Parks & Wreck

My wife and I recently discovered Parks and Recreation on Netflix and we've been enjoying watching a few episodes at the end of our day. The show has some amazing writing and it really makes us laugh. But it's also a bit disturbing to me because of the overt bullying of the Jim O'Heir, aka Jerry Gergich.

I know that the show's characters are an exaggeration of real life personality types but kids don't. Young brains believe that what they see is real, especially during the concrete stage of development between the ages of 6-12, which coincide with the first 6 years of school when negative coping skills are often learned.

We develop most of our interpersonal coping strategies on the playgrounds of elementary school and we either use the skills we've been taught or those we've been exposed to. Media is an increasingly important component of information for young people about how the world works. As they continue to be "educated" by messages that often misrepresent the true nature and dangers of bullying, they may interpret our message of respect and consideration for others as unnecessary and even ridiculous.

I mention this not because I want TV to change or I think we, as educators, can control the types of shows our students are watching. I mention it because we need to be fully aware of how bullying is viewed outside of the halls of education so we're prepared to deal with the obvious contradictions our students see everyday.

Other examples of "do what I say, not what I do" are easy to find. Talk radio and network news casts are full of hate and negativity towards others which students can easily be exposed to in the car or at home. Parents often talk about co-workers and other adults with great distain and even the teacher's lounge can sometimes be guilty of clickish and mean.

What can we do? We can talk about the shows they're watching and how characters are being treated. We can talk about how most of us would feel if we were being treated that way. We can talk about how the news works and why it tends to be so negative. We can talk about why adults sometimes don't get a long and how we all could do a better job of following the golden rule.

We can talk about the difference between the human tendency to judge others from the inhuman tendency to act out on those judgements. We can talk about the difference between liking everyone and being civil to each other. We can be real and have an honest conversations about what's really going on and leave the the utopian rhetoric out of it. The more honest we are in our conversations with our students, the more they'll listen and respect what we have to say.