With school shootings and teen suicide constantly in our awareness, asking “why?” is a trail that almost always leads to bullying. As a result, the effort to combat bullying in schools has been substantial. Schools across the U.S. have enacted zero tolerance policies with consequences for even the slightest infraction.

These punishments are designed to deter students from treating each other poorly. It kind of makes sense. Kids sometimes change their behavior to avoid unwanted consequences. But punishment doesn’t change someone’s mindset. Worse, anti-bullying programs are hiding a dark secret, invisible even to those who create the programs.

Anti-bullying programs create witch hunts

Anti-bullying programs are founded on the principal of “see something, say something.” However, students are encouraged to report anyone who makes them feel bad. Today’s kids really believe words are violence and feel equally attacked by criticism as a punch in the face.

Because kids are encouraged to report every small comment that makes them feel bad, these programs end up working somewhat like the witch hunts hundreds of years ago. You know, where people were tortured, imprisoned, and killed without a chance to defend themselves.

Anti-bullying campaigns work similarly. There’s no mediated conversation between the accused and accuser. Punishments – including suspensions – are dished out without due process. When administrators can’t figure out who started it, everyone with a finger pointed in their face gets punished.

In order for these “see something, say something” anti-bullying programs to work, administrators must take students at their word. This conditions students to be tattle-tales, reporting every minor word and gesture that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Kids today are growing up like fragile, porcelain dolls, unable to withstand the reality that not everyone is going to like them. And we’re not giving them the skills to develop self-worth, either. Instead, we’re training them to abdicate responsibility while they hide behind administrators, snickering because they can get their enemies in trouble without getting their hands dirty.

Zero tolerance doesn’t change a hostile school culture

Zero tolerance programs require no evidence before punishing students. But how can there even be evidence that someone’s been bullied? Often, incidents take place in a split-second and go unnoticed to those even just a few feet away. Most notably, It’s the administrators that have the hardest time recognizing evidence of bullying. A hostile school culture obvious to students isn’t so obvious to administrators who think it’s normal.

For example, in January of this year, a student from Lebanon High School in Tennessee created an anti-bullying video in response to a classmate’s suicide the previous October. She describes her school culture as an “emotional prison” that smashes creativity and doesn’t punish perpetrators of abuse because, as administrators say, “kids will be kids.” She was suspended for two days for “trying to incite violence.”

The principal publicly diminished her experience by saying, “I can appreciate her perspective of the video. Of course, she’s 16, and her perspective is going to be different from mine.” In other words, her perspective is invalid; she’s not really experiencing oppression and abuse. The principal’s response perfectly demonstrates the school culture she rails against in her video.

Bullying is an infinite cycle of reaction

Zero tolerance programs have one agenda: bullies must be punished. But the kid who just spit in someone’s face is the same kid who got beat up three days ago for being gay. The kid who called someone fat five minutes ago is the same kid the star football player forced to push a penny across the bathroom floor with his nose. And the girl who just pulled another student to the ground by her hair is the same student whose art project was vandalized last week.

Bullying is an infinite cycle where students are reacting to circumstances in their life, sometimes from school and sometimes from home. You’ll find nearly everyone to be a “bully” depending on where you drop in on the cycle.

The dark secret: administrators don’t know how to prevent bullying

These zero tolerance anti-bullying campaigns are being implemented in school because administrators have no idea how to prevent bullying. All they know how to do is punish students they catch acting out. To prevent bullying, you have to transform the entire school culture from the inside out. And nobody knows how to do that better than Erahm Christopher and JC Pohl – two filmmakers who have been bringing a life-changing presentation to schools for over twelve years.

Teen Truth isn’t your average school assembly. It’s not a motivational speech. It’s an interactive conversation that empowers students to handle social-emotional issues and to be the difference on campus and in their lives. Their presentation covers issues many students face in their private lives that causes them to act out.

Bullying, drugs, self-esteem, and family communication are all topics of conversation. The program features student stories about overcoming adversity, self-acceptance, coping with sexual differences, handling social media drama, and what leadership really means.

Based on the hugs and tears during these presentations – including hugs between students who don’t even know each other – I’d say it’s far more effective at bringing students together than a witch hunt. What do you think?

It’s important to recognize that facts exist independently of opinion.

A fact is “what’s so” and is supported by verifiable data, while an opinion is an interpretation of verifiable data.

For example, it’s a fact that many school shooters were bullied. It’s also a fact that school shooters are a statistical anomaly and account for less than 0.001% of all bullied kids.

The conclusion that bullying causes school shootings is an interpretation of the facts, and therefore an opinion. This doesn’t mean school shooters aren’t affected by bullying. And it doesn’t invalidate the effects of bullying. It simply means the premise that bullying causes school shootings isn’t factually correct.

On the other hand, anecdotal evidence (personal stories) suggest bullying plays a role in some, but not all incidents of school violence.

Both facts and anecdotal evidence (opinions) are equally important to share and discuss. However, distinguishing fact from opinion allows for a broader context in which to view an issue.

In the example above, the facts encourage us to zoom out to look at multiple factors, not just bullying. Because as long as some bullied kids never kill their classmates, bullying isn’t a cause – it is a factor. To be a cause, a factor must produce the same effect 100% of the time.

At the end of the day, there is only one cause for all incidents of school violence: choice.

The only factor that can be considered a cause is choice. That’s where the buck stops. Until the choice is made, all contributing factors are still in limbo, not yet classifiable as contributing factors. It is the choice to kill that turns a person’s life circumstances into contributing factors. While a portion of school shooters are bullied, the only common denominator in every school shooting is choice.

100% of all school shootings happen when a person chooses to kill their classmates. That choice is made when the shooter chooses to use contributing factors (like bullying) as an excuse to kill others.

Again, this doesn’t mean bullying doesn’t create the desperation some shooters feel that causes them to choose to kill. But let’s be honest here. Aside from tackling a shooter in the act, the only person who can stop a school shooter is… the person about to become a school shooter. They must make the choice not to kill.

“How can we stop bullying?” is a surface-level question that only facilitates intellectual conversation. Even when schools manage to stop bullying, that teaches kids to require, no – demand others to change their behavior so they can feel better. A world full of people who need others to change before they’ll take the high road is a dangerous world, indeed…

The deeper question – the question that can make a genuine impact – is, “what makes some people want to have the final word by killing and silencing others in response to feeling wronged?”

What character trait makes the majority of bullied kids (99.999%) not choose to kill other people in response to being treated poorly?

Perhaps we should identify that trait and focus on developing that trait in our youth.

Sure, we can and should change school culture and do our best to prevent bullying. But if that’s all we do, once those kids graduate, they’re more likely to become a workplace shooter when they become dissatisfied with the way they’re treated at work. Kids who depend on eradicating bullying in order to refrain from killing others are not healthy individuals and will be a ticking time bomb once they leave the comfort of a bully-free school.

The point is, it’s not fair to demand that other people change their behavior just so we can feel better. That might be the way the majority of the world operates, but it’s disempowering. When you refuse to take responsibility for your life and your feelings, and instead, demand that others change, you’ve lost your way. There will be no genuine happiness or pleasure in life for those who live this way.

Yes, kids need to stop bullying each other. And, they also need to learn how to take personal responsibility for their own lives when nobody else will step up. In the real world, only those who take responsibility for their life, regardless of their circumstances, will be free.