Middle School Boys in a Pack

National news this month includes the strange story of an online video showing a pack of middle school boys bullying an elderly bus monitor. The bus monitor maintained that individually these were nice boys. She was probably telling the truth, but packed together these boys turned into something very toxic.

The phenomenon has been well-known long before even “Lord of the Flies” was published. While the boys in this particular real life story have been punished with year-long suspensions, our culture as a whole puts in little to no preemptive work to address this problem that occurs with natural predictability among boys this age.

Chloe had her own experience with a pack of middle school boys. In her final class of the school day desks were rearranged once every five weeks. With the last rearrangement she was put in the back row with four boys. With just one exception, each of these individual boys was normally nice. One boy, Neil, tended to be difficult.

As the first class with the new desk arrangement got under way, Neil began to test what he could get away with doing. Whenever the teacher had her back turned, he would turn directly toward Chloe, put the fingers of one hand up to his mouth in a V-shape and push his tongue through his fingers and give a rapid licking motion with an intimidating expression on his face.

At first, Chloe tried to ignore Neil’s behavior. But ignoring Neil only got him to double his efforts. As Neil raised the stakes in boldness, it made the other boys in the row start to laugh. Their laughter further emboldened Neil and his bolder antics eventually got the other boys to try the same thing. After a several days of this non-stop, Chloe finally broke down one evening at home crying.

Amelia and I immediately showed our support. We took the time to draw out the story and to single out Neil as a ring leader among normally nice boys. We then worked with Chloe to come up with a joint solution. She was terribly embarrassed, and she was very concerned about some kind of payback. She was also worried the teacher wouldn’t believe her or wouldn’t think it was a big deal.

In the end, we asked the teacher to move Neil away from Chloe and the other boys. But we let the teacher know the other boys had followed Neil’s lead. We expected the teacher had seen this kind of thing before and that there were already complaints about Neil’s behavior cycling through the formal and informal channels of communication at Hermes Middle School.

Perhaps the hardest part of it all was that I remember behaving in a similar manner when I was a middle school boy. I remember the thrill of falling in with a pack as well as the accomplishment of finally getting the bravery to do things I was otherwise too frightened to do. At the time I had no idea that my actions could have been potentially painful and that someone might have experienced the fear and sadness my own daughter Chloe let out that evening with us at home.

A group of boys on video created a national firestorm and they were severely punished. Politics required a particularly harsh punishment. I hope there will be a reconciliation that matches the punishment. More importantly, I hope there real solutions will be put forth to address this real problem. If not, those boys will simply be scapegoats while the real problem persists.