To the Editor:

Senator Lisa Keim of Oxford County recommended contacting schools about the problem of bullying.

As read in the Citizen a while back, we would like to encourage and thank SAD 44 administrators and teachers for tackling the upcoming difficult issue of bullying in schools. One of the most frustrating, sad, and incendiary aspects of education is bullying.

Resisting, fighting back against it: teachers, administrators, parents, students. Decades and decades of it in schools all over the country have laid the ground for its current aggression in the adult world.

But there seem to be no courses on the history of bullying, no cultural, educational psychological studies, no sociological teaching, no prohibitions, no nothing on this seemingly everlasting and wrenching problem in schools. Civics and the history of bullying should be taught from grade school on.

Preceding 1940, Hitler was clearly a bully. He encouraged bullying among Hitler youths in Germany. In 1940, Albert Einstein gained US citizenship. In that year he wrote:

“What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not.…but from the point of view of daily life,…we exist for our fellow men…A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving…. The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

There are many bullying leaders and wannabe bullying leaders in the world today. This can be studied in current Social Studies courses.

What exactly is bullying? What is its nature? How do we deal with it both as individual citizens and those in authority? Importantly, how do we train our children and youth (both victims and perpetrators) to deal with/avoid it?

Can the current cultural situation be mitigated by teaching qualities, types, and situations of bullying without naming names of bad actors, or bad influencers? It will be a challenge, but it can be done.

For those who pray, a spot of prayer will greatly help.

Profound thanks to administrators and teachers for tackling the difficult issue of bullying in schools.

*Source: Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (New York: Philosophical Library, 1940), 2–5.

Ron and Sue Dorman

Bethel