Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.

The Podcast:

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

All right. Thanks everybody for being here. This is going to be Bullying Prevention Part 4: Bullying, Myth, Truths, and What To Do About It. Now we’ve talked a lot about what’s going on and what the situation is with bullying prevention. I want to welcome Senior Master Laura Sanborn, and I’m Dr. Greg Moody, Chief Master Instructor. We’re going to be talking again about bullying prevention and this is part three.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

We’re so happy you’re here and watching the podcast and part of taking bullying prevention seriously. Unfortunately today, well, not unfortunately today, but we’re going to be talking about the education system. While we don’t blame teachers, we don’t blame administrators, we don’t blame school districts for what’s going on with bullying prevention, it’s impossible to reduce bullying down to zero, and nobody should expect that in any kind of school environment. But the reality of the world is that there isn’t enough done to prevent bullying in schools. We’ve seen that in the data that we presented previously, about one in three kids is affected by bullying, and we saw a lot of detailed statistics in our past podcasts. They’re really not taking the idea of bullying prevention seriously. Why is that?

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Well, let’s talk a little bit about what the laws and rules and things that are happening. Almost every state has laws about bullying prevention. In Arizona, we have Arizona revised statutes that directly address bullying. And again, in almost every state in the United States and in most countries, there’s laws about bullying prevention that schools are supposed to have things set up that speak to bullying prevention. When I go into a school and talk to them about bullying prevention and I talk to principals, almost all the time, they say, “Oh, really? We do have laws about bullying?” And I show them the revised statutes and they’re pretty surprised.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Now the part of the reason for the surprise is that there’s no enforcement typically for schools and why is that? Well, the main driving force for educators in the United States is of course, the main parameters that they have to abide by which are whether or not the students are reading, writing, and doing all of their academic work at a good enough level. And that’s understandable. I completely understand that. And they have so many priorities and so many pressures in the school system that bullying prevention gets pushed down unless it’s a high priority. When does it get to be a high priority? Well, unfortunately, it gets to be a high priority when there’s a suicide or when there’s some other case that is tragic and terrible that happens in the schools. And then the focus becomes suicide or mental health or another issue.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

That’s what we’re trying to prevent at the grassroots level, at the beginning level. What we know is from our other podcasts and from some of the other things that we’ve talked about in the book, depression, anxiety, somatic, physical issues, mental health, there’s a lot of these issues that happened before these tragic events occur. So many, many schools do have bullying prevention programs. We’ll talk a little bit about in this section which ones are going to work and which ones don’t work. And because there’s tremendous pressure to take action, very frequently schools choose to take action with programs that may or may not have any evidence-based background, and they may not have any real reason to think that they’re going to have some success in the future. So we’ll talk about that in the next few minutes here. Master Sanborn, anything to add about this?

Sr. Master Laura Sanborn:

No. I just know that when I go into a school system or even when I’m looking them up online, one of the first things they all talk about is, “Oh, we have this great bullying prevention. We talk about it.” And then I’ll get a parent from that school come in with, “Oh, my kid got bullied. I went to the teacher and nothing happened.” So it’s so inconsistent with what they say that it’s easy to see this kind of lack of follow through.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Yeah. And every teacher that we’ve ever met cares about their students. I want to emphasize that. There is no teacher we have ever met that does not feel like bullying is important and that they need to do something about it, and that it’s a key factor in their students’ health and wellbeing and academic success. The problem is all the other things that we’ve talked about in the book is they generally are not given enough information and education about how to identify bullying and then what to do about it. And that’s what this podcast is about.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

