’bout violence: an essay…

BULLYING AND THE “CULTURE” OF VIOLENCE

Violence – in our homes, our schools and streets, our communities – is destroying the lives and dignity of human being. The celebration of violence in much of our media, music and even video games is poisoning our children (Priests for life). Nowadays, there’s no doubt that we are facing a new threatening “culture”, which is violence. We can see violence everywhere, anytime. On our way to school, workplace, and supermarket, or in the bus, in the television program, and even in our neighborhoods; we can feel that the violent actions do exist in our society, even in our world. This is a fact, and we do not need to feel embarrassed. What we should do is to try to minimize this violent action by constructing awareness on how sickening the violence’s effect in our society is. Then, it leads us to these questions: “What makes violence exist in our society? How does it exist?” This essay will prove that the violence exists in our society through bullying and hazing, and how it is bounced in the school gangs.

It is fresh in our mind when Wahyu Hidayat, a candidate student of Sekolah Tinggi Pemerintahan Dalam Negeri, Jatinangor, Jawa Barat, died in his college initiation because of the violence approach done by his three elder students in the college. These three students tormented Wahyu at the initiation. At the end, we have known that Wahyu died because of his incapability in receiving such physical harassment. Currently, we are shocked by school gang’s cases. These days, the police interrogated five students of SMA 34, Jakarta for being accused of torturing their friend, M Fadhil. The same cases happen in other schools, not only in Jakarta but also in other areas. Even in the USA, the annual number of youths killed because violence grows rapidly. Those kinds of verbal harassment, physical attack like what we heard today in the school gang’s cases are just a part of the bullying images.

At first, we will see how and why violence exists. It is hard to say it precisely since there is no legal proofs for it. But, at least we can see from the television and newspaper about the increase of violence in our world. The indicator is the frequency of those topics covered by the media: how often violence issue fills the headlines or the live reports! Statistics also inform us the same thing. These evidences are taken just to show how much violence influenced our lives. In this case, maybe we can use the term “culture” to describe this condition of series of violences. If “culture” is defined as a particular set of attitudes that characterizes a group of people (Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2005), it means that “violence culture” is a particular set of violent-behavior that forms human being. So now, if there are a lot of news out there discussing about violence and the number is increasing gradually; we can say that this behavior is changing into a new “culture” and is expanding day by day, in every part of this world. Violence itself is caused by multiple factors: the disintegration of family life, media influences, the loss of moral values, poverty, and the increase of youth violence.

Violence lasts because people unconsciously conserve the habit of violence. In that way, violence seems like becoming a “heritage” in the society. No doubt, we are familiar with video games, television programs, movies, news, which unfortunately contain rude languages and of course violence. It seems that a movie or TV program becomes less interesting without those kinds of content. If kids, from their childhood, have been forced to consume things like this, we can estimate what these kids would turn out later. So, if currently in our society, there are a lot of schools bullying, it undoubtedly comes from the unconscious habit of conserving violence.

What we call as bullying is only one of the violence forms. So now, what is bullying? There is currently no legal definition of bullying, but Tattum and Tattum (1992) proposed this following definition: “Bullying is the willful, conscious desire to hurt another and put him/her under stress”. Or in other word, we can say that bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others through verbal harassment, physical attack, or other more tricky ways of intimidation. If we want to know precisely what bullying is, then we can observe the characteristics of bullying. These conditions below can also be named as bullying: making others isolated and separated from his/her colleagues, excluded from what’s going on, marginalized, ignored, frozen out, humiliated, shouted at, overloaded with works, criticized unjustly, and threatened. Refusing others’ existence and value can be added as bullying. So, it is clear that bullying contains physical, verbal, and social harassments. Bullying, as violencedo, can occur in any possible situation when people with each other.

These types of bullying can be categorized into some forms: school bullying, workplace bullying, political bullying (occurs when one country imposes its will on another), cyber bullying (the use of information and communication technologies to support intimidating behaviour), and military bullying (the use of physical strength, the abuse of authority to oppress others, or to give unlawful punishments). Each type of bullying displays the aspects of bullying, some of them are authority, domination, strength, aggressive behaviour, and desire to make others suffered. But, even though its forms are different one with another, the core is always the same; the actor, usually is called the bully, always perform violent behaviour. From its definition, we can make a supposition that bullying is a special form of violence. Its evidence can be proven by the impact of bullying, that is harm. Apparently, “harm” is the object of violence. So, we can see here the link between bullying and the violence.

