others and their feelings.(19)

Such an intervention may be motivated not only by a general commitment to making sure that students don’t feel bad, but also by a desire to promote high-quality learning. There are intellectual costs when students don’t feel safe to take risks. A classroom where kids worry if their questions will be thought silly is a classroom where unselfconscious engagement with ideas is less likely to take place. (Of course, students often are unwilling to ask questions or acknowledge that they’re struggling for fear of the reaction from the teacher, not just from their classmates.)

On a schoolwide level, intellectual and emotional safety require that students are freed from being rated and ranked, freed from the public pressure to show how smart they are – or, even worse, how much smarter they are than everyone else. Awards assemblies and honor rolls are very effective ways to destroy the sense of safety that supports a willingness to learn. Some schools that pride themselves on their commitment to high standards and achievement have created a climate that really isn’t about learning at all – let alone about caring. Such places are more about results than about kids. Their students often feel as though they’re in a pressure cooker, where some must fail in order that others can succeed. The message students get is that other people are potential obstacles to their own success.(20)

There is much more to be said, of course, about how and why to build community, to meet kids’ needs, to create a culture of safety and caring.(21) The benefits of doing so are most pronounced in schools that have more low-income students,(22) yet such schools are often distinguished instead by punitive discipline and a climate of control. However, schools in affluent areas may also feel unsafe in various ways. Columbine High School was reportedly a place where bullying was common and a sharply stratified social structure was allowed to flourish, one in which athletes were deified. (Some of these sports stars taunted other students mercilessly “while school authorities looked the other way.”[23]) In some suburban schools, the curriculum is chock-full of rigorous Advanced Placement courses and the parking lot glitters with pricey S.U.V.s, but one doesn’t have to look hard to find students who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, or medicating themselves, as well as students who are taking out their frustrations on those who sit lower on the social food chain.

Even in a school free of weapons, children may feel unsafe and unhappy. And that’s reason enough to rethink our assumptions, redesign our policies, and redouble our commitment to creating a different kind of educational culture.

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Please keep up your great work! Our community needs more people like you!

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Chaim Walder's books for adults are full of stories of the long-term effects of female/male bullying, both on the victims and the bullies. In fact, Hamodia recently published a story about how some boys bullied an already fragile kid into permanent insanity. True story, no chance to repair the damage, receive mechila, nothing.

I think AK's suggestions, al pi Alfie Kohn, are also right on target. (AK, I got hold of Epstein's The Case Against Adolescence on your recommendation, and found a lot of guidance there, and lot of explanations about why things are going haywire. As with any secular book, it takes adjustments to apply to frum society, but I strongly recommend it to others.)

A big problem in Israel can be the children of fresh-off-the-boat olim, meaning that the children themselves are new olim. Aliyah is a beautiful and important thing, but it needs to be done right in order to be successful for everyone, and doing it with children who are above 5 makes it very difficult (though not impossible) to do it right.

Recently, I noticed my American friend's pre-teen son with a broken thumb. Guess how it happened? According to the boy, a classmate just started twisting his thumb backwards for no apparent reason (he claimed they hadn't been fighting or playing around) and in spite of the boy yelling at him to stop, the classmate continued until the thumb broke. Okay, you say, maybe he didn't tell the whole story. Maybe. But he and another friend (a short, aidel, Sephardi-Israeli) regularly tell of bullying from their fellow classmates who are mostly from wealthy, Anglo, Ashkenazi families and the school is considered very desirable by Anglos because the standard of both secular and Jewish studies is very high. According to our stereotypes, that is the last place that such bullying should be happening. But it is.

Also, non-white gerim have expressed to me their surprise that in school, their children were bullied by children of very new American olim, rather than by children of Israelis or veteran olim. (We Americans can think we're so much more open-minded and informed than everybody else, but sometimes...)

In such situations, the teachers have a very hard time stopping the abuse. The parents and children (if the children have not yet picked up the language) don't know Hebrew or Yiddish well, and the teachers don't always know English. (And if the abuse is verbal and in English, the teachers may totally miss it, unless they are very on top of things.) Plus, the teachers may not know how to deal with the American mentality. What's mor, sometimes teachers are reluctant to press an issue on a family that is already struggling with all the normal stress that comes with aliyah.

