Last week, Sydneysiders took a break from discussing the earthquake in Japan to share their opinions on a video of a schoolboy bullying incident in an Australian school. The video, taken on a mobile phone, showed a school boy being hit repeatedly in the face by a much smaller boy. At first the larger boy just stood there and took it, then he began to block the punches. Eventually he snapped, grabbed the smaller boy, turned him upside down and threw him onto the concrete.
So which one was the bully? Public opinion was overwhelming in its support of the larger boy for giving the bully what he deserved. My immediate reaction was to think that it would never have happened in my day. I then simultaneously realised that I was too young for such a thought and that it had in fact happened in my day. There was a large Greek boy at my school who had often been picked on. He’d been learning karate and one day decided that he’d had enough. I arrived at the fight in time to see him sitting on top of his tormentor, banging his head on the concrete.
Is anywhere in the world free of bullies? Surely somewhere as friendly as Bhutan would be well placed to make that claim. They tease each other a lot, but it’s a good natured teasing used (I was told) among friends to keep each other humble. PaSsu showed me that even Bhutan has bullies when he asked which gang his son should join. His concern was for his son’s safety when crossing the border into India, but he saw gangs forming in other major Bhutanese towns which aren’t near any borders.
Both boys in the video were suspended from school, but the larger boy is now holding his head higher. The Greek boy at my school became good friends with his tormentor. It remains to be seen what happens with PaSsu’s son and what the gangs even represent in Bhutan. I can only hope they are/become support networks rather than warring tribes.