Back to my schoolmate. Towards the end of a pleasant evening,he revealed he had never got over his bitterness at the horrendous abuse he had received at Knox (from other students,not the teachers who were secretly abusing boys sexually in that same era).
Knox Grammar School,confronting another scandal.Rhett Wyman
The damage he revealed,even as an adult with a good life deriving from his mighty intelligence,his lovely young family and the educational headstart he’d had in life,was chilling. I thought:Uh-oh. After a silence,I said,“I want to know – was I responsible for any of that?” He said with a sharpness that showed how hurt he still was,“I wouldn’t have you in my home if you were one of them.” The awful truth for me was,I honestly wouldn’t have known if I had or hadn’t been “one of them”.
In the discussion of the most recent Knox Grammar disgrace (like many private schools,it can count scandal among its many traditions),much focus is on online malignancy,in this case in an app the boys used called Discord. Attention has been drawn to the $10 million or so that taxpayers provide the school,including inadvertent state overfunding last year of some $1.8 million,on top of more than $80 million poured in by parents and donors. If you want to use the word “offensive”,annual school fees are up to $35,130. If they had kept pace with inflation since I was there,those fees would now be about $9000. The resultant shift towards economic elitism speaks for itself.
When the blame is not placed on entitlement,toxic masculinity or social media,it is shifted back to those individuals and their parents. Poor examples at home,absence of morals,no limits. These incidents recur year after year,or the tiny sliver that is uncovered and reported,and responsibility becomes so diffuse that the remedy shrinks back to the simple punishment of the children involved. And so the preconditions continue.
I have no idea whether adolescents today behave worse or better than in the past,nor whether teenage boys are any different from teenage girls. Many of us would like to think that the narrowing of economic entitlement produced by elevated school fees has lowered morality to a kind of local Eton-Harrow gutter. The online environment generates its own sewer mentality,which is also soothing to those who already believe electronic devices are the source of all evil,but I’m not so sure any of those factors is more to blame than any other.
What I do know,from my schoolmate’s ongoing anger and my phantom guilt,is that the worst bullying from teenaged boys and girls stems from strength in numbers,and it is essentially a performance in front of a group. It is simplistic to think these boys are actually glorifying Adolf Hitler. What they are doing arises from an intoxicated over-exuberance that renders the perpetrators too stupid and too full of themselves to have the first idea of what they are doing.
These particular teenagers are not solitary wolves brooding alone over why they are victims in this world (those are the really dangerous ones who,in countries where they have easy access to guns,go out and use them). The bully groups believe they are among the strong,whose group identity is consolidated in attacking the weak. They do know right from wrong;the problem is that “wrong” is just another boundary that they can compete with each other in crossing. You want to cause shock. You escalate it to anti-Semitism,gross misogyny and homophobia precisely because you know they are forbidden places;you want your friends to gasp and giggle at your audacity. Drunk on group approval,enclosed in your little group,you think your crime is victimless. This is not solo violence;it is one big circle-jerk.
I recently stumbled across my HSC copy of Jane Austen’sPride and Prejudice,which I had annotated in those days when our group’s competitive over-exuberance might have unwittingly – witlessly – harmed schoolmates. Aside from getting top marks for stating the bleeding obvious,Young Malcolm’s notes showed a peculiar viciousness towards Mrs Bennet. Austen makes her a comical figure,of course,but her interfering and alarmist ways evidently got right under Young Malcolm’s skin. He felt sorry for Elizabeth but sorriest for poor old Mr Darcy,the uber-wealthy landowner victimised by the hysterically anxious mother-of-five. Young Malcolm’s notes escalate into misogynistic territory,egged on by extra comments by friends,towards what we all knew were outrageous slurs against a type of woman. So much for the civilising power of Austen. We knew it was wrong;being wrong was what made it funny. This was two decades before social media,two decades before the private school fee explosion. It wasn’t as hateful or propagated as widely as what Knox boys in groups do in 2022,but it was on the way.
So,although all the usual suspects feed into today’s brand of excess,I really believe the enduring toxicity goes back to competition,group dynamics and boys performing for each other. Unfortunately,it lies in a continuum with high-status performances in sport,on the stage,in the classroom,and in social life. Excess,good and bad,comes out of competitiveness. If we are going to deal with the dark side of boys trying to outdo each other,we also have to come to a more mature and rational reckoning with all sides of the competitive encouragements of late-stage capitalism. Boys conceal all sorts of emotions,not least their fear of the future and fear of who they really are,under the cloak of competitiveness that they are constantly told is a good thing.
I do harbour hope. My son would never have dreamt of behaving like those Knox boys,even though he was on his device a lot and had a privileged education. I don’t put it down to good parenting. I put it down to his innate morals,his empathy after having been bullied himself,and his not being part of an alpha male group inebriated on their own performances.
He’s a better person than I was at the same age,despite – or really,because of – not having as many friends,not being as full of himself and not being over-rewarded for competitive success. It also helped that he went to a school that did not see competitive success as the be-all and end-all,or ingrain the fear in young people that life would eventually sort them into winners and losers. I know for sure that in 30 years,he won’t be kept awake wondering if he unknowingly made one of his schoolmates’ life a misery.
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