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Justice and Peace reps from across the diocese attended an introduction to “Easter People in a Good Friday World” at Wickersley on 4th February. During which we were given a very inspiring lesson in peacemaking by some of the young people of the diocese.
Conflicts and violence in schools, in the form of bullying, mirror what happens in adult life; in our families, in our workplaces and communities, between nations and between faiths.
Here is a true example
A boy at a Roman Catholic Grammar School had been on crutches all his life. Rather than giving him their support, his classmates resented what they felt was favouritism shown to him by teachers. They took it out on him accordingly. There was no physical violence but a whole catalogue of psychological cruelty in the form of jokes and nasty remarks at his expense, sometimes out loud during lessons.
It amazes me to think these boys could have been so cruel - and shames me to remember that I was one of them.
Perhaps the problem was that when our teachers took us aside, told us off and said that we should be more considerate, it just reinforced our prejudices.
Had it been our fellow pupils putting the point across to us, I think it might have dawned on us how horribly unkind we were being. I’m sure many of my former my former classmates think back remorsefully like me and wish that “peer mentoring” had been around 35 years ago as it is in many schools today.
The McAuley School Buddies
The Buddies group of young people from The McAuley School at Doncaster have won the Diana Award for their peer mentoring work.
Two lunchtimes a week they are available for anyone who is being bullied to come and talk to. They then arrange a separate meeting where they talk and listen to the people involved in the bullying, in a constructive and not a punitive way. They trust that the bullies want to change and just need to be “given permission to do the right thing”. Their experience is that this works and the bullying stops.
In a short role-play session they gave us an example of bullying and how they try to stop it by changing hearts and minds.
Words of encouragement
It isn’t easy being a Buddy though. Even with the training they receive, some cases can be very challenging. But they know they aren’t alone – and we’re not talking about teacher support here. But rather the support of a God, who in the words of the wonderful “Footprints” story, carries us in our greatest times of trial.
If our children are mature enough to refuse to accept the inevitability of bullying and conflict in their daily environment, why can we not do the same and be peacemakers and reconcilers in our communities?
The Buddies also draw on the words of peace of Martin Luther King Jnr.
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it
is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie not
establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. So it
goes. Returning violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night
already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do
that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do
that.”
Martin Luther King, Jnr.