A good example: how the teacher explained that bullying is bad

Pain that is not visible.How to explain to children what happens? After all, when you hit a person, he cries, he has a bruise, blood - in general, the consequences are immediately visible. What if you hurt someone with a word? No bruising, no abrasion. The words “you hurt me”, “you hurt me” are just words. Realizing that all these abstract arguments about the fact that words also hurt, do not work very well, one ordinary American teacher decided to resort to an illustrative example and explain everything to children literally on. The woman told about what she did on a social network. The success was deafening: 240 thousand shares, 200 thousand likes, 25 thousand comments. And we decided to share her story with you.Photo:GettyImages “Today in class I decided to introduce children to apples. They were perfect - red, juicy. The apples looked exactly the same both in size and in shape. - The same? Absolutely, - the children and I decided. And then I took one apple and told the children how I did not like it. - I think it is disgusting. The color is terrible, and the stalk is too short, and she threw the apple on the floor. The children, of course, looked at me as if I were insane. But you can't argue against the teacher's authority. - I don't like this apple. I want you not to like it either. Tell me why you don't like him - and handed the apple to the class. The task turned out to be quite simple. Children are inventive people. They found a lot of reasons to hate the apple. "Smelly apple, I hate you", "Why did they buy you at all", "You must be wormy." And each time they threw the unfortunate apple on the floor. I even felt sorry for him. So, everyone insulted the apple, and it returned to its brother on the table. And it was the turn of the second apple. We didn't throw him on the floor. On the contrary, everyone stroked it and said how wonderful it is: “What a smooth skin”, “Such a beautiful color”, “I love apples.” And again the apple returned to the table. It looked like it was impossible to tell which one was thrown on the floor and which one was praised. One could only feel the difference by touch: soft spots appeared under the skin on the "offended" apple. And then came the final part of the experiment. I cut both apples. One of them was bright white inside, strong, crispy even in appearance. The second is in brown spots, completely unsympathetic. It was immediately clear which of them was beaten and offended. After all, there are bruises and abrasions on it - they just are not visible from the outside. But inside it was badly damaged.A photo: @ RelaxKidsTamworthImpressively impressed upon the children, this produced a very powerful one. They understood what happens inside each of us when they offend us. But many of them could not even guess how much hurtful words can cause. And then the results of the experiment were consolidated - by practice, as it should be. - I told how I was offended last week. She said she didn’t give a look, how unpleasant it is to me that I smiled, but in fact it was very painful for me, the teacher says. Then the children themselves remembered various unpleasant incidents and offenses. We can teach children to understand that this is not normal to hurt someone, to tell each other offensive things. We can teach them to protect the weak, to stop bullying. One girl did just that — she refused to offend the apple, ”the woman said. - In our power to grow a generation of people who will be kinder than us.