I've always been uncomfortable with the Newport-Mesa Unified School
District policy against bullying, which -- for quite different reasons --
allied me briefly with trustee Wendy Leece.
But it isn't conflict with the 1st Amendment that concerns me, as it
does Leece. Rather it is the encouragement for young people to rely on
authority to settle matters that in my growing up and early adulthood
years were handled by the individuals involved.
When I was in public school, my family moved every year between my
fourth and 10th grades. My father's work required this, and in those
Great Depression years we were just grateful that he had a job. This
meant that every September for six years, I was the new kid in school.
And this meant that inevitably I was tested. I was neither big nor
combative, but in those years I learned various ways to defend myself --
not always, but sometimes, by fighting, which I didn't do very well. But
as soon as the other kids saw these qualities, I was accepted, which
meant they would stand with me if the odds were skewed.
The same thing was true of the military, at a more sophisticated
level. We dealt collectively with antisocial behavior among our ranks. It
would never have occurred to us to take our complaints to higher
authority. And these experiences in both youth and the military provided
me with tools to deal with a frequently cutthroat society without
allowing it to take the edge off the truly good things in life. It is the
fear that the likelihood of developing such skills is eroded by the
creation of formal bullying policies that makes me uneasy with them.
That's why, when the Newport-Mesa school board a few weeks ago renewed
its determination to intervene if "gestures, comments, threats or
actions, either written, verbal or physical, which cause or threaten to
cause bodily harm or personal degradation" take place on school property,
I got uneasy all over again. So I sat down with Supt. Robert Barbot and
school board trustee Dana Black to find out why the people who share my
views shouldn't feel uneasy too.
They began by explaining that there are two rather widespread
misunderstandings about the bullying policy. First, it is taken verbatim
from the California Education Code and is therefore the policy of every
school district in the state. The differences among districts grow out of
how this policy is observed and enforced. Second -- and Barbot was
concerned that this be clear -- there is no connection between
