King Arthur's wounded children
But King Arthur's children are not just knights in this series; they're the rejects of society, the bullied, the wounded, the kids who don't fit in. And here, author Michael J. Bowler offers his take on why so many children in American society suffer this way, and what we can do about it.
One Size Does NOT Fit All,
(Or Why Bullying Has Become
Institutionalized in America)
America doesn’t just permit bullying - America encourages bullying. There,
I said it. A sad, but very real truth that mars an otherwise in-so-many-ways
great country. Every day we hear more and more horrific tales about kids
bullied ceaselessly in school or on the Internet, some to the point that they
can take no more and commit suicide. Was there bullying when I was a kid? Yes,
and I was a victim in elementary and middle school. Has it gotten exponentially
worse, and not simply commensurate with population growth? Yes. Based on my
observations, here are a few of the reasons.
First off, what constitutes bullying? Is it always the kid being kicked or punched or called names or mocked or
who has his stuff stolen or his lunch tray upended in the cafeteria? No, though
these are common examples. But these and so many more actions are the symptoms,
not the disease. They are learned behaviors taught to children by the adults
around them, and the media, and our politicians, and our school system, and our
justice system and our sports teams, and, well, just about every institution in
America. So let’s look at the continuum of bullying from where it all begins –
in the home.
Do some parents intentionally bully kids? Yup. Disturbing, but true, and
these stories pop up every day on the news, especially parents who bully their
children for being gay and either drive them from the home or blatantly kick
them out. I’ve known kids like this personally, and it happens all the time. Very
often parent-run organizations like the Boy Scouts of America engage in forms
of marginalization and bullying. Only this year did the BSA remove a ban on gay
boys being scouts. For all the years before, the impressionable BSA membership
was taught that gay kids were bad, or dirty, somehow less than human, and
that’s why they couldn’t be scouts (and were kicked out if their “dangerous”
nature was uncovered.) If that’s not a flat-out recipe for bullying taught by
parents to their kids, I don’t know what is. And the BSA is only one parent-led
organization. There are hundreds out there that teach the same. When adults
make anyone in the population sub-human in the eyes of other kids, bullying
results. After all, “those” kids are not “real” humans like me, right? See how
easy it is to think like a Nazi?
These are overt examples. Are there also many ways parents unintentionally bully their kids or
model it for them? Yes, and in large part it’s due to that “one-size-must-fit-all
mentality” dominating the country. If a parent doesn’t like a certain sport,
football, for example, and has a son who does, the parents will say whatever
they can to belittle his ambitions in that arena because they don’t like it. Or
if a boy wants to be a dancer and his parents tell him that’s not for boys, or
a girl wants to play rough sports like wrestling and the parents keep insisting
that’s not for girls, or, or, or . . . The list can be endless.
Parents all too often think their children should be exactly like them in
every way, or that their children must fit the “norm” in order to be successful
in life. A kid may want to be a teacher because he or she wants to give back to
the community and work with kids, but parents will often try to force him or
her to be a doctor or lawyer or banker because those are more lucrative
professions, and more money always makes people happier, right? Wrong. None of
us are ever truly happy unless we can be who we are, not who others think is
better or more normal. Period. Sadly, all of this stems from thinking of kids
as part of a group first and as individuals second, when it should always be
the other way around.
Some parents pimp their kids out as models or entertainers so they can make
money off them, whether or not the kids really want to do those things for themselves.
That’s a form of bullying all too common these days given the prodigious
amounts of money that can be made in entertainment or sports. I’ve known many
kids forced to do sports they didn’t like or play an instrument they weren’t
interested in or follow a career path completely against their own wishes, all
because one or both parents wanted to brag about them and, to a large extent,
control them. A rose by any other name is still a rose, and so is a bully. But
since it’s parents, it’s okay? Shouldn’t be.
In my Children of the Knight Cycle,
institutionalized, as well as personal bullying, is brought into the light of
day in a quest to gain more human and civil rights for kids in America. As my
main character tells an important group of adults in Book IV, “Your kids
aren’t little mini-me’s. We’re real people, different from you, with likes and
wants and opinions of our own. We don’t need to be brainwashed to be
successful. All we really need is for you to show us how to think, not what to
think, and how to make good choices, so we can grow into good adults. How hard
is that for grownups?” Apparently in America today, it’s very hard. And make no mistake, brainwashing kids to be copies of
adults is a major form of bullying. How can it not be? You’re essentially
telling a child he or she isn’t good enough the way he or she is, that he or
she must be like you to be of value. Wow. That’s crazy.
