Reframing Bullying in Middle Schools

By Sarah Shulkind

The following article is dedicated to Dillon who was tragically killed in a car accident last summer.

"Loser" and "Fag" are scribbled on binders littering a classroom. A huddle of "popular" girls glare at the classmate they’ve chosen as outsider of the week. A broad-shouldered 9th grade boy shoves his scrawny, bespectacled friend of yesterday into the stretch of lockers.

Bullying. We know it when we see it. Though we bemoan such behavior, it’s almost as if we expect it from adolescents. Even educators rarely do anything about it. And when such incidents are publicized by the finger-wagging, tongue-clicking media, they implicitly blame the kids. ”Watch out America!” the headlines warn. Adolescents are brutish,...