I have been warning for years that anti-bullying laws are a Catch-22––that they will cause an increase in the problem they are trying to solve.
New Jersey, which has proudly passed the most intensive anti-bullying law in the country, just proved my point. It has announced the statistics of bullying complaints during the past school year. What were the results of their law, which many people consider to be a model? Bullying complaints quadrupled!
Of course part of the increase is because the law encourages people to file bullying complaints. But it is more likely that the law actually caused an increase not only in the quantity of bullying but the intensity. Kids are being taught all the bullying actions they should not be tolerating, like name calling, rumors, gestures, eye-rolling and social exclusion. These things happen to all of us on occasion. However, what causes a person to become a victim of bullying, meaning that these actions happen to them repeatedly, is that they get upset by them. So kids who have received intensive anti-bullying education are more likely to get upset when someone does something mean to them. And when they get upset, the attacks continue and escalate.
Furthermore, students are instructed to report to the school when they are bullied. Does the reporting process cause hostilities to decrease? No. It results in an immediate intensification. If you and I are kids in school and I report to the school authorities that you bullied me, are you going to like me better? You are going to want to beat the crap out of me. You will try to get your friends against me. You will try to make me look like scum on Facebook. You will look for an opportunity to complain to the school that I bullied you.
And will your parents like me better? Will they admit to the school that you are a bully? Most likely they will try to prove to the school that you are the innocent one and I am the real bully.
Complying with the law is extremely time consuming and expensive. The investigating and reporting process, which involves meeting with each student separately, meeting with their parents, interrogating witnesses, documenting findings, and writing and filing reports, can easily take upwards of ten or more hours of staff time. If you consider the cost of an hour of staff time, including vacation, medical benefits, pension and school maintenance, it is easily a minimum of one hundred dollars. Thus, handling each bullying complaint probably costs the taxpayer at least one thousand dollars. And that doesn’t even solve the problem. All it does is make it possible for the school to show that it complied with the law so that it doesn’t get in trouble.
But this cost pales with the expenses involved when parents sue a school for failing to make their child stop being bullied. The law makes it easier for parents to sue schools over bullying. This is great for lawyers but terrible for the taxpayers. The legal process costs at least tens of thousands of dollars, and probably hundreds of thousands. If the school loses the lawsuit, it can cost in the millions.
In Orwellian fashion, proponents of the law are calling the current statistics a proof of the law’s success. If success is defined as an increase in bullying complaints then it is an outstanding success. If success is defined as reducing bullying, it is an outstanding failure.
I have repeatedly offered to provide New Jersey, free of charge, with the tools to dramatically reduce bullying. School staff will have more time to teach academics and the students will grow in resilience, emotional maturity and independence. So please, if anyone from the New Jersey Department of Education is reading this, take me up on my offer. You can reach me at (718) 983-1333 or izzy@bullies2buddies.com.
Transparency Declaration: I declare that I do have a financial interest in a company that offers products and services that may be related to the content of my writings.
Author's Policies Regarding Comments: 1. I rarely respond to comments because I simply don't have the time. If I don't respond to your comment, please don't take it personally. 2. Psychology Today has a strict policy about nasty comments. I believe in free speech and rarely censor comments, no matter how nasty. Every nasty comment by adults––especially by ardent anti-bullying advocates––illustrates how irrational it is to expect kids to stop engaging in bullying.