Correlated with this topic, there is a ritual named hazing. Hazing is a ritualistic test, which may constitute harassment, abuse or humiliation. Hazing, is sometimes used as a way of initiation into a social group. School’s initiation, as we knew, is sometimes familiar with this action. We often heard about the tradition of hazing, even in the popular, chosen schools. The junior students who are in the school initiation get the mental practices (sometimes) that might lead to the physical abuse. The same cases happen in the school gangs. There is a tradition to let others join the gang if he/she succeeded in the initiation process, which of course contains “tests”. Hazing at schools is a chance to do bullying and a way to prolong the tradition of violence in schools.

With its chancy effects, violence has entered every sector of human lives, without exception. Even, the education sector as the guardian and the central role of the future nation, could not escape from its power. Considering the power of violence in it, particularly many people become more responsive in dealing with the problem. But, unfortunately the phenomenon of school gang and the image of bullying still exist, even become larger day by day. We can pick some illustrations from our own country. The illustration of Wahyu Hidayat, a candidate student of STPDN and that of M. Fadhil of SMA 34 above gives us a picture of bullying in the academic world. Or, if we want to lengthen our lists, we can add with the students-fighting cases in many areas, particularly in Indonesia. In this aspect, the phenomenon of school gang plays quite dominant role. Still, in special cases in our society, the main actors of bullying are the school gangs. And if we want to relate violence, bullying, and the school gang in order to see the effects in the education sector, maybe we can use the analogy about a vehicle and its driver. The explanation is violence as the driver of a vehicle which rides the vehicle, i.e. school gangs. Bullying itself is the modus operandi.

Related to the existence of violence in our academic world, Diena Haryana, the chairwoman and founder of Sejiwa (a foundation provides training for teachers and school principals in recognizing bullying) once said that all students of public and private schools in Jakarta have experienced some form of bullying at some points. It means that each of them has experienced whether being bullied or even becoming a bully. This idea is based on Crothers & Levinson who said that the bullies may bully out or be acting out because they themselves are bullied. It’s just as simple as that. If the fact is like that, it must be clear that the school gang is the medium of the bullying, a kind of place that guarantees the existence of bullying. In this way, they who join in the school gang play the key role. So, what do actually these students often do in the school gang as their way to continue the spirit of violence by bullying? The simplest way is doing violation to others, both physically and verbally, to show their superiority. Sometimes also, these students threaten other students who are weaker than them. Usually bullying happened between the superior group (school gangs) and the inferiors, while in the college and universities, the bullies are usually the seniors. That is why we can say that the school gang and hazing are the images of violence and ways to make violence exist in our society, especially in the education world as the main “constructor” of our society.

What can we do to them, who are accused as bullies, then? Of course, we can not judge them harshly spontaniously because of those mistakes. In turn, we can help them fix this condition by giving advices and also good examples in doing non-violence action, whether verbally or even physically. Looking at the bad effects of both the bullied and the bullies, we must think about a way out to reduce the frequency of its occurrence. Recently, some schools in Jakarta try to have a dialogue with those who are bullies. These schools made a peaceful approach to these “troubled” students. They offered the students a talk. Some psychoanalysts also refer to this method because there will be no use to fight against violation by violence. But, on the opposite, some schools are taking a more disciplined approach to handle the problem. The Indonesian government, through Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo urged schools and police to be more firm in dealing with students involved in acts of violence. Each method has its own supporters. So, both methods are used by various schools, parents, or social groups.

It is clear now that the violence presents in every aspect of our lives. Killings, wars, students-fighting, bullyings, and hazing are some excesses of human being’s deeds and the real witnesses of how violence influences our lives much. Even in our schools, colleges, and universities, violence do exist. The situation gets worse when bullying and hazing are also applied by the school gangs (especially). What must we do then? We can not blame the actors. On the opposite, we can help one another to maintain a better life. This growth of violence must be confronted. But it is not just our policies and programming that must change. It is our behavior, our hearts. We must condemn not only the killing, but also the abuse in our own houses, the anger in our hearts and the worship of violence in movies, video games, and other kinds of entertainment. We can turn away from violence and build communities of greater peace. It begins with a clear belief: respect for life. Respect for life is not just a slogan or a program; it is a fundamental moral principle. It is an approach to life that values people over things. Respect for human life is the starting point for confronting a celebration of violence.

December 2007