Since children spend
huge portions of each day at school, this is the primary location for bullying to
occur. This arena is where kids who’ve learned the techniques modeled by their
parents actually get to put them into practice. Do schools condone it? Not
officially, but since the “one-size-must-fit-all
mentality” is the driving force of education in this country, bullying is
permitted. It helps keep the riff raff in line, the kids who dare to be
different, who have the affront not
to fit the norm, like those Goth kids and those emo kids and those heavy metal
kids and those annoying-as-hell skaters and, of course, everyone’s favorite
target, those kids who dared to be born gay. Sadly, too many adults turn up
their noses at kids like these, or openly disdain them. I saw it first hand where
I taught high school. Hell, these were the kids I loved the most, and they were
quite often the most creative and innovative in their thinking. But no, that’s
wrong according to the education system. Everyone must be rote, must memorize
the same common core information, must think inside the box – if they’re
allowed to think at all. This is institutional bullying at its most disgusting.
Look at the standardized testing the kids must endure,
all of which tells little about the ability of an individual child except his ability
to memorize information or, in the case of the SAT, regurgitate that info
within a set period of minutes (as though success in college is determined by
speed.) These tests don’t allow students to analyze, or more importantly,
synthesize what they have learned, and every student as an individual will do
these things in his or her own unique way if encouraged to do so. Variety of
thought and expression should be celebrated in education – instead it’s bullied
out of kids starting in the first grade when everyone must conform or else.
Here’s another brief moment from And the Children Shall lead, Book IV of my Knight Cycle:“Ricky described some of the crimes against
children that had been sent to them from all across the fifty states. Some were
seemingly small, like parents browbeating their son to participate in a girl’s quincienera against his will, even
though that commitment required him to give up all of his free time for two
straight months. Others were downright preposterous, like a school suspending a
first grader because he bit his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, or the middle
school boy who’d been suspended for dying his hair green and the school ordered
him to go back to his natural color or he’d remain on suspension, or the first
grader suspended for kissing a little girl’s hand.
Other episodes
would be clear violations of the First Amendment if the accused had been an
adult, like the case of some American kids in a California school who got
suspended for wearing American flag shirts because the principal was afraid it
would offend the immigrant students. There was a middle school in Florida that
went to court to stop students from starting a Gay Straight Alliance – a public
school using the court system to bully kids. There were stories from children
who’d been beaten or abused in foster homes or group homes, kids who were
bullied nonstop at school for being gay and the school would only “talk” to the
bullies; there were kids who got punished by their parents for listening to
“the wrong music,” and even kids in high school who got suspended for bringing
their own lunch from home because they were required to eat the school food.”
Just recently, an
international student from China whom I train at the gym told me he
accidentally violated a school rule he didn’t know about – he was eating food
in the student common area. An unfamiliar teacher saw the infraction, marched
him down to his counselor, and pointed at him like he was Adolf Hitler, saying,
“This one was eating in the common
room. Take care of it.” She wanted the boy disciplined by the counselor, who
then proceeded to chew him out for breaking the rules. Couldn’t this have just been
handled with a simple explanation by the teacher that eating wasn’t allowed,
and thus he needed to take his food outside? But no. The boy was presumed
guilty of willfully violating a school policy and bullied by both the teacher
and the counselor. Welcome to America, my friend, land of the free and home of
the bullied.
And of course,
in the fall of 2013 there was this egregious, inexcusable bullying by a school principal
of a boy who did a stupid, childish prank:
“A popular
15-year-old student has committed suicide after he reportedly faced
expulsion and could have been placed on the sex offenders' register simply for
streaking at a high school football game.
Christian
Adamek, from Huntsville, Alabama, hanged himself on October 2, a week after he
was arrested for running naked across the Sparkman High football field during a
game.Sparkman High Principal Michael Campbell told WHNT a day
before the suicide attempt that the teen could face major repercussions because
of his actions.
'There's
the legal complications,' Campbell said. 'Public lewdness and court
consequences outside of school with the legal system, as well as the school
consequences that the school system has set up.'Campbell added that that the
incident was not just a prank and needed to be treated seriously.
Sparkman High administrators
even recommended that Adamek face a hearing in the Madison County court system
to determine if formal charges would be filed, WHNT reported.”
The
principal had Christian arrested, and so frightened the “A” student with the
fear he would have a criminal record for the rest of his life that the boy
killed himself. While not always with such tragic consequences, schools bully
kids every day with their zero tolerance policy toward any behaviors they don’t
like, behaviors that pretty much define why kids are kids and not yet adults. I
met a middle school boy in juvenile hall who’d given a small pocketknife to a
friend of his on the school bus and forgot about it. The friend got caught with
the knife at school, told administrators who he got it from, and now this quiet
fourteen-year-old learning disabled boy with no criminal record sat with me in
juvenile hall facing adult felony charges for handing off a weapon to another
student. In California, he could be prosecuted in adult court and sent to
prison for that “offense.” Insane!
