I never set out to write QUAD. I never wanted to write a book like QUAD. But a couple of years ago, I watched helplessly as one of my classes systematically dismantled certain kids with a campaign of meanness, teasing and isolation so cruel, I was afraid it would end in tragedy. And they wouldn't listen. My interventions came off as flimsy, even funny to them. We, as a society, must stop passing off as “normal adolescent behavior” that which is actually an epidemic of tragic proportions. The pandemic of bullying has shifted from the occasional incident, where the bully was easily identified and universally shunned, to a casual, daily activity that all but demands the participation of school children everywhere. Students are subjected to years of emotional and verbal abuse at the hands of their peers; abuse which flies just enough under the radar that those who witness it often choose to “let it slide.” In my own classroom, it is a daily battle, admonishing kids to think twice about the vocabulary of separation and humiliation they’re not even aware of using with one another. Privately, most adolescents will admit that even casual, everyday cruelties and the so-called teasing of their friends weigh heavily on them. And yet claims of ongoing, uninterrupted social alienation and teasing keep turning up in the manifestos and suicide notes of those who commit the most unspeakable crimes against their peers (reference the Columbine shooters, as well as the Virginia Tech assailant, just to name two). Not until we, as a nation, make a conscious decision to interrupt this cycle, to not just squelch the obvious forms of bullying that take place in our presence, but to be on the lookout, to intervene in the more subtle, and perhaps more dangerous forms of alienation and teasing, to no longer allow divisive language to be acceptable in our schools and homes, will we see relief from the disease of fear and violence that has escalated beyond comprehension in this country.