By the way, when hearing about recent divorces that resulted specifically from abuse on the part of the husband, both physical and emotional, I was surprised at how many of the husbands were children of American olim while the wives themselves were born-and-bred Americans. I don't know enough cases to generalize, and I don't know if anyone else experienced this too (maybe it was just a coincidence that I came across several at a time--it happens), but I do wonder if there's a pattern or connection. (The new olim bullies in the schools, the now-veteran olim as abusive husbands...) And it makes me wonder when the bullying behavior started and why. And why was it never made clear, throughout all those years of limud Torah that hitting people is WRONG?

We think we are so great and have such derech eretz compared to Israelis, but our overconfidence blinds us to our flaws.

I don't mean to imply that all young new olim bully or grow up to beat their wives. Some destroy themselves instead of destroying others. And some young new olim, baruch Hashem, do adjust beautifully.

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There will always be some occassional bickering- that is "normal". But more than a mild case of bickering requires a parent to reevaluate his/her own relationship with the child, and what efforts they have invested in ensuring that the child feels valued and content in his/her role in the family dynamic.

Hatzlacha! Almost all of us go through this at one point or another!

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if the teachers stop all incidents, even innocuous ones, then it stops. Dan Olweus created an approach to stop it, at the behest of the norwegian government, that worked exceptionaly well. I'm not sure how to find the data, but I'm sure you could look it up on google if your good at that sort of thing (which I'm not).

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Later I found out that he is a good year older than everyone else in the class. He was placed there out of choice because in his American school, they were behind in Kodesh when he moved to Israel, and also because he hadn't know Hebrew. If a kid is too old for the class, in many cases it causes a lot of social problems. (Also, perhaps the sounds of Israeli natural happy talking sounds aggressive to an American kid. So perhaps he figured that he was doing what the atmosphere seemed to him to be implying) (Also perhaps because the average Israeli kid is very independent without needing to spend money or needing to be driven around. The loose structure (which does not equate, for the Israeli kids, with freedom) may have freaked him out).

So I was pleased to hear that he later moved up a grade and seemed to like himself and others more. Last seen, two years later, he was playing in a friendly way with other kids his age, and not bothering the littler ones. I hope this holds.

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What I like about the Alfie Kohn/ Izzy Kalman approaches it is not ' doing to ' but rather ' working with ' kids , helping the bully and the victim be part of the solution , and Alfie kohn creating an environment which encourages and fosters prosocial behavior which Kalman IMHO misses out on . This is all about chinuch , confronting the kid not with punishment but getting him to ask ' who he is , what kind of family, classroom does he want.

Dan Olweus, Crusader Against Bullies Dan Olweus, a Norwegian psychologist and researcher, is the "Freud" of the modern anti-schoolyard-bullying movement. He was the first to become known for doing psychological research on bullying and is considered the ultimate authority in the subject. Unfortunately, his approach to reducing bullying promotes a victim mentality in society.

Olweus correctly explains how the victim's own actions unwittingly cause him to continue to be harassed. From this understanding, we would expect Olweus to reach the logical conclusion that kids need to be taught how not to fall victim to bullying. Instead, he decided that the solution is no less than changing the whole culture of the school so that teasing and bullying would not be tolerated. In his program, the staff, students, and parents all need to become vigilantes against bullies, preventing them from bothering anyone and disciplining them when our preventative efforts fail. In other words, if you are teased or bullied, don't worry about handling the problem by yourself. You are the good guy, and if you tell us that someone is bothering you, we won't tolerate it. We'll become knights in shining armor and rescue you from your evil bullies. Why did Olweus decide to change society rather than change the individual victim with the problem?

I believe there are two reasons (and I may very well be wrong). The main one is that he didn't figure out a good, reliable way to teach kids not to be victims. Thus, the only option was to forbid anyone from being a bully.

The second reason (and I am less certain about this one) is that Olweus comes from Norway, a strongly socialistic country. In socialism the drives for personal power and wealth are considered evil. While all types of govenments sympathize with the downtrodden and provide for their welfare, sympathy for the underdog is the raison d'etre of socialism. Therefore, it could be that Olweus is expressing his cultural ideals and putting them ahead of pure psychology. I have no doubt that Olweus has nothing but the best intentions. Unfortunately, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Because I haven't joined the crusade against bullies, many people think I have no sympathy for victimized kids. Nothing can be farther from the truth. I have been helping them for years, and my entire website is devoted to ending their suffering. But I do it only by helping the victims overcome their problems on their own, not by feeling sorry for them and fighting their bullies for them.

