Earlier in the year, a few of my sophomore volleyball
players were asking some of their team mates why they weren’t with them in the
weight room during the off season. As a
head coach, I was proud that my underclassmen were making their team mates
accountable. I was even prouder that I
didn’t have to initiate that conversation – they did it all on their own. And because they were individually asking
their team mates why, more and more girls began to attend the weight room.
Well, as you know, there are always 2 sides to each story.
One of the players mother’s claimed that the sophomore group
was “bullying” her daughter.
I really didn’t know where to go with that. I didn’t want to discredit what the one player
was feeling, that her perspective wasn’t “real”. But in the same breath, I thought to myself, “How
is this now considered bullying?”
I worry for the youth that we have been carefully raising,
by telling them that they are smart enough to become whatever it is they wish
to become. That if they want something
bad enough, they can accomplish it JUST BECAUSE they think they can. Our kids are not permitted to struggle, they
are not allowed to lose and therefore they do not gain valuable experience with
dusting themselves off and trying again.
This generation has been raised on beefed up self-esteems, to the extent
that they have unrealistic perspectives of their abilities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my
students in Biology class say, “I’ve never had to study before.”
I do not doubt that bullying occurs in schools. I am not saying that there are not kids that
are targeted because they are different.
What I am saying is that being held accountable is being misinterpreted
as bullying now. If you can’t take
constructive criticism, it’s bullying.
If your boss informs you that you are not doing your job well/right/fast
enough, it’s bullying.
One of the aspects of high school sports that I absolutely
love is that the parallels from athletics mirror real life. In life, there are winners and losers. And when your team loses, it stings and you
have 2 choices – you can give up or you can get up and work harder. Losing is good for kids; everyone shouldn’t
be awarded a trophy JUST BECAUSE they participated. Kids need to learn that just because they
lost, doesn’t mean they give up. It
means you learn how to dig deep. It
means you need to work harder. My
students are no different – when they encounter a tough problem or they get “stuck”
in a lab/activity, their first instinct is to quit. Because struggling is uncomfortable for them. And God forbid they feel uncomfortable – they
“think” they can accomplish anything JUST BECAUSE. And when they get stuck, it doesn’t fit their
paradigm.
In life, there are going to be people who don’t like
you. In life, you are going to encounter
people who try to keep you down. Because
we do not teach our kids how to deal with these sorts of experiences, I feel
that we are inadequately preparing them for life in general. Yes, we do spend some time while in school on
how to be “nice” to one another and not to pick on others who are different,
but we do not teach kids who are the victims of bullying how to adequately deal
with real bullying situations.
Lordy, if I recount how many times my college coach screamed
his head off at me, by today’s standards, I would have been harassed. If I look at how many times I was evaluated
by athletic directors/parents/principals and read through the constructive
criticism I had received, it’s amazing how I didn’t end up depressed, rocking
myself in the corner of my bedroom.
Maybe it’s because my parents made me fight my own battles. Maybe it’s because my parents were teachers
and coaches, and they refused to let me grow up thinking I was better than
everyone else just because. Or maybe it’s
because I grew up in a time period where we weren’t all told that we could
become anything we wanted. Whatever the
reason(s), I fear that I am doing the youth of today a disservice by not being
honest and up front with them. And I try
to purposefully put my athletes and students into situations where they might
feel uncomfortable because they need to learn how to problem solve. They need to see that there is learning in
the struggle.
