Posted by Sal on January 31, 2001, at 23:24:56
Hello, all,
Let me share a story, if I may. When I was in elementary school, playing well together involved a game called hawks and doves. When it would snow, the neighborhood kids came out to sled down the steepest street the neighborhood. Some of the kids who had lived in the neighborhood the longest, some of those whose parents earned a bit more money, and some of the bigger kids told the rest of us who wanted to use the hill how we should play. They were the hawks.
The hawks told the doves to slide down first. The hawks would then chase after us, trying to force us off the street, into a ditch. Since the driveways that crossed the ditch had brick culverts, it didn’t take long to figure out that playing together with those kids meant the possibility of a head injury. Pretty soon, there were few doves on the hill, and few who had any problem with the game of hawks and doves.
In high school, playing well together often meant going along with the crowd. It sometimes meant standing with classmates in a gauntlet outside the cafeteria, to heckle and jab whatever target of derision was selected by a clique that had the clout to instigate such an incident. To stand apart from the crowd meant the possibility of becoming the crowd’s next chosen target. I still wonder how the teachers managed not to be there at those times.
The school staff seemed to endorse such hazing by supporting the annual senior day celebration. Seniors enjoyed the privilege of ordering freshmen to carry their books for them, to crawl on hands and knees in the foyer to clean the school seal with a toothbrush or to perform whatever other demeaning act a senior could contrive. Some carried the hazing a step further, slapping us in the back of the head as they passed in the hallway.
Some of us learned to avoid school and isolated ourselves. Eventually, some of us learned to cope, and even learned skills to counter and redirect such conflicts.
Because we learned to stand on our own, and not to let others play with our heads, we sometimes still encounter the same responses from some who learned things as kids about how to play together. Popular groups talk loudly among themselves about us. We are told we are pushing their buttons when we do not immediately recognize and adopt their unique customs. We might be called energy monsters. Someone might speak out to rebut our every word. People feign to not comprehend us. Our input is treated as irrelevant. People loudly agree to ignore us, yet soon are talking among themselves in the terms they learned from us. We are personally criticized if our viewpoint does not concur with a dominant opinion. We are blamed for what people do to us, and the way people feel about us. People presume to know our motives. We are told we are not welcome.
But some of us grew accustomed to the predictable responses. We learned that, with effort, we could help change the situation. Some of us even learned to enjoy playing together in a way that would promote tolerance of divergent viewpoints.
On television now there is a cute “Take a Bite Out of Crime” McGruff animation for school kids. The animation style is like that of a Nintendo combat game. In response to a bully’s confrontational posture and thrown fists, a kid with a skateboard sidesteps, dodges and jumps acrobatically over the head of the school bully. Kids are urged to "talk it out," which, in the cartoon, chills the bully in a cloud of blue ice.
Thanks for your attention,
Sal
poster:Sal
thread:495
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20001124/msgs/495.html