My manual for victims, "How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied Without Really Trying," available free on the website, will help most kids understand why they are victimized and how to make their problem end without anyone else's help and without getting anyone in trouble. Even without the victim's involvement, adults can reduce teasing and bullying between kids by 70 to 80% simply by using the "magic responses" in my adults' manual, "A Revolutionary Manual for Handling Children's Aggression." And this is accopmplished not by intensifying staff efforts but by reducing them!

interview

http://www.ednews.org/articles/8296/1/An-Interview-with-Izzy-Kalman-About-Bullies-Bullying-and-Coping/Page1.html

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'Studies also have shown that, in comparison to nontargeted children, targeted children are more likely to reward bullying by giving in, crying easily, failing to defend themselves, and, in general, responding passively and nonassertively (Hodges, Boivin, Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999; Olweus, 1993; Perry, Williard, & Perry, 1990; Schwartz, Dodge, & Cole, 1993). The lack of self-confidence experienced by children who are frequent targets of bullying increases the likelihood that they will respond ineffectively unless they are provided with better strategies and the opportunity to practice them. ' We encourage children to have growth mindsets and problem solve rather than having a fixed mindset , here the victim. We need to tackle the problem from many sides - peer mediation, making a school a community which is empathetic and kids feel for others, making sure the bully does not turn into the victim but genuinely reflects on his actions and develops empathy and making the school safe. Just targeting the bully IMHO justs makes the bully more angry and a victim

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When it’s teenagers dropping out of Torah observance (and all the MideOraisohs that that entails, often including violence), they are “Our kids” and we have to brainstorm on ways to help them not drop out/come back.

But when they are young adults who stay well within Torah observance, and very occasionally resort to violence to achieve what they perceive as Hashem’s word, suddenly they “Do not represent us! Enough is Enough!”

Of course, one doesn’t have to agree with everything another Frum Yid does, one can even condemn certain behaviors, but: Why don’t you even care about helping them? What happened to Kol Yisroel Areivim? Does it only apply to Americans who look chilled? Should we only have compassion on people who society casts into the role of victims?

More importantly, shouldn't we not care just a little more about helping people who wear the King's uniform, they dress like Frum Jews, and make most of their decisions in their lives according to their understanding of what Hashem has written in the Torah, and passed on through Tzaddikim (even if they get it wrong occasionally) - than people who throw off the King's uniform, disassociate with Frum people, and spend their decisions and their days following their baser instincts?

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Ak- victim mentality?! Yeah, those Jews in the concentration camps with their victim mentality should have been part of the solution in getting those mean Nazis and Ukrainians and Poles to stop hurting them! I'm sorry, but when a child is bullied in school, the bully needs to be stopped posthaste, period.

If the child is doing things that make them easy targets, sure the parents and teacher should help them out, but not as part of the solution.

An analogy would be muggers and old people. Old people who are the victims of mugging, are not mugged because of their victim mentality but because they are easy targets. It would be helpful to give elderly people tips on how to avoid being mugged, not as part of the solution, but to simply avoid being a target. It's not synonymous! Being part of the solution implies that they are part of the problem!

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Point well taken

But there is a big difference between individuals sinning -- as all humans do -- and those who claim to be doing G-d's work while harming others.

If someone is eating trefe, we try to find good in him/her. But if someone is firing an AK-47 near my home, my first order of business in not to find good in him. It is to do what I can to see that he is locked up in jail.

There guys are destroying the name of frum people around the world.

Yakov

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"Accustom yourself to instill a love of humans in your heart, even the wicked, as though they are your brothers, and even more, to the point that love of all humanity will be implanted in your heart, to love even the wicked in your heart. say: "If only these righteous people would repent! they would all be great and acceptable to G-d." Moshe Rabbeinu, who loved all Israel faithfully, declared: if only all G-d's people were prophets...."

(R. Moshe Cordovero, Tomar Devorah, ch. 2)

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"Point well taken" That's because you're an anav and do not take offense, so thank you.

"But there is a big difference between individuals sinning -- as all humans do -- and those who claim to be doing G-d's work while harming others."

Granted, there is a difference, but that difference is mainly that the latter is fodder for the cannons that are trying to imply that Orthodox Judaism is like fundamentalist Islam.

