Stop Bullying

According to the Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary of Current English, to humanise means to make something more pleasant or suitable for people, hence making it more humane, whereas bullying means hurting a weaker person or to use your strength or power to make somebody do something.

Bullying does not only happen physically, but it can also be emotional. Yes, hurting somebody’s feelings. Emotional bullying happens to be the most dangerous kind.

A friend of mine, John*, was brutally bullied emotionally during his entire years of school. One of the times he recalls when he was bullied is one day in high school when his Life Skills teacher was teaching.

The topic of that day was about self-esteem. The teacher was explaining the two types of self-esteem: High and low self-esteem, and giving examples of each. It was during the time when the teacher was explaining how people with low self-esteem act or behave that one of John’s classmates jumped in and shouted “like John!”

The teacher was making it clear that a person with a low self-esteem can be good at doing something like playing soccer, but because they have low self-esteem, that is being not confident enough about themselves, they would not want to play soccer in front of their peers. So the classmate jumped in to refer John to the example that the teacher gave.

John could not help himself but smile out of embarrassment because the worst part was that John and the rest of the class knew very well that he is good at playing soccer, but he did not like doing it in the packed stadium. John’s self-esteem was extremely low again that day.

John is now pursuing a bachelor of surgery degree at the University of Namibia. He says that he is glad that he had been bullied at school as it helped him to avoid his peers or extramural activities, in the process taking advantage of that time to study. This, according to him, helped him pass his matric with flying colours. Most of his bullies have failed Grade 10 and are struggling with college enrollment.