Bullying: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

The purpose of this essay is to show the argument of how a school’s affinity space plays a role in the bullying that takes place there. The essay is organized in a way that examines the questions of how affinity spaces play a role in schools. James Paul Gee, with the help of other authors such as Mary Louise Pratt and Paul Heilker, helps the author to present a specific conversational argument about affinity spaces in relation to bullying. The essay uses Gee and his concept of affinity spaces as a form to communicate through a non-conformed community, but solely interaction with one another. Affinity spaces seem to play a great role in school facilities today, and the way a school’s affinity space is upheld could determine whether or not bullying ceases to happen or continues.

In 2010, a girl named Phoebe Prince, an immigrant from Ireland, committed suicide by hanging herself. She was only 15. It turns out that Phoebe was a victim to very harsh bullying, by some high school girls in particular. Eventually Phoebe had had enough, and decided to take her own life. It is absolutely astonishing to know that all of this poor treatment led to a young girl taking her own life. Could the issue of bullying have gone unidentified for as long as it has if schools were more of affinity spaces? If they were less of affinity spaces? How does bullying affect a child’s performance in a specific area of life such as an affinity space like school? Who should become involved? How effective are affinity spaces in preventing bullying? It is hard and sad to imagine Phoebe being one of my friends and ending her life due to harsh bullying. It makes me want to be more proactive and informative about preventing bullying from happening anymore so that awful effects like suicide, drug use, self­harm, etc. cease to happen. Any kind of bullying should have no tolerance, and many schools have bullying policies that do not tolerate any bullying taking place in the school. However, each school identifies bullying differently when it comes to the definition and then the consequences for bullying. In order to deal with bullying the right way, we must be able to get to the root of it, and truly understand what is going on. Bullying and its consequences can be used as a lesson for life outside of school. For instance, it can be a way to teach kids who bully that extreme behavior like breaking the law can lead to unfortunate consequences. Affinity spaces seem to play a great role in school facilities today, and the way a school’s affinity space is upheld could determine whether or not bullying ceases to happen or continues.

Bullying can have a large impact on numerous individuals and the community it takes place in. In other words, it can affect anyone and everyone. Those who are bullied can experience mental health problems like depression and anxiety, a decrease in academic success, drug and alcohol use, and, like in Phoebe’s case, suicide. Those who bully are susceptible to using drugs and alcohol as adolescents and adults, engage in fights, drop out of school, have criminal convictions as adults, etc. Finally, those who are witnesses to bullying have an increased use of drugs, alcohol and/or tobacco, develop depression or anxiety, and might skip school. Since these are some of the effects of bullying, we need to know the exact definition of bullying. A definition of bullying found in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is “to treat abusively, to affect by means of force or coercion.” According to stopbullying.gov, it is defined as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.” Already, there are some discrepancies between these definitions for the same word. Although they may mean the same thing, but use different wording or ideas, they can be interpreted differently. It is important that when a school is going over their bullying policy that each student understands exactly what it means so that they know what the consequences will be if they partake in these actions. Schools having different definitions of bullying can lead to a few problems. For example, if a kid goes to one school with one bullying policy and then transfers to another school with a completely different policy, the school should be responsible for letting that child know the expectations when it comes to their school’s own bullying policy. So, this is a place where an affinity space, which will be identified more clearly in the next paragraph, can come into play.

In an essay called Affinity Spaces: From Age of Mythology to Today’s Schools written by James Paul Gee, Gee writes about how his focus of community is “on the idea of a space in which people interact, rather than on membership in a community” (57). This is applicable to schools in general today because many kids who are bullied would probably not consider themselves a part of their school’s community or even call it a community because of how they have experienced it in a negative way. A school should, at the very least, have a welcoming atmosphere to it. When kids who bully hinder that friendly experience that every student deserves to have, then something needs to be done about it. Also, as one way to see it, a school as an affinity space should only be a safe place where students interact, instead of just a place that is like a membership community. It would be too difficult to get kids, especially in school, to conform to the ways of one another because we cannot even get mature humans to do such a thing in society today. However, kids in school should conform to the rules and ways of the school in order to prevent bullying from happening inside the walls of the facility. Videogames, computer games, etc., especially violent ones, support the concept of vehemence and disregard for other humans. Videogame violence would take up a whole other paper and then some, so I am just focusing on the way videogames can encourage bullying. Discussed in Gee’s essay is a videogame called Age of Mythology where a player can create an identity of their very own; “They can make up any name they like and give any information (fictional or not) about themselves they wish to” (67). When kids have to the access to create this online façade, it enables them to feel bigger and more confident in their actions. Nevertheless in reality, they are hiding behind their disguise of being someone who they are really not. Since kids have the ability to empower themselves like this nowadays, it has me thinking, what if school facilities were less of an affinity space? This leads into an argument that counters the idea of schools being more of an affinity space discussed previously. Everyone would be adapted to what is accepted and what is respectable for their school. If schools allow kids to interact in a place that is not made up of a community where they are considered members, there is barely any support system, less accountability, and more room for a child to do whatever they please. There is a sense of fewer boundaries and a more relaxed way of dealing with bullying and other problems that could occur.

When a child is put through an environment where they are continually bullied, it can lead to many negative outcomes. In the article What Happens Over Time To Those Who Bully And Those Who Are Victimized? by Patricia McDougall, Shelley Hymel, and Tracy Vaillancourt, through research it was “found that being victimized in grades 6 and 9 could be linked to greater depression and lower self-esteem at 23 years of age.” Bullying can create an environment where it puts a restriction on kids that sticks with them as they grow up and throughout their life. To answer an important question such as, how does bullying affect a child’s performance in a specific area of life such as an affinity space like school?, Paul Heilker and his work can be useful in describing the answer. In Paul Heilker’s essay On Genres as Ways of Being, he explains how “The desk is unstable. It will fall over easily if any cross pressure is put upon it…” Bullying can be looked at in a way that Heilker describes a desk. An environment where bullying is prominent is certainly an unstable environment for anyone to be involved in, especially a child in school. This also goes back to affinity spaces. The affinity space a school environment puts out must be stable and not harmful for students in order for them to thrive.

