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"Teen
Suicide and Cyberbullying 2010: An Educator’s and Therapist’s
Perspective"
by
Anthony Pantaleno, Ph.D. © April, 2010
In the seventies and eighties,
it was cluster suicides – the bonding of small groups of young
people who had pledged to take their own lives together for
reasons which made no apparent sense. Then in a flash, it was
Tuesday, April 20, 1999… the Columbine massacre and the
beginning of a string of school shootings and school violence
which continues to this day. Here come the front page
headlines, the photos, videos, and audio clips, the Today Show
and dozens of other media venues springing to life to cover
every aspect of our national shame. Enter the 21st
century – the internet, the cyberbullies, the suicides related
in some manner to the emergence of a faceless tormentor out
there in the crowd. These phenomena all share similar elements
-- a tragic and heart-rending human response to the loss of
young lives, and the feelings of disgust that humanity seems
once again to have found a new low. Yet, there is a hopeful
element amidst all of the tears and the sorrow. Many more
people globally are starting to wonder how to put an end to the
madness, how to do something meaningful as a personal
individual statement, how to make a small contribution that hold
up the light of hope, love, and respect for one another –
qualities that have somehow been lost in the media surge to
satisfy the seemingly endless human appetite of our most
primitive aggressive and sexual drives – welcome to “the Jersey
Shore."
When we study
the societal response to teen suicide and violence over the past
forty years, most of the calls to action offered up by the
“experts” all derive their motivation from externally-imposed
solutions. “Ban the music that these kids listen to,” “Install
more metal detectors at the entrances to schools,” “Create
school committees to study the problem and establish policies to
punish the kids who commit cyberbullying,”“Legislate Facebook,
Twitter, Formspring, and the rest of the social networking
sites, “Lets have an
antibullying assembly and get a speaker that the kids will
really relate to,” “Let’s wear tee-shirts that say we oppose
violence of any kind.”
As an educator and therapist of thirty-plus years, one cannot
criticize these intentions. They are well-meaning and may be
very sincere responses for sure, but in our very human way, they
are often knee-jerk responses to individual tragedies that occur
within individual communities. The events come and go, the
faces come and go, and we are left in a system which seems to
revert back to the political and societal sameness that existed
before the event occurred… waiting for the next tragedy to
erupt.
There is another way into the heart of this problem, another
approach that does not come by trying to legislate human emotion
and behavior from without. This alternative path is an
invitation, an invitation to look within, and in finding our
true hearts, develop a belief in our own being that is so strong
that it can withstand any attack or circumstances that try to
invade our personal space from “out there.” As a child, we
enter the world with a sense of wonder. Seeing our first
snowflake, tasting our first orange, being knocked off our feet
by our first wave at the beach – these and thousands of other
experiences all are stored by our sensory memories. Soon,
however, there emerges this entity which will come to run much
of our life if we are not careful. This entity starts to
register that it likes this experience, that it doesn’t like
that experience, and that it “hates” certain experiences. Enter
the ego – the unseen part of our experience that judges,
evaluates, labels, categorizes, solves math problems, tells us
just how much salt to add to the spaghetti sauce, “loves” this
person, and rejects this other person.
Western educational systems have fed the ego and empowered it,
so that most people do not register those sensory experiences as
pure sensory experiences any more. Human experience is
controlled by the ego, or the “mind." We process our
experiences not as sensory experiences, but as cognitive
experiences. In a word, we “think” about experience more than
we may feel experience. Our egos become addicted to wanting
more – more money, more status, more predictability in our
lives, more control. Multi-tasking becomes the master. Our ego
“forgets” that it really does not exist on its own as a
definable and separate entity. It is a mind-product, mind
stuff, a human evolutionary tool that tries to understand
experience. BUT IT IS NOT TRULY A “SELF,” with its own
personhood. While educators are reduced to being evaluated by
the standardized testing scores of their individual students,
their classes, their schools, or their entire school district in
state “report cards,” we have too often lost touch with the
personal side of our students and the humanity of the very
children we teach. The test scores will fade away, but what
messages will our children take away from their years in school
into the rest of their lives? How many children will develop
big egos, but lose the ability to relate to the world at a more
spiritual level?
Recently, I was giving a workshop to a group of about
twenty-five seventh graders on stress reduction. I told them
that I would invite them to try something that was very simple
to describe but very hard to do. “OK, people. Here it is. I
want you to close your eyes for three minutes – no peeking. I
want you to breathe in slowly to a count of four, hold the
breath to a count of seven, and very slowly exhale to a count of
eight. We’re then going to repeat that sequence three times.