But it doesn't make much difference to these reprehensible journalists whether the rest of us align with or malign these guys. They want a scoop, and unfortunately they got it. These journalists control what gets put on the media, not what really happened, and not the truth.

"There guys are destroying the name of frum people around the world."

And here I was thinking you were protesting on behalf of the female bus victims!

People who leave Torah observance are also creating a massive Chillul Hashem - it's as if their actions are implying that the Torah derech can't provide for them.

BUT while Chillul Hashem is a thing we mustn't do, and a thing that we try to prevent, we nevertheless should not waste our energies protesting and protecting against the results of someone else's Chillul Hashem.

Hashem chooses that the bus beatings get done in a way that that the general public gets to find out about it. He chooses that some kids go off the derech, and others dress like they wish they could; and lots of people know about it. Conversely, in Mitzrayim, he chose that the Goyim should not find out that 4/5 of the Jews had no intention of leaving Mitzrayim, (when He made them die in the Plague of Darkness).

All public events are way beyond the scope of the individual or even the group, to have an influence. If Dr MLK managed to make huge changes, it was mostly because Hashem made that the time was right for it. As opposed to what the history books say - that he created the revolution. Hashem rules the world. In another example, Edison created the light bulb. The face of civilization changed as a result of this. Is it all because of Edison - or more likely, Hashem wanted the world to get sleep deprived, whoops I mean get lit up more in the evenings. Similarly, internet. It was obviously decided in Sheshes Yemei Bereishis, and all the things that needed to make it happen were put into place at the right time. There is no such thing as chance.

The media stations (many of whom seem to be supported by Arabs) are just looking for a negative scoop, and absent an occurence, they could just as easily have created one. This too is organized by Hashem.

WHILE there is no such thing as chance, there is such a thing as change. We can change who we are. Also, the vibes we give off, and our messages we pass on to friends and family (the ones that emanate from the heart), and Shiurim, and helpful blogs, can provide new ways of looking at things, new ideas to implement into our lives, and positive change to the world.

Before I click "Submit", I'd better add that some will say this is Passivist. I'm not a passivist when I see a route to change something, and I'm not a passivist when something is extremely important (Just plow through it!). But I don't see a method nor the importance of trying to change world perception of Orthodox Jews. Those who want an honest opinion just have to come for a visit. And they all really know the truth really. Why can any Arab walk safely down any Israeli street, while any Israli just has to drive ten meters into an Arab town and gets lynched (no joke). Everyone knows this. When they complain about Orthodox Jews it's to give a labelled reason for their hatred. Whatever Orthodox Jews did is neither the fuel for the hatred nor the cause of the reactions. Lev Melachim veSarim Beyad Hashem. Political leaders do not control their own hearts and movements - it is Divinely ordained.

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I am a frum torah jew a young wife and mother part of the Lakewood yeshiva community I work in the secular world far removed from the yeshiva community. many times people from this secular world have said to me I saw a ultra orthodox hassidic man dressed in traditional garb (which is how they identify him) going to the movies or engaging in a behavior that I tell them I don't do - I have to explain to these people that although these men are "dressed in the kings uniform" (to put it how you did) they may not be the kings soilders or the behavior they were engaged in does not in any way represent the King. It is the job of the true servants of the King to keep the Kings name holy and pure by decrying and condemning the actions of those dressed in the Kings Uniform behaving improperly in the Kings name.

You do bring up a good point though, it would be great if Rabbi Horowitz could give us some practical tips to deal with these "kanoim" to help them with their self esteem issues and to help them be happier with themselves so they wouldn't have to "bully" others.

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I would LOVE to know more about the beaters, who they are, who their families are, what they are like. Are they single, married. Who they look up to. People make all sorts of assumptions about bullies and kanaim. Who says the assumptions are correct?

