Local day schools address ‘the hidden culture
of aggression in girls’
It may be the elephant in the living room — the problem everyone recognizes, some understand but few know how to discuss. Girls’ aggression — covert, indirect, often non-verbal, cloaked in niceness yet brutal — is the subject of Rachel Simmons’ book, “Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls” (Harcourt, hardcover, $25).
“Within the hidden culture of aggression,” writes Simmons, “girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives. In this world, friendship is a weapon, and the sting of a shout pales in comparison to a day of someone’s silence. There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.”
Simmons visited Milwaukee on Nov. 19 as part of the Jewish Book and Culture Fair at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center. Her talk, funded by the JCC and the Dr. Herbert & Ruth Giller Endowment Fund, was co-sponsored by the Harold and Terry Nash JCC Parenting & