Continuing with the bullying posts...
( Part 1 can be read here.)

I'll posit that there are two types of bullies, whether or not they are exclusive entities from each other or simply two aspects of one behavior I'm not too worried about at the moment. For want of better terms I'll call one the Predatory Bully and the other the Herd Bully.

Also as I go through and put my students’ behavior under the microscope don’t imagine that I’m holding myself separate or above them. Too often I've encountered myself while dealing with my students.

The Predatory Bully

You know the phrase "I wouldn't cross the street to pee on so-and-so even if they were on fire". It's generally used to show one's level of contempt and loathing at another person. Well, the predatory bully is the opposite of them.

They'd cross the street to pee on you simply because you're having a nice day.

These are the people who can’t bear to see others happy or having a good time without feeling the need to stop and crush it for no reason other than their, the bullies, own desire to get back at the world because they’ve been bullied themselves. As an adult the predatory bully might simply be a criminal, but he or she could also be the type to destroy a person's enthusiasm in order to boost their own egos. (In a recent blog post the writer Robert Twigger gave these folks the sci-fi sounding name of "Energy Pirate".)

The worst male bully at one of my schools is this type.

He’s a small kid who I suspect is quite smart but he has learning disabilities (ADHD and possibly dyslexia) that make school and sitting still difficult, an older and also small for his age brother that is himself bullied at his school and subsequently comes home and bullies his brother, my student, and both of whom live a hand-to-mouth existence that’s likely one stroke -- they live with their grandmother -- away from them being homeless. To say the kid has issues is an understatement, but to empathize with his plight is one thing, to tolerate his behavior is another.

The Herd Bully

Another common type that shows up regularly among male and female students, these are the bullies whose insecurities get the better of them. These are also the bullies we encounter most often as adults as they police societal norms.

The worst female bully is this type.

She’s smart and talented, but lacks the confidence to be her own person, so she’s made herself the Number 2 in her clique which is the alpha-clique in her class. If she perceives any threat to her position, she’s quick to lash out and, with her words, get the group against the offending person. If someone is in a weaker position and she thinks she can get away with it, she’ll exploit it in an effort to shore up her own position or if doing so will elevate her own status. It’s a bit sad to see on a number of fronts. The fact that she's lived abroad gets exploited by the other students who say she’s not Korean but Canadian (actually they says “She is Canada-people”), so it’s easy to see where her insecurity comes from.

I've learned it’s a rare student who has the confidence to go along with their excellence. Hell, it’s a rare person who has the two hand in hand. But again, it's one thing to empathize, it's another thing to tolerate. In both these cases the student's teacher has stepped in and actively tried to right both these behaviors. From what I've noticed the teacher has been successful.

On a side note, a lot of people talk about the differences between “Eastern” and “Western” mind-sets, and I think too much gets made out of this. Yeah, personality is a cultural construct, and group identity might be stronger in the “East”, and the “West” tolerates more overall, if superficial, atomization among its populace, but both cultures have their norms and to be perceived as somehow outside the norm allows oneself to be open to attack. It’s a rare bully that exists in isolation and even wolves have packs. So regardless of culture one lesson most people learn early in life is that it’s best not to stand out but stay within the group, or within the limits that the group deems appropriate.

This is why I find this stuff fascinating because it's not like it goes away. The schoolyard bully remains with us, as does the hurt experienced by the bully's victim, and as adults these experiences determine our character and behavior in so much as we operate without self-awareness and run on autopilot letting our accumulated assumptions and default settings guide our actions.

Up next, the workplace! And finally, the Ukulele Story!

And in case any of you are currently being bullied, here's a video one of my students showed me.

Remember, never underestimate the kick to the groin!



(Actually my student showed me the Korean-dubbed version. It was like they went to central casting and found an Italian "hood" and taught him Korean.)

This is going to be an at least three part series of posts on bullying as witnessed over the last year that I'll relate to bullies in the workplace and their contribution to overall workplace toxicity levels. That'll be the Ukulele Story.

