Let students take on bullies

However sincerely the teenagers and children “striking’’ from school today in support of action over climate change believe they are acting in the interests of the environment and their own futures, they have been manipulated. That is clear from the comments of adult-run organisations backing the protests, such as Greenpeace and GetUp. Public figures — including NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley, who has praised the students for realising “their own personal power” — would have been wiser to suggest they stay in class and learn.

Every school day is a bad day to skip classes, but none more so than today, long designated as the National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence. Bullying, especially, is a chronic problem faced by too many students, sometimes 24 hours a day, because of the reach of social media into their home lives. If students are to be freed from the despair and serious depression that often results from the cruel, embarrassing taunts that thousands of them endure, they need to hear and discuss the messages of the anti-bullying day. Students also need to come together to act on them.

Rather than waving placards about issues politicians and scientists struggle to deal with, it is within the students’ power — in their friendship groups, classes and schools — to take a powerful stand against bullying by agreeing, individually and collectively, not to indulge in it, or to tolerate it, or to retaliate tit for tat. Activism of that kind would transform lives, including those of the most vulnerable young people, almost immediately. It would also need to be maintained, solving a problem that has proved to be beyond the scope of parents and teachers to fix.