I’ll be doing this practice with you and counting on my
fingers. If anyone finds that it’s not comfortable to do this,
just sit quietly until the rest of the group is finished.”
After three minutes, I opened my eyes to a classroom full of
eyes staring back at me. “No way, that’s impossible,” said one
young girl. A young man was scowling at me so I asked him to
share what was on his mind…"That was B-O-R-I-N-G!” One girl in
the back fell asleep, some shared that the experience was very
soothing, and one boy said that he was aware that his mind just
kept thinking of so many other things. “Yes,” I gleefully
shouted back to him, “You got it! When you sit quietly, your
mind takes control, takes the steering wheel and takes you
away.” “But”, I continued, “you can learn to take the wheel back
whenever you want.”
Welcome to the world of learning how to turn off the thinking
mind – even for a minute. Since we mostly exist at the level
of thought, our minds are always churning out a waterfall of
thoughts about our experience. Much of our thought process is
driven by experiences of the past, and is even more driven about
what may happen in the future. We have to be taught to live in
the present moment – to nurture our inner lives that exist
moment by moment, in the present moment, to return to our
sensory perspective of looking at life through the eyes of a
child. We need to be taught to let go of the past and the
future, the two places our thinking minds will always be trying
to pull us to, and to come into presence. This is not a
comfortable place at first, because we have become strangers to
it. Our mind will try its best to keep us out of the present
moment. It doesn’t like to be there.
So where am I going with all this as it relates to teen suicide
and cyberbullying? I suppose at the most basic level, it all
comes back to a re-examination of the childhood adage that was
universal to our upbringing in America – “Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” In the year
2010, I would change the ending of that sentiment to “words can
never hurt me…unless my ego is so fragile that I think that my
ego (i.e., my thinking mind) is truly ME.”
Over the course of my entire professional training, I am slowly
coming to understand that all human suffering can be traced to a
“disconnect” – the human tendency to exist mostly in our
thoughts, our “doing” minds as some scholars have aptly named
this facet of human” experience, and to exist apart from our
capacity to be in the present moment of our “being” minds. The
doing mind is a noisy, but necessary problem solver, without
which, mankind would have never realized the miracles of our
time. However, the being mind is still, it has no agenda, it
exists to absorb and observe the moments of our lives, in the
present, and without any judgment, criticism, or goal-setting.
The field of neuroscience is teaching us that the brain does not
have an endpoint of growth; it matures and grows over a
lifetime. That’s the good news! We are all capable of changing
the way we react to experience and painful emotions.
Most adults have experienced a period of deep depression, the
growing spikes of anxiety in the face of a difficult challenge,
a rush of anger or even rage, the sharp cutting feeling of being
rejected, the emptiness of loneliness, the despair in losing a
cherished relationship, or the guilt in realizing that our words
or actions hurt someone that we truly love. We run from these
feelings because they hurt. They are so painful. Young people,
and adults as well, try to dull the pain with alcohol, drugs,
driving way too fast, shopping sprees, cutting themselves or
overdosing with sexual behavior and other diversions that try to
cover the hurt.
What if we just stopped for a moment? What would we hear? The
silence would be deafening for a second or two, and immediately
followed by a flood of thoughts, a waterfall of self and other
judgments, a bottomless pit of analyzing our actions, and the
sometimes erroneous conclusion that it is really our
unacceptable and despicable egos/minds at the center of this
raging river. We do not accept ourselves as we are, with all of
the good, the bad, and the sometimes very ugly parts of our
being. We do not accept others in our lives, especially our
harshest critics. We want the people in our lives to be
different from the way they are. We want situations to be
different than they are. Good luck, world! People and
situations are always going to be the way they are going to be.
It is how we choose to experience them all that may eventually
do us in, or give us the insight and wisdom or “wise mind” to
accept reality just as it is.
As teenagers, we all learned to run away from these sometimes
overwhelming feelings because that is what we watched our elders
do. Why do we not teach our children to stop and to learn to
navigate the space of their own interiors? When we turn down
the volume of our thinking minds, a deep inner peace can begin
to dwell in us. It has always dwelled in the shadows while our
thinking minds held it at bay. “Being mind” holds the promise
of developing an inner resilience that cannot be pierced by the
mean- spirited arrows of life. We cannot fix the problem of
teen suicide from without --because it is a phenomenon that
finds its roots from within. Suicide at any age can only
present itself as an option when those souls who become lost try
and kill the most reprehensible parts of themselves – their
unending and searing emotional pain.
