In the name of bullying

I'm the first to say bullying can be bad.  There are times when one has to step in and take control of a situation and protect children from gross levels of persecution and violence.   But, on the other hand, there is also that need to allow kids to learn to take care of themselves, to fend for themselves, to learn that bullying doesn't stop in school, but goes on through life.

Like most things in our floundering culture, even if the problem is valid, our solutions are almost guaranteed not to be.  Take for instance this little gem from The Lookout.  Researchers, who often get it wrong because they tend to focus on a single leaf on a single branch on a single tree, conclude that playground gossip has to go. 

The usual study is cited, the results, the joyous and Utopian paradise that arises when we just do it the way researchers say to do it, is lauded.  And yet something behind it all gives me the shakes.  Playground gossip should be monitored; it should be stopped?  Some of this is just the ages old kids talking about kids.  Kids being kids.  Kids learning to grow up and be adults.  The idea that kids' speaking habits should be so closely monitored has that whiff of the Orwellian.

No, I don't want kids beat up, persecuted, and tormented to the point they can't function.  But on the other hand, I still want a society that allows for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought.  And things like this are commensurate with the growing tendency we hear in other venues that suggests it's time to put away some of these freedoms for those who advance beliefs that are 'bigoted', or 'hate', or 'intolerant'  - all subjectively defined by the latest, hippest who can't help but know they have the right to tell everyone else the way it should be.

My biggest gut feeling is that this is the foundation stone of a new Order.  The progressives who, throughout the 70s and 80s, insisted that students should have total freedom, their lockers a sacred Holy of Holies where no teacher or authority should dare to tread, their opinions and their ideals completely unfettered (especially when trashing America, religion, or traditional values), are now the ones acting as if it's time we demand all children conform to The Truth (TM), the New Way, the Absolute Value that demands absolute obedience.  There is an underlying current behind this and a growing number of studies that sounds less like the forces at hand are tyring to solve the bullying problem, and more like they are trying to exploit the worst parts of an age old problem in order to begin truly seizing the reigns of our children and moving them toward the New Order that all soon will be expected to follow. 

Maybe I'm being a little paranoid.  But when set within the overall context of our society over the last few years, I can't help but feel it's only paranoid to a degree.