'Real Boys' speak up about bullying and buried emotions

As schools scramble to put anti-bullying programs in place, one of the nation's leading experts on school violence and the inner life of boys has some pointed advice:

Don't go for the quick fix.

And most of all, steer clear of "zero tolerance" approaches, which are punitive but ultimately ineffective, says William S. Pollock, an adviser to the federal government's Safe Schools Initiative.


	JULIE SIMON / P-I

Pollock, a leader in the so-called "boys' movement," is scheduled in town today to address a benefit luncheon of Mothers Against Violence in America and to promote two companion volumes to his 1999 best seller, "Real Boys."

"Zero tolerance is just a form of bullying people into stopping bullying," says Pollock, a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Center for Men, at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital.

"My opinion," Pollock said, "is where there's zero tolerance, you're going to get anger and pain going underground and then coming out in more severe violence later on."

Last month the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reported that nearly one out of three U.S. children in grades six through 10 are directly involved in bullying, either as victim or perpetrator. Educators say bullying ultimately affects the entire student population, including onlookers who feel helpless to intervene.

Rather than slam bullies with punitive programs, Pollock said, a better approach is to create cultures of respect, understanding and connection" within schools, from the superintendent and school board on down.

"There are whole fortunes being made on bullying (programs)," Pollock said, "but they're of no worth whatever unless everyone believes in them and engages in them, from the top down."

In his influential book "Real Boys," Pollock decried the societal straitjacket that prevents boys from acknowledging their sensitivity and emotions. He said this "boy code" stunts their emotional growth, forces them to hide behind a mask of stoicism and creates a society of boys who cry bullets instead of tears.

Now we hear from the boys themselves. New in paperback, "Real Boys' Voices" (Penguin, 392 pages, $14) offers intensely personal and often moving excerpts from conversations Pollock and research associates conducted with boys around the country. Boys are so starved for a safe, shame-free opportunity to express their deepest feelings that "a good half" broke down and cried during the talks, Pollock said.

Most were in middle school, junior high or high school. Some were interviewed one-on-one, while others chose to write a poem or essay that revealed their inner voice. Their comments are arranged in thematic chapters, with commentary by Pollock.

Also new is the "Real Boys Workbook," co-written with Kathleen Cushman (Villard Books, $15.95). Aimed at parents, professionals and boys themselves, it offers advice, exercises and stories to increase insight into boys' lives and improve communication.

These issues have taken on greater urgency as school shootings have ravaged one community after another. What most people fail to understand, Pollock said, is that school shooters are not a separate breed. Rather, they represent the extreme end of the continuum of the pain and isolation felt by many "normal" boys -- the ones who lead lives of quiet desperation.

"Many of the boys (who shot at teachers and classmates) couldn't talk about their pain for a long time," Pollock said. "Over 50 to 60 percent have been viciously teased and bullied. In extremis, they represent every boy, and that's what America doesn't want to look at."

Pollock is an adviser to the Safe Schools Initiative, a joint project undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education and the Secret Service in the aftermath of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

The Secret Service signed on because it had recently done a study of assassination, which involves similar issues in a political, rather than a school, context. Pollock's role was to help explain the culture and psychology of boys, since all 41 of the school shooters under study were male.

Initiative members are preparing a final report and will produce a guide for parents and teachers sometime this summer or fall.

The group has been careful to say "there is no single profile of school shooters," Pollock said, adding that an earlier FBI profile was so vague, it could apply to 75 percent of all boys.

Despite that caveat, Pollock said he believes that nearly all the shooters were experiencing "full-blown depression" by the time they pulled the trigger. Pollock noted that "a number of boys said they expected to die, or wanted to, during the attack."

Depression wears many faces. While some depressed children and adolescents act sad and weepy, others appear angry or out of control.

"What we often see in boys is sassiness, negativity, acting-out, when they haven't been that way before," Pollock said. Some depressed boys also engage in "acts of bravado" or extreme risk-taking.

Being emotionally connected to other people lowers the risk of depression. But, cautioned Pollock, "just being on the Internet alone is not a connection."

The fear of being labeled gay is one of the driving forces behind boys' walled-up emotions and, ultimately, bullying itself, according to Pollock, who found that many boys are far more sensitive, thoughtful and frightened about sex than they appear.

"The biggest put-down across America from ages 5 on is that boys are gay," he said. "It causes immense psychic harm. It's not a matter of gayness or what you believe about it, it's a matter of homophobia."

Although society has become more sensitive about sexual harassment issues, Pollock found that many boys assume harassment, by definition, is something that can happen only to girls and sexual minorities. Which implies that everyone else is fair game.

As one boy told Pollock, "You can't call a fag a fag, you can only call boys who aren't fags, fags."

One of the most gripping sections of "Real Boys' Voices" contains the reflections of Columbine High School students. Some had been gravely injured physically and all carried deep emotional wounds.

"What was so striking," Pollock said, "was that these boys did not harbor massive anger and rage, they had a deep and intense sadness that things could have gotten that bad without (anyone) knowing."

Yet how quickly old patterns returned. One boy described how group hugs and we-are-family solidarity faded at Columbine after a month, giving way to a familiar pattern of gossip and cliquishness.

"You can't change behavior overnight," Pollock said. "There wasn't enough of a genuine attempt yet to make a societal shift."

Meanwhile, school violence has created a new set of victims -- the troubled or sometimes just non-conformist kids who suddenly find themselves under suspicion as potential killers. Pollock, who calls this overreaction the "Columbine syndrome," considers it a form of paranoia against maleness itself.

Here's what one 14-year-old boy told Pollock:

"What I hate about this school is that I'm being picked on in the halls and just about everywhere else. They shove me into the lockers, take my pens and fling them and break them. And last year somebody started a rumor, right after the Columbine thing, that I was going to do the same thing and kill everyone in the school. ... I've still got people coming up to me in the hall and saying, "Watch out, he's going to shoot everyone."

Straight from the mouth of a "real boy." Read it and weep.