From: rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richard Carlson)
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Re: Aggression in boys (Was: Re: BARBIE
Date: 15 Oct 92 10:00:49 GMT

clare@nynexst.com (Clare Chu) writes:

> In article <FB9ksB3w165w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Richa
> >lynn@elan.Elan.COM (Lynn Gazis) writes:
> >
> >> Undoubtedly I did something to make them dislike me.  I had
> >> skipped into their class after the school year started, I
> >> was smarter than the rest and, with no friendships to preserve,
> >> probably had no qualms about flaunting it if I did better than
> >> someone, and I was determinedly eccentric, playing games
> >> differently from the rest of the children.  What I didn't do
> >> was attack anyone.  I was playing peacefully in a corner of
> >> the playground when people sought me out and attacked me.
> >> 
> >> Perhaps there is more variety in patterns of bullying and
> >> motives for it than you realize.
> >> 
> >> Lynn Gazis-Sax
> >
> >On the contrary, your story is as typical as a story can get.  The
> >factor of being more intelligent and _showing_ it, being "new" and
> >lacking established friends that predate the school environment,
> >and probably even the belief that you had to fight back.  Even the
> >rock -- most bullied kids recall one incident where they picked up
> >some kind of a weapon, and if they didn't actually do it they
> >recall their father telling them to "pick up a stick or pick up a
> >stone!"
> >
> >Did you have any extended family, especially cousins, in the
> >community?  Were you new _in_the_community?  Were you a different
> >social class or ethnic group form the majority of the other
> >students?
> >
> >And why didn't you tell a teacher? or your father talk to the
> >boys' fathers?
> >
> 
>   Man, Richard, you oughta go get yourself put in a men's prison
>   so you can fully experiment with your thesis of bully-victim dynamics.
> 
>   Did you have any homeboys, especially blood brothers, in the
>   prison?  Were you new _in_the_pen?  Were you a different
>   social class or ethnic group from the majority of the other
>   license-plate makers?
> 
>   Why didn't you tell the guard?  or the prison warden or talk
>   to the guy's gangleader?
> 
>   Really, Richard, we'll be more than interested in reading your
>   expose of bullyhood and victimization in post-modern America
>   after you've experienced these things firsthand.  Tell us which
>   methods worked, and how you portrayed yourself.  Did you have
>   to join a gang?  Or were a few killings enough to get them to
>   leave you alone?

OK.  It was cute to transpose various considerations into the most
extreme environment imaginable.  Actually all along I've assumed
environments of variable virulence, ranging from inner city
neighborhoods and schools to idyllic suburbs where the worst thing
the bully ever does is call his victim a nerd.  I've seen quite a
bit of the variation first hand.

Btw, how effective would the strategies you outlined in your post
be in such an environment:  Make a joke, stand firm, act as if
they are uncool?  Those are all excellent and I'm sure they will
work _under_ _some_ _circumstances_.

Actually I _was_ in a maximum security prison for a month, only I
was the Chief Psychologist.  However I never got beneath the
surface of the interactional dynamics -- blocks of men being
marched around the corridors and yards, their faces blanked to
provide zero information to anyone who might look at them, or
lounging in the cell block listening to multiple radios and
televisions.  That's all I saw.  In the individual and group
sessions I tried to conduct all I got were petty complaints about
how someone lost his smoking privilege unfairly because a guard
didn't like him, or things like that.  Finally I decided that my
barely contained claustrophobia -- there were six locked doors
between my office and the street -- made the job too stressful and
I told them to find another chief psychologist. Oddly that was one
environment about which I learned nothing. The surface was too
opaque.  I've often thought, though, that if I was behind those
six locked doors and wasn't wearing a tag with my picture on it, a
tag that directed the guards to open those doors for me at my
request, I'd really know what hell was like.  (And I haven't
broken any laws since.)

The question this all raises is: is there a set of social skills
-- _teachable_ social skills, like the ones you outline in your
other post -- that are applicable across diverse environments?
Psychologist who are into things like assertiveness training
operate on the assumption that there is such a set.  [Although
even if there are they clearly don't have them yet.  For example
assertiveness trainers wouldn't recommend a creative comment like
the one you made to the line crasher; they have set responses
like, "Excuse me but it makes me very angry when someone cuts into
a line."  I think those might work for people standing in line to
buy tickets for the Metropolitan Opera, but I don't know if that
would have worked for you in the school cafeteria.]

And like any other really interesting and important question you
find complementarity: there is evidence that there is such a set
of universal skills and evidence that social skills are specific
to peculiar environments.  However, even in the most extreme
environment, I suspect that having  few cousins in the prison
would be helpful while being different and defenseless would make
doing time more difficult.

--
Richard Carlson
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