Bullying at schools is an important issue, but the real worry is how adults continue to support policies that adversely impact their kids.
On Feb. 13, B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced that her government will roll out a new comprehensive policy to deal with bullying in schools.Dealing with schoolyard bullying is important, but focusing only on child bullies and ignoring the adult ones is misguided and, unfortunately, nothing new. What we really need is a comprehensive policy that includes consequences for the policy choices that adults make that negatively affect children.
According to Dr. Dan Olweus, an expert on bullying, “a person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself.”
Using this definition, there are a number of things that would qualify as bullying that aren’t typically considered as such. We know that poverty, for example, negatively affects children for their entire lives, and is certainly difficult for a child to defend against.
In a recent op-ed for the Vancouver Sun, Finance Minister Kevin Falcon stated, in celebratory rhetoric, that B.C. has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the country. He did not mention that B.C. also has the highest child-poverty rate in the country. If he had discussed statistics on child poverty rather than tax cuts for the rich, he would have had a tough time spinning children and families as a government priority.
Policymakers with a bullying problem are not isolated to B.C. In 1989, the federal government resolved to end child poverty in Canada by 2000. Today, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Conference Board of Canada, our society is more, rather than less, inequitable. We have more kids living in poverty today than we did when the goal was originally set. The federal government has been provided with ample research that shows the economic and human costs of poverty: The problem is not a lack of knowledge. Rather, the issue is that the government continues to make policy choices that bully children. In the last few years, it has chosen to ignore a House of Commons committee report on poverty, as well as a Senate subcommittee anti-poverty plan. Instead, the government has changed the poverty line to improve its numbers: While a family of four living in Vancouver with less than $12,329 for housing (the most expensive market in Canada) used to be considered poor, that same family is now only counted as poor if it has less than $7,455 for housing.
Sadly, there are other examples of adult bullying. The federal government is pushing forward with Bill C-4, which means refugee claimants that an immigration official suspects of a crime could end up being detained for a year without anyone even reviewing their case. These detainees – not charged or convicted – will include children. Other countries that have detained refugees have seen results of suicide, self-harm, and further trauma for children. Canada is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that adults must do what is in the “best interests of the child.” It is hard to imagine how separating children from their families, detaining them, and deporting them is in their best interests.
The most long-standing example of policy bullying is towards aboriginal children and their communities. Gross inequities caused by policy choices have been repeatedly documented by Canada’s auditor general and other offices and organizations too numerous to name in this piece. Earlier this month, the Federal Court of Appeal heard arguments from the Assembly of First Nations, Amnesty International, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, among others. All argued that aboriginal children on reserves have the right to services that are equitable to those that non-aboriginal children receive. And again, the federal government spent taxpayer dollars on lawyers and took up court time to argue to oppose the rights of Aboriginal Peoples. We will have to wait and see what the court decides, and whether the government reacts as adults rather than overgrown bullies.
In each of these cases, children are disadvantaged by choices that adults have made. Adults with the power to decrease child poverty rather than spend millions on PR campaigns that use images of children to create the illusion that life is getting better for all Canadians. Adults with the power to fight for, rather than against, the rights of young refugee claimants. Adults with the power to live up to commitments to aboriginal children rather than fighting against them.
What would the world look like if we thought about how we should respond to adult policymakers who bully children, and to the bystanders who let it happen? Childhoods don’t run on election cycles. Children require government to commit to them as people. They also require all adults to become democratic actors who demand policies that don’t bully children.
Photo courtesy of Flickr.