But for now I'm going to talk about bullying in an abstract fashion.

It’s been interesting dealing with kids this past year because after all kids are people with the same drives and emotions as adults except without the psychological masking, rationalizations, or experiential framework to guide their behavior. As most people know bullying is not something that goes away as people get older, but something one encounters too often even if it's masked beneath other names.

What surprised me over this past year was noticing how not all kids reacted to bullying in the same way.

With my first and second graders it was hard to distinguish bullying as separate from the general tumult of their experience. The exception being when say a fifth grader started bullying a second grader, but even then the second grader's ego was more malleable and likely to bounce back without damage because there was less cruft accumulated around the wires. Then around about the fourth grade things started to get different. By then the personality/ego/whatever had become more fixed and bullying became more perilous, and one was apt to embrace it as the norm and let it shape behavior.

After that, puberty comes along and all this ego/identity posturing ramps up and gets really weird.

Take all this with a grain of salt. I’m not a behavioral psychologist, nor am I positing a cut and dry series of developmental stages. Basically all I’m saying is younger kids bounce back from bullying better than older kids, because younger kids have a less fixed attachment to their sense of self. It's not really a groundbreaking observation, but it did get me thinking.

For visualization purposes imagine a stick.

That's the sense of self. A little kid can encounter something threatening to the stick and let go of it easily before grabbing the stick in the same place or elsewhere soon after the event. An older kid, a teen, or an adult when they lose their handle on the stick it takes a lot longer for them to get hold of it again, and there’s always the possibility that they won’t.

We’re not gifted by default with infinite adaptability.

And if the stick breaks, or even more importantly if one perceives the stick as breaking, because, really, the stick’s a fabrication, then one’s likely to encounter something really ugly.

Which I'll talk about next time when I tell you about some of my students.

This is the first in a (at least three part) series of posts on teaching English in Korea.

When I told one of my closest friends I planned on moving to South Korea, her first reaction was to call me crazy, her second was to say: "People like you don't do that." That's when I knew I was making a good decision.

Travel’s not the answer. It’s too easy to travel and never leave one’s comfort zone, to stay on the tour bus, going from sanctioned tourist site, to sanctioned restaurant, and back again. The comfort zone never breached; the new experience never encountered except within a sanitized boundary where it can be limited, made safe, and consumed.

Travel can become an inoculation against having an open mind. We can see the world and remain as mired in our own preconceptions as before. Possibly even more so: “Been there, done that. I’m glad I don’t have to live there.”

The real answer is to get beyond the comfort zone. To go beyond one’s assumptions and safe spaces and enter that area where the boundaries aren’t fixed and there’s no scaffolding supporting our preconceptions. A space where we’re likely to grow but we’re also likely to get burnt.

It can be painful to watch our preconceived notions crumble beneath the weight of their own unsupported crufted-on bullshit.

Some people come away from the experience lessened, still attached to the broken pieces of their assumptions but unable to trust them again. Bitterness and cynicism set in, and a wounded pride takes over. For others it can be a weight removed, a pressure done away with, not collapse but liberation.

The goal is not to travel. It’s not to have “adventures” or “see the world”. These can be too easily transformed into consumables, the stereotypical endlessly backpacking globetrotter. Rootlessness and the excitement of new places can be as deep a rut as the familiar treadmill. But the ruts aren’t deepest in our environment, they're deepest in our own heads.

Travel and living abroad are two ways to encounter the unknown. They’re not the only ways. Nor is the comfort zone to be made an enemy. Our desire for a place where we can feel safe is hardwired, but like much that’s hardwired, it can be made a luxury and abused. When that place starts to resemble a cage, we need to find our way out and stretch past its confines.

I used to haul around this Francis Bacon quote which I unfortunately can’t source but will nevertheless paraphrase: “One’s mind should be broadened to meet the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries shrunk to fit the narrowness of the mind.”

That’s the perspective required. Travel’s one way to learn it, but it’s not the only way.

(The painting's by Nicholas Roerich.)