And for the
record, that principal in Alabama should have, at the very least, been fired
and at the most banned from any future job involving kids. He’s the sex
offender here, the real criminal, not Christian. And so is the principal of the
school that had the fourteen-year-old I met arrested. Shameful.
America
needs to wake up and face the war it’s waging against children. Look at our
juvenile justice system. I spent twenty-five years in the public school system,
and thirty within juvenile justice, and kids are bullied, denied rights, forced
by cops to confess to crimes they didn’t commit, assigned attorneys who do
nothing butallow overzealous district attorneys to ram their cases through and
send them to prison. This is institutional bullying at its most despicable, and
always because there’s money and prestige to be accrued with incarceration and
long sentences meted out.
Where’s the
media in all this? The media is supposed to have our backs, right? Sadly, it
actually encourages the demonization and bullying of kids. All the kids
I know who’ve gotten arrested and appeared in the paper were labeled “monsters”
anddeclared guilty by virtue of the
arrest only, rather than innocent until proven
guilty. Why? Because the cops and the D.A. said they were guilty. No
investigations occurred to actually verify what was said to the so-called
reporters. No, these kids were monsters because the media is a bully, too, and
uses its power to marginalize everyone, even people it doesn’t intend to.
And lastly, let’s not forget
bullying by omission, something the media, schools, and adults in general are
very much engaged in. Why are kids who get in trouble with the law so vilified
by a public that doesn’t know any of them personally? Because the media allows
the bullies in law enforcement and the district attorneys offices to malign the
kids, and makes no effort to get the whole story out to the public. They simply
repeat what is told to them, print or broadcast that info like it was fact,
wallow in their ratings for being as lurid as possible, and as a result, often
innocent kids, or kids for whom there were many extenuating circumstances, are
now tarnished for life, or worse, hated by a general public who knows nothing
of substance, and then sent to prison for life. I depict this form of bullying,
and that of the railroading justice system, rather vividly (I hope) in the
soon-to-be-released Book III of The Knight Cycle, There Is No Fear, though the origins of this storyline begin in Running Through A Dark Place.
And while we’re talking sins of
omission, why does bullying occur
with such frequency on school campuses? Because teachers, administrators, and
even campus security are so caught up in their own little worlds that they
ignore what’s right in front of them, or perhaps even privately condone it. My Gay
Straight Alliance kids would tell me how often they or someone else would be
called “faggot” in class within earshot of the teacher, and the teacher simply ignored
it. “That’s so gay” was flung about with frequency, or being called stupid or
retarded or any other names one can think of, all not even mentioned or dealt
with by the adults in charge. By ignoring these behaviors, the teacher, or any
adult within range, has given tacit approval that the behavior is acceptable.
The only way to stop such behaviors is to confront them head on. Ignoring
empowers, and empowerment means the behaviors will increase.
Parents do the same thing by not
standing up for everyone’s right to have respect simply by virtue of being
human, even famous people or politicians. One can, and should, talk to their
kids about inappropriate behaviors people do, behaviors that hurt others,so
their kids can learn hownot to act. That’s
fine. But because we might disagree on someone’s political point of view we often
lash out and demonize that person’s very humanity, and our children pick up on
these attitudes. There are some people in this world that can rightly be called
evil, but that is a super strong word and should not be bandied about
carelessly. Most politicians or celebrities we dislike are not evil – they may
be dumb or misguided or just flat out wrong, but not evil.
Even such throwaway comments
exchanged between adults such as this one I saw on Facebook also teach children
to bully: “Same sex couples shouldn’t be able to adopt because their kids will
get bullied for having two moms and two dads.” What did the parent who said
this just teach his child:If you know kids with two moms or dads at school they
are fair game for bullying. Sadly, the most narrow-minded parents are the ones
who spout off in front of their kids the most, and bullies are created.
Children take all their cues from adults who surround them, starting with their
parents and teachers and coaches. If we want to truly reduce or eliminate
bullying among the young, we the adults have to model the right behaviors, not
once in awhile, and not just with people we like, but always and toward every
human being. Andall us adults must do
this, from the poorest to the richest, from the most famous to the least famous.
We need to keep our own prejudices to ourselves when in the presence of
children, or better yet, grow up and realize that all prejudice is stupid and,
as history has repeatedly shown, always leads to acts of evil.
