Many of the competencies and values we aim to develop through education are cognitive and technical: conceptual understanding, skills, knowledge and the transfer of knowledge, innovation and creativity, criticality, and reflection. The radical transformation of the generation and distribution of knowledge by artificial intelligence is reshaping the importance and form of some of these facets of learning.

Then there are the more intrapersonal, ethical, and social aspects of an education: social and emotional learning, wellbeing, building self-confidence, civic responsibility, skills, and approaches to being linked to the way we live in society and in our environment. Anxiety, mental illness, difficulties navigating childhood and adolescence in a fast-moving and fast-changing world are more and more prevalent and shape the expectations placed on educators today much more than 100 years ago. It’s good that we understand that vital interrelationship between learning and emotions today, for this means that relationships with students tend to be curated more subtly, encouragingly, sensitively, and mindfully than they were in the cold Dickensian classroom of the 19th Century where humiliation, corporal punishment, and sarcasm reigned freely. Research in cognition shows us fairly clearly that these inhibit learning, they do not encourage it. 

One of the major challenges facing educators is bullying. Students are bullied in and out of school in a number of ways, and more and more online. Often bullying takes place in “friend” groups and is characterised by a persistent mocking or humiliation, or physical torment, of another person in front of a group. It is the persistence, accompanied by an imbalance of power, that characterises bullying.

When a child is constantly bullied by another student, going to school becomes a traumatic experience. The learning in the classroom is far from the main preoccupation, which is keeping safe and away from the bully. Parents will feel exasperated when their children come home with horror stories and it seems as if the school is doing nothing about it. From a disciplinarian point of view, such scenarios can be complex to unpack, for the bully might feel bullied themselves, and narratives around what is happening are difficult to unpack, the truth not easy to determine, especially since it requires evidence that may not be at hand.

This much said, it has to be taken seriously, and schools have to do what they can to tackle bullying, to stamp it out, and to ensure that children grow up free from such major distress. How can this be done?

There’s no easy answer. Responses range from positive discipline and restorative practices to more traditional and stricter, less collaborative approaches. In truth, it’s a long and arduous journey to change the dynamic in a relationship between students where bullying is occurring, to make it stop, and to reinstate confidence in the bullied child.

One thing that is vitally important to recognise and encourage is the power of the upstander, and to develop the strength to overcome the fear of the bystander. One of the most pernicious aspects of bullying is that when it happens people turn a blind eye to it, often out of fear or apathy. The bullying carries on in broad daylight in front of others, and nothing is done to stop it. At some point, someone has to have the courage to step in and say “enough”, “stop”. Needless to say, this is much easier said than done. 

It’s an important message to send out to students in assemblies, discussions, and when handling individual cases: to involve the group and not just two individuals, and to remind everybody that as a community we are no stronger than the weakest link in the chain; that if we all remain silent while someone is being persecuted, when we are persecuted, no one will stand up for us (Martin Niemöller’s famous poem comes to mind, as does the quote by the British philosopher Edmund Burke about evil proliferating because good men do nothing).

As adults, the place to start is with ourselves, for no moral education can be carried by rhetoric alone; it has to be modelled and delivered through example. Too many cases of bullying exist in the adult world—through mobbing, email assaults, unkind words—especially when there is an imbalance of power, and it is a person who is organisationally more powerful than another who is doing it. In how many cases does the group (department, team, or boardroom) simply keep quiet, out of fear, when this is happening?

If you find yourself in an environment where someone else is being humiliated, downtrodden, maligned or threatened, don’t be afraid to speak up. This gives enormous strength to the person being attacked and makes the persecutor think twice. So often, all it takes is for one or two people to stand up for the behaviour to cease, but who will be the person who manages to break the silence and step forward?

Teaching these profound leadership moments is less about lessons and concepts and much more about a culture where kindness is venerated and the practice of calling in and being an upstander has become normalised. It takes years and, if truth be told, few institutions will truly manage to get there, for human beings can be cruel by nature and culture is morphed by all sorts of hidden and surreptitious, changing forces. But if we keep our eye out for it, if we are serious about combatting bullying and treat signs of it as every bit as important, if not more so, than other signs of learning, the first step will be taken.

Leaders have to emphasise the message that we will not tolerate certain types of behaviour, model vulnerability so that there is enough freedom in the community for others to stand up and speak, even against the leaders themselves. That is the open society as the great philosopher Karl Popper called it—a space where those in power allow themselves to be criticised, refuse to take it personally, and never respond with vindictiveness or vengeance. This models that people in power know how to step back and allow others to express themselves.

Let us keep educating for the moral courage to call others in, to step up, to help each other out. All the talk of 21st Century learning in the world won’t mean much if the wellbeing and psychological safety needed to flourish is not taken care of first.