So I got a tweet from a colleague this morning just as I was leaving my house. It said "Today is International Day of Pink. Wear pink and take a stand against bullying" Unfortunately, I was already dressed and ready for the day...no time to change so alas, I went into the day not visibly supporting this very worthy cause. But that's not the point of this post.
Now as much as I know that bullying is a very real and relevant issue in our culture today, I must admit I'm a bit weary of these "special days" to do things or pay attention to issues that we should be doing or paying attention to everyday like "tak[ing] a stand against bullying".
I get the fact that these special days are helpful in increasing the overall awareness of issues like bullying, and I'm willing to support that work. But in the world of education, in particular, I would prefer to see us moving more rapidly toward an attitude of inclusion and respect that doesn't require a special day to raise awareness because it's just what we do and how we operate. Surely this isn't that much of a stretch, is it?
In Alberta, we have programs of study that specifically deal with building relationship skills, Health & Life Skills for Kindergarten to grade 9 and Career & Life Management (a high school course required for graduation). And I know there's space in other areas like English Language Arts and Social Studies where relationship-related topics and issues can be addressed. I'm sure the situation in other provinces and states is the same. If we paid good attention and allowed these courses, the Health-related ones, to be viewed as being essential to student learning and development (right now they're certainly not given even close to this level of respect), I do think we'd see issues like bullying begin to be impacted.
I'm not naive enough to believe that just increasing our emphasis on learning in Health will be enough to change the world, but if we did this, and also took a comprehensive, whole school approach like Comprehensive School Health, such as is promoted by EverActive Schools Alberta, the Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health and Physical & Health Education Canada, as well as many others, I can't help but think we'd really begin to see an impact in our schools and, eventually, our society.
The thing about all this is that these changes wouldn't cost that much. It's a bit of a shift in priorities, ease up a bit on the craze with "academics" (example: cutting out recess so there's more time for reading and math. I mean, really?!) and test scores and focus more intentionally on a holistic approach to education - valuing the complementary areas like Health, the Arts, and Physical Education and I believe we would see improvements not only on issues like bullying but also an overall improvement in academic achievement.
Then, maybe, we wouldn't need to have special days to raise awareness and take a stand against bullying. Just my (somewhat unpolished) thoughts...and I know I've only scraped the surface here... but feel free to comment and share your thoughts.