There are various ways in which bullying can be dealt with. In cases where schools have dealt with bullying poorly or have failed to address the issue at all, kids have switched schools to avoid the torment, and some have even dropped out of school completely. Schools have a big part in whether or not bullying continues or stops. Sometimes schools can give extreme consequences for minor bullying. Although bullying should have no tolerance, it would not make sense to suspend a kid who lightly teased another kid. It would also not make sense to give a kid a minor consequent, like a detention, for harsh verbal abuse or physical harm towards another kid. The discussion of how effective affinity spaces, or a term such as school used in this commentary, can be in preventing bullying is apparent in the article “How are schools addressing bullying?” by Rebecca Clark. She states how some parents sometimes see an incident as bullying when in reality, it is just a misunderstanding. This is when school administration can step in and be the mediator to set the records straight for the one who felt bullied or violated and for the one who is accused of the violating or bullying. In order to take the right actions when it comes to bullying, the school should make sure that an incident is, in fact, bullying. In other words, there needs to be more of an analysis on the situation in which bullying was claimed to have happened. Then, the appropriate actions will be able to take place. We need to start recognizing effects of bullying and make bullying policies clear and the consequences clear and fair in the schools. After these have been cleared up, schools also need to start seeing an incident for what it really is instead of jumping the gun and assuming that it is bullying.

In conversation with Mary Louise Pratt who wrote Arts of the Contact Zone, it is clear why it can be difficult to relay the real reason as to why bullying happens and cannot always be pinpointed. In Pratt’s essay, she uses the words contact zone “to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other…” (106). It is helpful knowing this because in relation to Gee’s discussion of affinity spaces, the idea of community and interactions within that community are prevalent throughout both essays. In contact zones, such as school, where different cultures and ideas come together, there is a large amount of diverse perspectives. This causes a difficulty in making schools less of an affinity space and more of a member-based community, because it would be hard to get everyone to conform to one way of being, as mentioned in the paragraphs above.

In a documentary called Bullying, produced by Real Life Productions, in Just for Governors (Teachers TV/UK Department of Education, 2005), real life governors in the UK are trying to tackle bullying in schools in the most helpful and effective way. In this fifteen minute video, there is an alleged incident of bullying and many parental complaints. The governors talk about how schools should start to handle these situations when they come up. In this incident, a young girl is acting isolated and quiet, but refuses to talk to any teachers about what is going on. Several weeks later, her mother notifies the school that she is reluctant to go to school. The parent claims that this is because she child is being bullied, and while making this claim, she questions the school’s anti­bullying policy and that the school needs to figure out the problem. When the governors where discussing this issue, they stated how when teachers see a change in behavior in a child, they need to do something about it. Also, they mentioned how there needs to be a partnership between the child, the parents and the school. That way, the problem is not weighted on one person only. The key is the parent’s ability to trust the school with handling the problem of bullying and also open communication between the parents, the school and the child. When it comes to the child’s change in behavior, it does not always mean that they are being bullied. There could very well be something else going on in their life outside of or even inside of the school setting. However, this is where communication between the child, teacher and parent come in to play so that whatever problem the child is facing can be figured out, whether it is bullying or not. In other words, it is important that the school keeps an open mind to what the causes of the child’s behavior might be.

The child whose mother claimed that she was being bullied, finally came out to say that some of her close friends were sending her offensive texts. This raised another concern; the cellphone policy in the schools. While the policy was “no cellphones allowed in the classrooms” there was still trouble with kids having their phones out during class. All in all, there clearly needs to be way more enforcement of the rules when it comes to certain policies, like this one. When school administration confronts bullying, there needs to always be a sense of pupil confidentiality. This is so the student experiencing the bullying does not feel too vulnerable or uncomfortable because they are already the main point of the issue. The school should respect the confidentiality of the student, but still find ways to investigate the problem.

The girls ended up confessing to sending the offensive texts, but thought it was all fun and games, and said they did not realize it was hurting their friend’s feelings. Parents ended up calling the school with complaints about how their child was being unrightfully interrogated and accused of being a bully to the young girl. In this case, the school should take into account how they are addressing the issue with the girls who were said to have been bullying their friend, as to not unrightfully accuse anyone. When it comes to bullying over texts, it can be ambiguous, and the texts could be misinterpreted from both sides.

The governors came to the conclusion that when bullying is not clearly defined for the students and parents in a given school, then there is a great risk for misinterpretation and miscommunication. This relates back to a previous paragraph about how bullying policies can be misunderstood among kids and parents if they are not directly stated and explained. They noted that when the school is talking to a student one-on-one about an issue of bullying, that the parent is able to sit in and understand exactly what is going on and the outcomes of the situation. Overall, parents need to have trust in the school and that the administration will be able to handle whatever issue comes about in the school and that there needs to be open communication and solid relationships with the school. Also, since it is a school setting, the problems that arise are always a learning opportunity.

In order for bullying to start to come to an end, how affinity spaces are occupied in school settings is what will induce a student response that will either be bullying, or not. It all seems so simple, yet it takes a significant amount of time to instill the right values and ways of living in the students at any given school. This is especially so with kids of all ages in school because they only want to do what they want to do. Will bullying ever come to an end? It sounds too optimistic and unrealistic to think that such a thing could happen. However, starting at the root, where it all takes place, sure is a momentous start.