Bullying is ignorance ‘inherited’ from parents

Having watched the father of Phoebe Prince speak on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show on Friday night, I want to highlight a cause of bullying.

I’m tired of the diagnosis that a psychological defect causes people to bully.

A bully is the product of bad parenting. In my experience at secondary school, bullies seemed unintelligent and badly reared.

Education, and efforts to inform these people, are in vain. The parents of bullies are as ignorant as their children.

It is difficult to enlighten parents to educate their children to become respectful, moral human beings.

It is only when policy makers recognise the lack of intelligence of bullies, and their parents, that they can make changes in the procedural treatment of bullying in schools. Bullying is an animalistic reaction by individuals who lack both the brain faculties and moral compass to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. They prey on people they perceive to be the weakest socially, when, intellectually, they themselves are the most deficient.

It is the bullies’ insular feeling of inferiority that causes them to isolate and target people they see as superior.

Obviously, this is not the only reason people are bullied, and the most socially equipped individuals can be bullied for that reason; jealousy.

Having said this, well-reared, and well-rounded people can deal with feeling inferior, even if it deeply affects them.

If people have been brought up well in a balanced environment, they will not become bullies, no matter what their own issues.

The problem is not a societal one; it’s a more basic, but more unmanageable human deficiency.

Justin Kelly

Edenderry

Co Offaly