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Nobody is blaming the rape victim , the mugged lady , or the bullied child. But the victim mentality which puts the blame on the bully or thief , making the enemy that needs to be destroyed is the fixed mindset that does not allow for growth and problem solving. The kid who leaves his bike outside without a chain and lock, is right , that the thief is to blame. But he should be part of the solution and that he will encourage stealing if he leaves his property unprotected. I quoted above ' 'Studies also have shown that, in comparison to nontargeted children, targeted children are more likely to reward bullying by giving in, crying easily, failing to defend themselves, and, in general, responding passively and nonassertively (Hodges, Boivin, Vitaro, & Bukowski, 1999; Olweus, 1993; Perry, Williard, & Perry, 1990; Schwartz, Dodge, & Cole, 1993). For sure there will be situations where targeted kids fall outside these categories and are competent etc , but by adopting anti-bully , zero tolerance campaign we are promoting a victim mentality which will encourage bullying , alienate the bully and turn him into a victim , the victim wants revenge and he becomes the bully. When it comes to human relationships it is not as we say here in Israel ' bang ve'ga'marnu '. Dealing with bullying is not simply stopping the bullying but working on all fronts , the school community = caring and responsible, the victims - a growth mindset that is willing to problem solve , change oneself rather than do to others , and working with the bully to reform him. Izzy Kalman calls his site bullies2buddies , our ultimate goal is friendship , as Nechama said , these are our brothers. The anti-bully campaign sees only solution , dealing harshly with the bully, which does a disservice to the victim , encourages the victim mentality , makes the bully even angrier and feel like a victim, making frienship impossible and ignoring the role the school has in helping kids to become prosocial. We are encouraged to go for compromises when we have litigation , and the question is asked why should we make some one lose something which is rightfully his. The answer is that he is really winning, when you compromise ,you have not made an enemy and you can sit at the same table at a wedding. When relationships are important , ' doing to ' has limits. Maybe with lots of supervision we can deal with physical bullying , but one can do very little to stop cliches, alienating a kid , teasing etc except through prosocial education and helping kids problem solve themselves. I have not looked into ' internet bullying'. In this thread R' Horowitz shared the anti-bully , zero tolerance approach and I shared those opinions who challenge that approach. I don't expect posters to agree with me ,and I hope they find it interesting and challenging ,but to call what I write as ' ridiculous' reflects for me ,not on me.

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You know what? I could care less about growth and problem solving when someone is bullying, stealing and hurting.

The kid who leaves his bike outside without a chain and lock, is right , that the thief is to blame.

"Pirtza kora l'ganav" - a breach invites a thief. The Torah holds us responsible to some extent. Rashi says about the girl who goes out and is raped - if she would have stayed at home, this would not have happened. Of course this does not absolve the thief or the rapist, who are responsible for their actions.

targeted children are more likely to reward bullying by giving in, crying easily, failing to defend themselves, and, in general, responding passively and nonassertively

They reward bullying? Feh! Like Jews "rewarded" marauding Cossacks and Nazis by cowering in bunkers, and under their beds.

The anti-bully campaign sees only solution , dealing harshly with the bully, which does a disservice to the victim

A disservice? I think not.

encourages the victim mentality

uh, he WAS victimized

makes the bully even angrier and feel like a victim

aw, isn't that too bad

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In such times, even if a person would have been brave and calm, accepting his fate from G-d, while trying to protect himself, there would be very little he could do in practice.

However, the opposite applies in our schools today. The kids who are bullies are JEWS. They are brought up in Torahdike homes. The atmosphere in much of the Western World equally promotes being kind as being selfish. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the 'bullies' in our Jewish school are not being mean for the sake of being mean, hurting for the sake of hurting, as the Goyim did then.

Rather, modern day Jewish school children who bully are scared, so they create a clique to ensure they themselves will always be popular; or they are scarred, so they try to seem tough to protect themselves, or they are neglected, and they have been given to enough, and are unable to see other people's points of view. Or they have other issues.

Modern day Jewish school children who are victimized are also not brave and calm, accepting their fate as from G-d, while trying to protect themselves. Rather, some are overly babyish, reacting to very small insults because they view their classmates as potential enemies, possibly a thought they picked up from their parents. Or, they do not have good social skills, able to join an already existing group. Often this passive attitude is also passed down from parents. Or, they have a deserving problem, and they feel deep down that they have done wrong and deserve to be punished. Or any other of a host of issues.

Careful observation of the details of the bullying, with questions by an expert or caring parent, can help to recognize the specific power plays that are taking place. Obviously, you have to be attuned to how to extract honest information without exacerbating the problem or damaging your own relationshiop with the child. I can't stress this latter point enough. Then, with appropriate skills, one can then resolve the underlying reasons of the child who bullies or the child who is bullied to the benefit of the situation and the children involved.