We cannot stand by and watch anyone
being bullied. It doesn’t matter if the victim is a total stranger or our own
child. Telling kids to “man-up” in the face of victimizationis the height of
stupidity. Kids need to be empowered, not mocked or ridiculed. And the bullies
need to be called on their behavior every single time. As a teacher, this was
often a daily battle because the name-calling was so omnipresent. If that means
we stop what we’re doing to address it, that’s what we do. Human beings and
their mental health had better take precedence over any subject we might be
teaching because if it doesn’t, we have already failed.
My Knight Cycle doesn’t explicitly deal with one-on-one bullying, but does
show the long-lasting trauma of parental and governmental bullying of children.The
series attempts to illustrate the points I make in this blog, that in America’s
now obsessive quest to make every child fit into the same exact mold, we as a
country have become “The Bully.”Children who grow up in fear will not do a good
job running the country. Teach them basic human values and let the deeper stuff
come with age. Teach them to respect everyone no matter how different. Teach
them how to work together. Teach them how to not waste anything because wasting
is wrong. Teach them to look out for others and not stand by when someone is
getting hurt. If we adults model these simple behaviors, as King Arthur does in
my books, the children will learn
them. And the future of this country will look a whole lot brighter.
Thank you Michael. You've given us much to think about. And you've also produced an interesting series to explore how things can change. Readers can find out more by following the rest of this tour:
6/24 Promo A Universe in Words
6/27 Review Window on the World
6/30 Guest Post Sheila Deeth
7/1 Excerpt My Kindle Fever
7/2 Review Reading Authors
7/3 Review TBR
7/4 Guest Post Pure Jonel
6/27 Review Window on the World
6/30 Guest Post Sheila Deeth
7/1 Excerpt My Kindle Fever
7/2 Review Reading Authors
7/3 Review TBR
7/4 Guest Post Pure Jonel
and don't miss the great giveaway below.
ABOUT RUNNING THROUGH A DARK PLACE:
King Arthur and his extraordinary young
Knights used ‘might’ for ‘right’ to create a new Camelot in the City of Angels.
They rallied the populace around their cause, while simultaneously putting the
detached politicians in check. But now they must move forward to even greater
heights, despite what appears to be an insurmountable tragedy.
Their new goal is lofty: give equality to
kids fourteen and older who are presently considered adults only when they break the law. Arthur’s
crusade seeks to give them real rights such as voting, driving, trading high
school for work, and sitting as jurors for their peers charged with criminal
behavior.
Understanding that the adults of California
will likely be against them, Arthur and his Knights must determine how best to
win them over.
However, before the king can even
contemplate these matters, he finds himself face to face with an ally from the
past, one who proves that everything isn’t always what it seems – even life and
death.
The Knight Cycle Continues…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Michael J. Bowler is an award-winning author of four previous novels––A Boy and His Dragon, A Matter of Time (Reader’s Favorite
Silver Medalist), Children of the Knight
(Wishing Shelf Book Awards Gold Medalist),
and Running Through A Dark Place––who
grew up in San Rafael, California.
He majored in English and Theatre at Santa Clara University and earned
a master’s in film production from Loyola Marymount University, a teaching
credential in English from LMU, and another master's in Special Education from
Cal State University Dominguez Hills.
He partnered with two friends as producer, writer, and/or director on
several ultra-low-budget horror films, including “Fatal Images,” “Club Dead,”
and “Things II,” the reviews of which are much more fun than the actual movies.
He taught high school in Hawthorne, California for twenty-five years,
both in general education and to students with learning disabilities, in
subjects ranging from English and Strength Training to Algebra, Biology, and
Yearbook.
He has also been a volunteer Big Brother to seven different boys with
the Catholic Big Brothers Big Sisters program and a thirty-year volunteer
within the juvenile justice system in Los Angeles. He is a passionate advocate for the fair
treatment of children and teens in California, something that is sorely lacking
in this state.
He has been honored as Probation Volunteer of the Year, YMCA Volunteer
of the Year, California Big Brother of the Year, and 2000 National Big Brother
of the Year. The “National” honor allowed he and three of his Little Brothers
to visit the White House and meet the president in the Oval Office.
He has already written the final installments that complete The Knight Cycle and all will be
released in 2014.
ONLINE LINKS:
Website
www.michaeljbowler.com
FB: michaeljbowlerauthor
Twitter: BradleyWallaceM
Blog: www.sirlancesays.wordpress.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/stuntshark
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6938109.Michael_J_Bowler
AND DON'T MISS THIS GREAT GIVEAWAY !
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