When Meanness is Cool--Talking With Kids About Bullying

support system these kids so desperately need when they feel threatened.

Did Kids Get the Mesasge?

A college mate and I went out to lunch last month. She was 17 and graduatinig from high school when Columbine happened. She was part of the popular crowd and sometimes made fun of the less popular kids. I wanted to know how the tragedy affected her and her crowd. I asked:

In what ways do you feel this incident affected students in high school at the time, if it even affected them at all?

Sadly, my college mate told me that the tragedy at Columbine did not change how they treated the unpopular kids.

As you can see by my friend's example, many of the children then and now have not been affected by the Columbine shootings. My theory as to why things haven't changed so much is simply because it has been 10 years and the high school students of today weren't old enough to remember.
My son is 9 and he knows nothing about it and neither do his peers. At the time it happened, many 4th and 5th graders were not even born yet, and the current high school students were too young to know about it.
My son's peers' parents don't talk about it. The teachers never mention it when they go to their character development assemblies on "Bullying is Bad". Not enough has changed.

As I was reading articles that addressed life at Cloumbine a year after after the shootings, I came across this transcript with some students from Cloumbine and what they thought had changed since the shootings. Many of the students said things had gotten better. One student's words surprised me. His name is Andrew Fraser, and the article was in The New York Times' Upfront column, April 10, 2000--just one year after the shootings. Here's what he had to say when he was asked by journalist, Kevin Moloney, how things have changed:

"As far as being scared at school, I'm not really afraid for my life or anything. I think partially because I've become just so desensitized to violence after all that's happened in our community. But one thing that does actually kind of scare me is the fact that not a lot has changed in the school itself. I really hate to say it, and I'm not beating on anyone or pointing out any particular people, but for a period of three months or so, and also the first month that we were back at school, the whole

The copyright of the article When Meanness is Cool--Talking With Kids About Bullying in Single Parent Activities is owned by Kim Martin. Permission to republish When Meanness is Cool--Talking With Kids About Bullying in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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