What would you do if you find out your children were hurting others? Or kicking the helpless? Or pulling hair? And the victim was crying while your children were laughing?
What would you do?
And let's say we were to reverse the situation. If your child was the victim instead, what would you do? Would you press charges? Would you seek settlement? Would you seek revenge? Would you tell your kid to fight back?
These questions must have been on everyone's mind last week when one viral clip set internet ablaze. In a video clip, filmed at a school in the north, a young girl was seen being bullied by a group of older students in which the scene mentioned above took place. Hair pulling. Kicking. We later learned the younger girl, a fourth grader, is reportedly autistic. And she was ganged up on by a group of eight graders.
Following the clip's release, which generated widespread discussion on the subject of bullying, the perpetrators were put on probation by the school. There were also reports that their parents offered a cumulative sum of 4,000 baht (500 baht from each of the perpetrator's family) to the young girl as a settlement, upon the school's encouragement.
People initially asked in disbelief if this is how it's going to end, that the bullies pay and walk away, leaving the victim broken and scarred? And to everyone's relief -- and could we also say satisfaction -- the girl's family refused to accept the settlement and planned to take legal action against the eight students.
When we see cases such as this one, we often wonder how it came to be in the first place. What made a person seek enjoyment from preying on the weak, especially when both parties are so young? The fingers point first to the family. What sort of home did these students grow up in? How and what were they taught as a child? What were their parents doing to raise such adolescents?
At first, it seems just that. A family matter. A group of kids growing up wrong. A bad job at child rearing. Something the kids' parents have to figure out. But that was before we learned that, earlier this year, the Department of Mental Health reported that there are about 600,000 kids being bullied in Thai schools each year. This put the country as the second highest in the world after Japan.
The amount of 600,000 students being bullied here each year is telling us something, that this is bigger than being just a domestic issue. It's a national issue. We may say a family moulds a person, but what moulds a family? What moulds a society?
We wonder a lot what kind of society these young bullies grew up in. Looking around, well, isn't it the same society we're in now? The one that orchestrates a mass online witch hunt when the incident surfaced online. The one that curses and calls the young perpetrators whores and that they have no future. The one that vows to harm them as a form of justice for their misdeeds. The one that feels it is well-deserved to counter violence with more violence. The one we all take part in shaping and moulding it.
In a society, we are either a bully, a victim, or a person standing by, commenting online, sharing the alleged clip and spreading the word. What roles are we playing now? Which side are we on?
What does it take to steer a child off course? Is it nature or nurture? And if it's nurture then what is the extent this nurturing goes? Does it cover just immediate family and surrounding? Or does it extend to media and just about everyone in society, too?
What should you do? What should their parents do? What should we all do? One way or another, we play a part in this scenario somehow. It's not enough these days to teach children to stand up to bullies. It's perhaps not even enough to make sure we don't raise bullies ourselves. But rather we all have to pause, observe our own actions, and see to it that we're not a part that keeps this vicious cycle going and fostering violence unknowingly. Or perhaps we're all the reflection of it ourselves.
Melalin Mahavongtrakul is a feature writer for the Life section of the Bangkok Post.