recently about a teenage boy who was at school and started
having trouble breathing. He had an inhaler at school, the
prescription label was in his name, he went to the school nurse's
office because he couldn't breathe, but the nurse would not
administer the medication because there was a consent form that was
missing a parent signature. The boy lost consciousness because the
nurse chose to follow the rules and not administer medication without
the signed consent form. I understand that she was probably afraid of
losing her job, afraid of having trouble finding another job after
being fired for not following protocol, afraid of prosecution, etc.; the boy was afraid for his life. I
have been watching to see what happens and I'm saddened to see that
the school is standing behind her decision to follow policy rather
than act to help a student. And this is certainly not the first time
I have heard of people being afraid to intervene to help someone
because of the potential negative consequences.
When Miss Merriweather falls and gets
hurt and no one can hear her call for help except the lion, he has to
decide quickly what to do. The lion runs (which is against the rules)
to get help and tries to indicate to the other librarian what has
happened. But the librarian refuses to pay attention to the lion, so
the lion does the one thing he knows will get attention—he roars
(which is also against the rules) loudly enough that he cannot be
ignored. He knows that he is breaking the rules and is willing to
accept the consequences, not being allowed back in the library, for
the sake of helping someone. Of course the lion was forgiven for
breaking the rules under these circumstances and was allowed to continue visiting the library.
The moral of the story being that we have rules to help us all but
sometimes there is a good reason to break the rules.
It
also makes me think, yet again, about our brief but eventful
preschool experience. While he was there, my son was really bothered
by another boy in his class who would often push and hit other
children. I understand that this other boy had some
social/emotional/sensory issues and was doing his best to cope with
the environment. My son wanted to stop him from hurting people. He
would step into the middle of the conflicts and tell this boy to
stop, and sometimes use his body to block him. He was reprimanded for
this and told that it was “not his job” to intervene, that he “is
not the boss”, and that the proper action is to alert a teacher. It
makes sense to tell a teacher when something like this happens, but
in the meantime someone could be injured. And once the teachers have
been alerted (repeatedly) that this keeps happening, there was no further course
of action laid out for the students. What are students supposed to do
when it keeps happening and the teachers are not taking measures to
prevent it, are not stepping in immediately to stop it, and are
saying that his attempts to help others are a behavior problem?
On the Penn State campus, just telling the right person wasn't
enough to stop atrocities—when the proper authorities don't do what
they should, there needs to be further action taken. I don't mean
vigilante action. I mean continuing to speak up and speak out and
seek out assistance from higher or different authorities.
Roar like a
Library Lion! I don't want my son to learn that it is “not his
job” to help people. He respectfully and non-violently stood up for
people who needed help—it's everyone's job to do this. We are teaching children so early on
(starting in preschool at least) not to help people when they have
the opportunity. When people are taught their whole lives to just
stand by and hope the person in charge will do the right thing, it
is not surprising really that a school nurse could just not help a
student having an asthma attack because of policy, or that people could report a heinous
crime on a college campus and then do nothing further to stop it, or
that there is rampant bullying in schools.
Barbara Coloroso wrote a
great book called “The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander”.
She relates bullying that happens among children to much larger scale
atrocities like genocides and explains how bullying (and genocide)
cannot happen without the complicity of the bystanders: there are no
innocent bystanders. Her
Bully
Handout illustrates the roles of various participants in
bullying, and is followed by some good tips for parents. Her
Three
Characters Handout explains the roles more in depth and
highlights the one role that can stop the cycle of violence: the Defender/Resister/Witness. If just one
person or small group of people, speaks out against the bully,
protects and defends the bullied, and speaks up for the targets of
the bully, others will follow the lead and begin to resist as well. (The Girl Scouts use an anti-bullying training called
Power Up that focuses on teaching bystanders what they can do, and they have a great slogan:
Doing nothing? Not an option.) Coloroso cites evidence that this effect has been demonstrated within
genocidal regimes. It has also been demonstrated in the
Asch
Conformity Studies and the
Milgram
Obedience Studies that people often go along with a group or an
authority figure, even when they know it is wrong, until someone else
speaks up; but once someone else speaks up, others are more likely to
do so as well. There is no inherent difference between the people who
speak up and those who don't. It is just a matter of which choice
each person makes in the moment, to help or not to help. But we can
prepare ourselves for these moments so that we can make better
choices when the time comes.
My son and I spend a lot of time
playing
heroes and villains. In our
fantasy
lives, we have fought all kinds of people doing harm to others
and we have saved the world, a lot. Fortunately, in real life we
almost certainly will never be in a position to actually save the
world in the epic fashion of our dramatic play, or from a genocidal
regime. But our play is good practice for standing up to people who
are hurting others and helping people who are being bullied or
oppressed. It gives us a chance to tap into that part of ourselves
that is (or at least wants to be) an epic hero and to get comfortable
in that role, making the choices a hero would make and taking the
actions a hero would take. And I like to think that the smaller acts
in our real lives, like stepping in and saying, “Hey, don't push
him!” again and again, even when the people in charge tell you not
to do it, are the kind of things that create a positive difference in
the communities that make up our world.
