Bullying Prevention and the Challenge of Contempt

One of the great challenges in bullying prevention is addressing contempt. Contempt is a dehumanizing bias that individuals in the school environment, students and adults alike, may hold toward individuals with a particular characteristic or who are part of a distinctive group. Contempt is not natural but learned. Students learn contempt from adults in their life, friends, and social media. Adults similarly learn contempt from a variety of sources including friends, colleagues, their cultures, ideologies, and religions. As such, contempt cannot be addressed with a bullying policy change or by teaching behavioral responses to bullying behavior to render it ineffective.

When students bully, they often don’t recognize their behavior as bullying as the behavior provides a social benefit. The aggressor may feel empathy, but that feeling is overridden by the need for the benefit provided. However, when bullying is driven by contempt, the aggressor will not only feel a lack of empathy, but may also believe the target is deserving of the bullying.

When bullying driven by contempt is limited to students, adults are able to intervene and humanize the target in the eyes of the aggressor. This will stop that instance of bullying and prevent future bullying of other similar targets. A greater challenge arises when educators in the school feel contempt for students with certain characteristics. Then it becomes a matter of getting these educators to recognize these feelings of contempt, accept how it may result in a bias towards the targets, and be mindful to not let the bias get in the way of addressing the bullying problem. In these cases, it may be necessary for other educators to step in and help ensure that the bias is mitigated.

But what to do when the contempt is formalized in school policy and codified in state laws? What can be done when an entire school community is taught to feel contempt for a particular group of students? I’m of course referring to regressive policies and laws that are designed to ignore the needs of, eliminate the rights of, or unduly burden LGBTQ+ students. My guidance to teachers has been to always be aware of negative feelings toward certain students as other students will pick up on this negativity and view it as implicit permission to treat those students negatively. But when an entire school community feels contempt for a particular group of students, these children will have no recourse. My hope is that adults in these communities, such as those in Owasso, Oklahoma, will recognize the harm these policies and laws are causing to these children, recognize the contempt that they have been or are being taught, and take action that puts the emotional, physical, and educational needs of these children on the same level as all others.