B is for Bullying

The Daughter brought home a bunch of anti-bullying material from school one day this past semester. Much of it came from StopBullying.gov, which defines the behavior as “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Both kids who are bullied and who bully others may have serious, lasting problems.”

At around the same time, I attended a symposium sponsored by some library students that featured

Bullies

I had reason recently to reflect on the bullies in my life. Growing up in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, it was what I suppose one would call a lower middle class life, with some doing well enough to get by, but others living a more hardscrabble existence.

My school, Daniel S. Dickinson, which I loved – and which I wrote about in 2012 – was a K-9 school that, I learned much later, didn’t always get the most current resources. For instance, we had an ancient music book that still had