Spineless Teachers and Bullies in the workplace Flinders University

It is my experience that those dedicated ESL teachers who care about their professional ethics and their own performance in their job are often seen as a threat by bullying operational managers and their faceless bureaucratic masters and mistresses in the hierarchy who inhabit the offices at the back of the workplace.

Such teachers eventually become a target of the bullies.

When this happens, to make matters worse, in order to survive, quite often the colleagues of such conscientious teachers are then obliged to participate in the bullying or, at the very least , turn a blind eye to it.

You see , the bully is not content to victimise the victim -he/she must have the cooperation of other colleagues in order to legitimise the bullying in the bully's own eyes. He must have stooges.

Sadly, most teachers in my experience are happy to assist in the legitimisation of the bullying in order to remain in favour with the bully. It is a bit like forcing a witness to participate in a rape so that the witness will keep quiet later about the crime. The witness becomes a rapist too.

It also reminds me of the now infamous scientific experiment in which a person in the role of doctor was asked to inflict pain on a person playing the role of patient in order to continue receiving the approval of the experimenter. Surprisingly, most people playing the role of Doctor were indeed ok with inflicting pain on the patient -just in order to retain the approval of authority.

Throughout my career it has disappointed me to learn that most teachers are prepared to be stooges in order to survive - and they appear to able to sleep soundly on it. Others are not so happy about it but will do it anyway and then keep a low profile, avoid the victim, and stay away from him/her in the staffroom. Keeping away from the victim in order not to be reminded of their collusion is cowardice.. Either way most teachers seem to willingly sell their soul in order to survive themselves.

Darwin would have explained these observations by telling us that people are ultimately only looking out for themselves and their offspring-their genes.

In which case it should come as no surprise that some victims have a desire to attack and destroy bullies and stooges.

Darwin would say it is human nature.

The devout would tell us to forgive the bullies and the stooges.

But how can you forgive a sin unless the sinner first admits the sin?

Do you know of a bully or a stooge who will admit to being one?

And yet, dear teacher,most of your colleagues are one or the other.


The moral of the story-is to find another profession if you are young enough to do so.