A Not-So-Super Anti-Bullying Campaign

Bullying is wrong. School anti-bullying programs are also wrong. Allow me to explain.

Bullies, like the poor, have always been with us. Bullies are cowards who use their strength to prey on the weak and the weird. There can be no justification for bullying behavior. None.

But only within the past decade has bullying become a social problem for policymakers to solve, like obesity, periodontal disease or racism. And plenty of us would say the serious, concerted response we’re seeing now is long overdue. How many good kids have been beaten and berated by their peers into depression and suicide? How often have grownups overlooked or ignored pervasive bullying—or, worse, dismissed it as “kids being kids”?

Trouble is, some problems defy “scalable” policy solutions. Yes, we have good old-fashioned discipline and punishment. We have carrots and sticks. We dole out remedies in easily digestible, bland portions appealing to broad audiences. But no government program ever devised has found a way to fix what ails the human soul.

All of this came to mind Friday, when I heard about a special anti-bullying assembly at Sam V. Curtis Elementary School in Rialto. Students dressed up in superhero costumes to hear police officers similarly garbed deliver the message: “You can be a hero by standing up to bullies.”

Oh, come on. What’s wrong with dressing up in service of a noble message? What’s wrong with encouraging kids to feel heroic?

Even though I think the world would be a better place if more people dressed up like Batman and the Flash, real trouble lies beneath the surface of the anti-bullying lesson that police and school officials are trying to teach: The persistent and erroneous belief that better self-esteem can cure just about anything.

A large part of the program focused on what self-esteem means. The correct answer: “Liking yourself.” If you hold yourself in high regard, nothing a bully can say or do will take away what you know to be true.

You know who else has a high sense of self worth? Bullies.

Study after study has debunked the oft-held view that bullies act out because, deep down, they really don’t like themselves very much. Quite the contrary, in fact.

“While many bullies are themselves bullied at home or at school, new research shows that most bullies actually have excellent self-esteem,” writes James H. Burns, an education consultant and author of “The Anti-Bullying Handbook.”

“Bullies,” Burns adds, “usually have a sense of entitlement and superiority over others and lack compassion, impulse control and social skills.”

In short, bullies act out because it makes them feel, well, super.

The baleful effects of bullying are undeniable. But the baleful effects of the self-esteem movement are too often denied.

At some point in the 1980s, self-esteem supplanted sound character and good citizenship. We can point to 1986 as the year the shift was codified into law. That year, Republican Gov. George Deukmejian signed a bill by Sen. John Vasconcellos, the late, liberal Democrat from Santa Clara, to establish the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, Personal and Social Responsibility.

Vasconcellos, an unpleasant man who somehow earned a reputation as “the most radical humanist in the Legislature,” contended that the state should promote self-esteem as a means of social reform. “Self-esteem is the best budget balancer, by far,” he wrote in 1990, “serving both to increase productivity and taxes, and to reduce human needs for public support and services.”

Vasconcellos died last year without ever understanding that self-esteem isn’t just another entitlement to be doled out through a state bureaucracy. A healthy sense of self-esteem is earned. What we have today is self-esteem on the cheap.

I hear the Rialto Police Department plans to take its superhero show to all Rialto Unified elementary schools in the 2015-16 academic year. I hope the effort has some positive effect.

But instead of overinflating kids’ sense of self-worth, perhaps we should teach them how to be citizens with duties and responsibilities beyond themselves. Good citizenship may not be as glamorous or exciting as dressing up in tights and a cape, but it’s a far greater and nobler challenge.

This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise

This piece originally appeared in Riverside Press Enterprise