Becoming a Bully
Malaysia has a problem with school bullying, but the way we deal with it might make us the bullies.
WHEN Anbu* was only 14, he almost killed a schoolmate.
It started as just another schoolyard argument, but it turned violent and quickly spiralled out of control when around 15 of his friends joined the fray.
“We kicked him and he hit his head against the wall. There was blood everywhere, on his lips and his head,” he said, recounting the violent scene with no visible emotion.
Luckily for Anbu’s victim, and his own future, the result of that vicious altercation stopped at the emergency room, not a morgue.
But Anbu doesn’t see himself as a bully. Instead, he saw it as justice.
“[The victim] was talking about my father, worse still, he was saying bad things about my mother,” he said.
“My friends told me to hit him, so I did.”
Why bullies bully
Malaysia has a problem with school bullying, with a drastic upswing of cases, from 2,825 in 2014 to 3,448 in 2016 – but the aggressors don’t always see it as bullying.
According to the dean of HELP University’s Psychology Department, Dr Goh Chee Leong, most people who bully don’t see themselves as bullies. They justify it as vengeance or revenge for a previous wrong. That the victim deserved it.
“Some bullies bully out of revenge, maybe they feel like they have been wronged in some way,” said Goh, who has been studying the psychology of bullying over the past 20 years.
Previous research suggests that vengeance on those who we think have wronged us actually feels rewarding.
In one 2002 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that when contemplating revenge, the caudate nucleus, which is our brain’s reward centre, lit up.
But sometimes, with the right tip in the balance of power, a victim can find themselves bullying and vice versa.
The main difference between bullying and normal teasing or fighting is the power disparity. When one individual has more power, either in popularity, age, money or position, this makes it difficult for the victim to stand up for themself. In fact, one individual can be both bully and victim at the same time.
Debra*, 15, didn’t see herself as a bully, but she ticked all the right boxes.
“It was just teasing, I’d tease people for the way they talked, or the way they walked,” she said.
Hers sounds like a textbook case of bullying, but things weren’t that simple. She, too, was bullied by the people she called friends, but hung onto the friendships because it was a better alternative than being lonely. Her story is not unusual. According to Goh, one of the most common types of bullies are those who have been victimised. Unable to deal with their trauma, they in turn transfer the hurt by bullying others.
Dealing with bullies
Society might not be actively contributing to the rise in bullying cases, but the way we deal with them might be part of that problem, according to Goh.
“I think we need to be very careful with the way we label children,” he said.
“It’s important to separate the person from the behaviour. When we label children, they internalise those labels and don’t believe they are capable of doing better. That’s not true!”
Unfortunately, as a glance at the comments section in any viral bullying story can tell you, the kneejerk reaction to injustice is to lash out, sometimes brutally.
After a 2015 video of three boys punching and kicking another schoolboy went viral, an official investigation was launched to determine the identity of the nameless students.
Online, another investigation was being carried out, this one by the members of the public.
What transpired was an online witch hunt that resulted in an innocent boy, Lukman Hakim, 21, having his name, personal contact details, and those of his thengirlfriend shared publicly on social media posts and blogs.
“There was one person who suggested gathering people and coming to my house to beat me up,” he said. “I was really scared.”
Lukman eventually lodged a police report, and a news story verifying his innocence was published. But for the actual bullies in the video, their names, faces and personal details remain searchable online, as permanent as their criminal records but public to the world, potentially labelling them, at best, as troubled individuals, and at worst, criminals, forever.
That’s why Goh suggests rehabilitation, instead of punishment for punishment’s sake.
“We can’t just punish children who bully for the sake of justice,” he said.
“We need to figure out how to reform them starting from their mind, getting the bullies to see from a different perspective.”
Reforming through rehabilitation
MySkills is trying to reform through rehabilitation using a curriculum that incorporates music, meditation and yoga, and prohibits caning.
“What MySkills is trying to do is to create a safe place for the students, where we can rebuild and replace human values in them,” said its CEO, Devasharma Gangadaran.
According to Devasharma, most of the children who are registered at MySkills come from dysfunctional homes, after spending years absorbing toxic ideas and violence from their surroundings.
“To them, fighting is cool, you gain attention, and these children are starving for attention,” he said.
“What we want to do is show them that there are other forms of strength.”
After Anbu’s nearbrush with manslaughter, he was enrolled here – and MySkills’ novel method of rehabilitation seems to be working.
“A month ago, I fought with my friend but then I wondered, ‘what was the point’?” he said. “That’s the same reason I ended up here, fighting. I should have just stayed there and focused on my studies.”
This is exactly what Deva hopes his other students will come to realise.
“Children have the amazing capability to change and adapt,” said Goh. “So I think we need to give them second chances and third chances without condoning the bullying.
“I think when we stop seeing people as people, that’s one of the first conditions of us engaging in bullying behaviour, and that’s not something that we want to do.”
*Not their real names