The Literal Brainwashing Pledge For Kids Against Bullying
Please Actually Say It Outloud Before You Nix My Simple Solution
I had an epiphany when I experienced a weird coincidence that happened to me the other day. My thought might have been triggered by a simple solution to a critical social problem, violence. OK, that’s a huge problem. But the social, emotional, and physical violence of bullying in particular. Now I vow for you to take the pledge at the end out loud to test if it will work.
Simple solutions are not difficult to think up to society's ills. They are not perfect or a hundred percent effective but can still profoundly change our view and actions and ameliorate serious issues until other methods come along.
It started when I told my brother that immigration was a complex issue and there weren’t easy solutions. No, he said, it’s not. I told him to think up a simple solution, and just like it happened, he did. It turns out, I knew too much about immigration, having been married in Siberia after living there. So, I could see the forest from the Siberian trees frozen in snow.
Then, something must have clicked in the back of my brain, and I thought one up, too.
Next, I got excited and began scheme of how to crowd source simple solutions to profound problems. After, I returned to reality as usual. But before I get too down, let me hear your views on crowd sourcing suggest a simple solution of your own. Listen to this solution I’ve got. I need to think to hone it a bit more but this is a start.
To start, a thought experiment as background: Think about what a typical playground bully is. A big kid picking on a small kid on the playground outside school on recess. Use the school you went to, or your kids go to if you have them like I do, and pretend you are an observer. Now think about the big kid being in 6th grader who failed and third grade and had to repeat it, so he is now five foot six and 145 pounds facing off against a kid three and half feet tall weighing 68 pounds in third grade. You look out and see that really, really big kid corner the little boy and start screaming, yelling at him, his face turning red. Would you think, holy cow that little tiny kid could get seriously beaten up here?
It’s terrifying. Who cares what the argument is about. Now imagine that big kid hauls off and hits that little one in the face full on. Wham. What would happen? Is it fair? Take the 3rd graders perspective and look up. What do you see? A fist coming down from above.
But that’s exactly the way it looks when a parent bears down on some kid for some minor infraction. Sometimes the father might be six foot tall, 200 pounds and thirty years old yelling at a four- or six-year-old, three to three and half feet tall and 48 pounds. Or even a five-foot four mom at 115 pounds yelling at that kid. I’m not making a moral judgement on being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ parents, so hold for a second until I get to the point. I’m just asking you to imagine.
Just for comparison, no manager ever would put Mike Tyson in his prime on a boxing ring with Lady Gaga at 5’2” and ring the bell. The whole crowd would yell Stop! They would beg for it to stop in their hearts as Tyson charges across the ring at her. Why did Gaga agree to this fight? Any professional boxing coach would literally fear for her life more than the crowd does. They and the referee professionals, they know what skill and power can do to a middleweight Tyson could be up against. They would pray to God even if they are atheist and try to intervene before he rolls up a punch. (Chose another super heavyweight if you want, I’m not picking on Tyson.)
So why do parents yell at and hit children? But no one else? Because the parent cannot understand the child is simply testing the child’s and/or the adult’s own boundaries. The four- or six-year-old also can’t see how overwhelming and unfair fight it is. But I still haven’t gotten to the main point or simply solution, so hold on.
OK, let me give you one simple solution I just thought up, though not the one I yet want. Please, parents, if your start getting very angry, just leave the room and cool down for twenty minutes.
Children under ten especially are terrified of your anger. I get angry, I’m not innocent. My children can repeat and repeat things I told them not to do, call me names, order me around. After the frustration of work, I can lose it. But I learned this technique when ‘fighting with my wife’ verbally (fortunately I’ve never her hit her or the children and am a pacificist). My wife is super logical and never relents and must get the last word and I’m stubborn, so a solution is necessary. Walk out of the room. When my kids do something again and again that they shouldn’t, I walk out sometimes. (My mom told me her technique, or simple solution, is to say in her mind, “Is this the hill you wish to die on?”).
So, what is the “simple solution” to bullying. It’s not to preach a moral lesson to adults, like “Control yourself, it is scary to see adults lose control and scream, scary when it verges or crosses over into violence.” That abstract reasoning doesn’t become a reflexive rule when you lose your mind talking to three- or five-year old on why they ‘did it again.’
Rather, the simple solution is to subtly brainwash children. Start young and slip into the brainwashing they already get at school. Policies don’t work. Teaching zero tolerance is not the way as kids can’t internalize abstract reasoning to actionable prefrontal cortex control. Habits are far more powerful. And we already employ them at school.
Simply add this sentence to the pledge every day at school. The kids take the pledge to the flag every day of every week for the first 12 years plus kindergarten. At the end of the Pledge, add this sentence:
“Hitting and physical violence will not be tolerated and are illegal.”
Right at the end of it, make the teacher repeat this phrase immediately in a three second announcement when the kids just fall silent. Make sure the principal repeats it once a week on the announcement by saying Please rise for the pledge to the flag, and remember, “Hitting and physical violence will not be tolerated and are illegal.”
After all, we force–or brainwash — kids to say the pledge every day and they don’t seem to use it but they do memorize it. I still know it by heart decades later. I don’t see why a simple anti-violence announcement is so difficult and imposing. How could school boards disagree anywhere, whether in red or blue or purple states of districts? Why do they like violence and bullying? Who would oppose a five second addition to the pledge, do you like the threat of real violence?
Say it to yourself and see how long it takes. Then say it after the pledge. That is one simple solution to bullying. Will it work?