They have not yet learned the truth – that they are not their
thoughts. All human thoughts are like so many waves on the
beach that sometimes crash loudly on the shore, but our true
nature is part of a much larger ocean. Teen suicide, and all
forms of human suffering will end when people begin to search
for and nurture the inner life. The hurts of the past will not
exist there. The worries and fears of the future will not exist
there. The inner life exists outside of clock time. It is the
final teaching mission of our schools, our churches, our
corporations and other institutions, and our world communities.
A new hope and respect for our own interiority will bring us all
a sense of peace that no metal detectors, internet blocking
technologies, or other external solutions can ever hope to
achieve.
Where Do We Go From
Here?
Social and Emotional Learning, or SEL, is an evidence-based
approach to education that integrates the academic, emotional,
and social dimensions of learning. SEL improves school and life
outcomes for children by helping students manage their emotions,
build effective relationships, and work through life’s
challenges in constructive and ethical ways. Rigorous research
links SEL to a range of positive results, including:
• Improved attendance and
stronger commitment to learning and healthy development;
• 9 to 10 point decreases in
negative behavior and emotional distress that can lead to school
failure;
• 11 percentile point gains on
standardized test scores in reading and math;
• Improved school climate and
greater student engagement;
•
Long-lasting benefits and a substantial return on investment
The
evidence that SEL works is leading more school districts and
states to incorporate SEL as a core education reform strategy.
As interest builds, maintaining the quality and depth of SEL
implementation is crucial. Research shows that only high-quality
efforts get the results our children need.
Social and emotional learning has a diverse and growing base of
supporters that include district and state school leaders,
leading researchers, policy makers, philanthropists, and major
education organizations. The Collaborative for Academic, Social,
and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, convenes the field and works
to advance SEL science, practice, and public policy. As recent
coverage in Edutopia and a forthcoming story on CNN in the
Morning suggest, interest by teachers, parents, and media is
also on the rise.
The Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning Act (HR 4223) was
introduced in December, 2009 by Congressman Dale E. Kildee (D-
MI), Congresswoman Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Congressman Tim Ryan
(D-OH). These leaders are now working to include this
legislation in the bipartisan overhaul of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA). HR 4223 authorizes the US
Department of Education to:
• Reach
More Children with Evidence-based Social and Emotional Learning
Award
five-year competitive grants to states and school districts to
develop and implement social and emotional learning.
•
Measure and Broadly Share Results
Study
the impact of funded programs on student achievement, attainment
and behavior.
•
Support Teachers, School Districts and States
Establish a National SEL Technical Assistance and Training
Center to provide high quality information, professional
development, and research-based tools to teachers, school
leaders, families, states, and other stakeholders.
The Academic, Social and Emotional Learning Act, HR 4223, has
strong support in the education community. Supporting
organizations include: American Council for School Social Work,
American Federation of Teachers, American Psychological
Association, ASCD, American School Counselor Association,
Coalition for Community Schools, Collaborative for Academic,
Social, and Emotional Learning, First Focus, National
Association of School Psychologists, National Association of
Secondary School Principals, National Education Association,
National Middle School Association, and School Social Work
Association of America.
Lead sponsors and SEL supporters are now encouraging lawmakers
to co-sponsor HR 4223 and include SEL in their priorities for
ESEA Reauthorization. For information, contact Andy Wade at 312
/ 226-3770 or e-mail
awade@casel.org or Ellin Nolan at 202 / 289-3900 or
enolin@wpllc.net.
Post script:
The pieces of life’s
puzzle present themselves in so many amazing ways. Just
recently, sitting in church one Sunday afternoon, where my
youngest daughter Kaitlyn was serving mass, it hit me! As the
words of the following prayer were sung by the choir, I realized
I had received this gift from beyond…
The Image of God (R.
Levulis)
We were created in
the image of God
Each face, each race
in the image of God,
He made the earth
with tender care,
A home for all of us
to share.
Though our eyes
may deceive us on life’s road that we trod (my underlining)
Each child was made
in the image of God,
Underneath every skin
there’s a soul deep within
That was made in the
image of God.
Anthony Pantaleno is
a School Psychologist at John Glenn High School in East
Northport, NY and has a private psychotherapy practice in
Commack, NY. He may be contacted at
www.drpantaleno.com.
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