So what are some solutions that will work and won’t work? What doesn’t work are simple, short-term solutions. Let’s talk about that in some detail. Let me give you some examples of that. I’ve heard about all kinds of very simple, short-term solutions. I did some work in the tate of Arkansas with their school districts and their city. One of the short-term solutions they tried, and they used their entire annual budget on this, was they got Stephen Stills from, what’s the group? Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Crosby, Stills, and Nash, they got Stephen Stills to come in and do a concert for the entire school district, the Little Rock School District, and the concert was about being nice to each other. And he did this concert and they were very positive songs and he talked to them between the songs and told everybody how they should be good to each other. That was it. They did a concert. And then everybody went off on their merry way and expected things to be different.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Well, guess what? No measurable difference. And they didn’t really even measure the difference. But we can predict based on what we know that feel-good programs, short-term concert, they used again, their whole budget on for anything related to bullying on this, no difference in effect. There were no change in what results they got out of this concert happening. So simple short-term solutions.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

There’s many bullying prevention programs that schools try to have where program will come in. They’ll do a speech. I’ll give you an example of one later that’s really kind of crazy. They’ll come in. The kids will have maybe a meeting or somebody doing a lecture in front of the class or a big pep rally. They’ll talk about some positive things and then they’ll leave. Well, everybody either A, feels really good, or they get very emotional. There’s a lot of crying in tears and people get very serious about it for a little bit. But then there’s no real long-term effect. Those kind of solutions or those kind of programs just simply don’t work. So we need to have something on the contrary that’s a long-term systematized program that’s in the schools that has real effects. We’ll go into the detail of what those need to be.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Programs of the day approaches, programs as the year approaches, where it might be something really popular or maybe related to a celebrity, and they have a great idea. I’ll give you one example. One program that we really love, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program created by Dan Olweus from Norway, he brought this to the United States as a very, very high level respective program. That is a great program. Well, one of their main researchers was waiting to be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and she was going to give a nice talk to Ellen DeGeneres about bullying prevention.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Well, the guest before her was Madonna and Ellen DeGeneres nicely asked Madonna, “What do you think about bullying?” And Madonna said, “Well, you know, let me tell you what I think about bullying,” and she had, well, good intentions, but she went ahead and talked for the next 20 or 30 minutes and they didn’t have the expert from the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program who knew all about bullying come on. So instead of having an expert that would really give people information and dispel some of the myths that we’ve been talking about in these last podcasts, they had Madonna. Again, well intentioned, I think Madonna probably cares about the problem. She has a history of being bullied when she was in school and has something to say, and she’s a smart person, very successful. But it wasn’t the information that people probably needed. So short-term approaches, simple short-term approaches, simple and short-term won’t work.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

Another thing that doesn’t work is group treatment for kids who bully. Now this is something that’s pretty common. And they this is a misconception about the idea of bullying. So the idea of bullying is is that kids who bully have anger management issues, or they may have low self-esteem. So let’s put them together in a program where we’re going to help them with their anger management or help them with their self-esteem, help build up their self-esteem. Well, we’ve learned in prior podcasts and prior videos that kids who bully don’t have low self-esteem and they don’t necessarily have anger management issues. There’s no evidence to think that they do. So group treatment and supporting them in these ways actually creates a more effective bully.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

This is totally counter-indicated and all you’re doing is setting up a more effective bully. And I like to say, what you really might be creating is gangs. Now you’ve got a whole bunch of these kids who are bullying together, and you’re going to turn them into a more effective bully, and you’re going to team them up with each other. Not really a good idea. So the other one is, and again, this is self-esteem enhancement or anger management. These really don’t speak to the problems that these kids have. Sometimes these are dumb one on one and this also doesn’t work.

Dr. Greg Moody, LAC, Ch. Master Instructor:

The other issue or the other treatment that won’t work is zero tolerance. Now if a child brings a weapon to school or a child is very violent, of course, a zero tolerance policy, that makes some sense. There’s certain things that zero tolerance policies can make perfect sense for. But bullying, when it happens to one in three kids and 19% of kids are bullying, if you have a zero tolerance policy, what effect would that have? Well, there’s going to be one or two effects. Either all 20% of kids that are bullying are going to get sent home and you’re expelling 20% of the child population. That probably would be a little too much. So that wouldn’t be effective.

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