Posted on 05/13/2002 1:30:38 PM PDT by Starmaker
Have you scrutinized the ubiquitous "1 in 4" statistic? I have. I can now spot a 1-in-4 coming a mile away. The 1-in-4 statistic was popularized by radical feminists when they were selling the great rape hysteria: "1 in 4 females will be sexually molested by age 18"; or "1 in 4 female college students will be the victim of 'date rape.'"
I also commented on the 1-in-4 recurrences when it was reported that ADHD was epidemic among school age kids.
You see, the ubiquitous 1-in-4 has become the contemporary version of the grizzled street-corner cartoon prophet carrying a sign or sandwich board that reads, "The End is Near." Contemporary society has been to school and has learned the scientific method. They are no longer influenced by the wild-eyed radical railing from their soapbox perch in the center of the park. But when someone appears in print or on TV spouting a statistic, now that's credibility.
In actuality, when the 1-in-4 appears we are best advised to run away because somebody is likely selling an agenda.
So it was that I encountered 1-in-4 again the other day when reviewing a piece in the Juvenile Justice Bulletin. It reported: "A study of 6,500 students in fourth to sixth grades in the rural South indicated that 1 in 4 students had been bullied with some regularity within the past 3 months..."
My review of JJB and other relevant literature on bullying was prompted by a headline in the Dallas News that shouted, "Oklahoma passes anti-bullying law." More portentous than the headline, however, were the carefully couched assertions that " bullying may have contributed to many of the nation's school shootings"; "that school-age bullying can be a precursor to adult criminal behavior"; "that in 37 of the latest school shootings, shooters felt bullied, threatened, attacked or persecuted."
Modifiers like "may", "can be", "felt" are those used by responsible researchers to carefully avoid asserting absolutes, and to indicate that they are withholding judgment until further results are obtained. But when they appear in a newspaper article that is sounding the alarm (selling an agenda), the intent is to appear objective while screaming "The End is Near."
When discussing research, one is also well advised to remember the "Heisenberg uncertainty principle". Even though the uncertainty principle is primarily concerned with Quantum Physics and the measurement of infinitely small events, it has implications important as well to Social Science (an oxymoron?). Essentially, the uncertainty principle asserts that the observer actually becomes part of the observed system thus making any reported results "uncertain" as to their objectifiability. And this becomes especially critical when considering the variables selected by the observer to serve as quantifiers. In sum, a thing observed is a thing changed.
Consequently, when the speaker for an agenda steps up and makes the 1-in-4 statement, with no legitimate basis for that claim, they have forever changed the thing even before the study has begun. And that has been the underlying story of the destruction of the American culture for at least the past forty years. Sometimes we have looked at research and labeled it appropriately as "Junk Science." But that has been about as useless as injecting antibiotics into a corpse. The ballyhooed "results" have already infested the body of the culture. Remember the "repressed memories" and "anatomically correct" approaches to determining the existence of sexual abuse? The falsely accused and indicted had their lives ruined and fortunes stolen. Even after exoneration, their character remains indelibly scarred.
So, how prevalent is "bullying?" Before we deal with that, let's consider the historic definition of a bully as one "habitually cruel to others weaker than himself." The variables in this definition are 1.) habitually, 2.) cruel, 3.) others, 4.) weaker.
Now, consider the definition offered in the Dallas News article heralding the Oklahoma codification of bullying:
"any gesture, written or verbal expression, or physical act that a reasonable person should know will harm another student, damage another student's property, place another student in reasonable fear of harm to the student's person or damage to the student's property; actions that insult or demean any student or group of students in such a way as to disrupt or interfere with the school's educational mission or the education of any student."
Can anyone even begin to quantify the number of variables in that definition? Let's just try one, like "gesture". How many ways can one gesture using fingers, toes, shoulders, eyebrows, eyelids, head, pelvis, mid-torso, buttocks, palms and so forth? And that's just the first defining term. Consequently, by definition, bullying and its potential are virtually ubiquitous. Heck, its prevalence may turn out to be a 1-in-1 phenomenon – in boys of course.
Consider the opening paragraph in the Dallas/Oklahoma piece; "Oklahoma has a message for school bullies: The era of boys-will-be-boys is over."
At least we are clear on one variable – gender.
We are also clear on another facet. Since the whole of the bullying craze arose out of the alleged link between bullying and school violence such as the Columbine killings, bullying and murderous violence and boys are inextricably linked. Nevermind that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were obsessed with Satanism and Hitler, dressed in black trenchcoats and wore heavy eye makeup, had been school-instructed in constructing their own value system, and were generally magnets for criticism and ostracism by their "bully" classmates.
The association between violence and the motley bully is a momentous example of faulty causal logic; post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this). Many learned opinion pieces have been written to explain and redirect us to a more rational, established causal relationship between school shootings and the shooters, most of which come down on the dark side of deficient parenting. In the past, the child's best defense against the school bully was the fortitude of family and sensible guidance. But in the Klebold and Harris case, permissive parents allowed if not propelled them to become the agents of their own destruction.
Now, albeit unsubstantiated, agenda advocates have established the 1-in-4 fallacy : All boys are bullies, all bullies are violent, and so all boys are murderers – quaternio terminorum. And around that fallacy is a burgeoning and profitable 'no-bully' industry involving special behavioral consultants, training for teachers and school officials, packaged anti-bullying curricula, student education and training programs like the risible No Blame Approach to Bullying.
In the Oklahoma approach, tattletaling is being institutionalized:
"The program ... also attempts to teach students the differences between 'ratting' and reporting – you report to get someone out of trouble; you rat to get someone in trouble. And it includes locked boxes around campus in which students can drop written notes alerting school officials to bullying, suicide threats and other emergencies."
An expanded cultural atmosphere of nurturing the victim is now in place as a matter of Oklahoma law. At least three other states have enacted similar legislation. Not coincidentally, this all comes about just as the homosexual lobby is successfully establishing a firm beachhead in the government school system as well as some private, religious schools with the help of the activist judiciary. In the past week, a community college instructor bullied a male student to "act gay" or flunk, and a Catholic school district was injudicially intimidated by the courts to accept that a homosexual student be allowed to take his boyfriend to the prom.
The homosexual youth is, of course, the epitome of victimhood and fluttering bully fodder. After all, who is more notaboy than the gender befuddled? Ergo, all notaboys are incapable of being bullies – as in the logical 'fallacy of exclusion'.
The destruction of culture stridently marches onward, unabated.
As for the title of this piece, I just made that up, but it may be true some day.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Dr. Rowles at glrowles@earthlink.net .
Of course they are.
That's just the first step. There's Vanity Fair subscriptions, cooking classes, Wizard of Oz posters and show tunes. What will you say then!
I really believe we need to prioritize and start out with our own community--trumpeting modesty to start with. We have to stand up and start opposing pop-culture and hollywood and those who push nothing but elicit sex. Maybe then we can begin to address the homosexual community and make some headway.
As oposed to the truly demented sick perverts who haven’t raped and murdered yet?
are you suggesting that all (or even most) homosexuals are inclined toward the same behaviour?
No, just the study that says “while no more than 2% of male adults are homosexual, some studies indicate that approximately 35% of pedophiles are homosexual”. K. Freund et al., Pedophilia and Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 10 (Fall 1984): 197.
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