Teachers Know Bullies: Trump Is One
By Anthony Cody.
A teacher sees the best and the worst in behavior any given year. And one of the most important jobs we have as teachers is to create a community of learners in our classrooms – teaching students to help one another academically, and also as friends. These two things go together. People learn best when they can take risks, and get supportive feedback on their work.
But some of our students come having learned a different pattern of behavior – that of the bully. The bully lives in fear that he will be seen as weak, and projects that fear onto others. So long as the bully is the strong one, he cannot be made to suffer the humiliations that the weak must endure. So the quest is constant for those to mock, those who can, by their inferiority, prove the bully to be superior. And when this mockery finds a receptive audience, the whole school environment can become toxic.
The US government sponsors this web site that fights bullying. It says that on our school campuses, any form of bullying is unacceptable, and should be dealt with directly by school staff. One presidential candidate would run afoul of this policy.
Donald Trump has emerged as the personification of the American bully.
Trump defines almost every situation as a contest between winners and losers, and nobody is in between. If he is allowed to “make America great again,” he promises “we will win so much we will get sick of winning.” Anyone who opposes him in any way is subject to mockery on whatever basis he can find. There seems to be Teachers Know Bullies: Trump Is One - Living in Dialogue:
