Commentary –

Bullies Are Connecticut’s

Social Problem Of The Month

By Chris Powell

Having failed as usual with its recent enthusiasms, Connecticut’s social service set has flitted off to its next Social Problem of the Month: schoolyard bullies.

The state education commissioner, Theodore Sergi, is sending a letter to school administrators asking them to make sure that bullying isn’t tolerated. And the other day the state Commission on Children held a hearing at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to call attention to the problem and outline solutions.

An “international expert,” Dan Olweus, was summoned from Norway to disclose that bullying is bad and schools should stop it.

If that was a bit obvious, Olweus had one good idea anyway: That schools should ask students, in a written questionnaire, whether they are being bullied, alerting them that a code of behavior will be enforced and encouraging victims to come forward.

The problem is that Connecticut’s will to impose discipline in public education is still in question. Schools often get little cooperation from parents in setting kids straight. Meanwhile, disruptive students can claim “special education” status to avoid discipline and accountability for their failure to perform, thereby imposing huge costs on schools. Even students expelled for the worst misconduct must be given expensive tutoring, so schools have a huge disincentive to remove them from the classroom as they should be, and that is, school discipline is expensive these days.

Olweus, the international expert, was laughable when he advocated special laws against bullying in school, as if Connecticut’s courts already are not so overwhelmed that serious crimes go years awaiting prosecution, while civil cases take so long that the victims of bullies would be in graduate school before they saw judicial relief.

No, instead of new laws, Connecticut’s schools need plain old public administration. That includes, as the principal of East Hartford High School, Steven Edwards, remarked at the Hartford conference, school staff members in whom students feel comfortable confiding and who have the courage to act against bullies, despite the work of making discipline stick. Without this, no new laws or rules will matter.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)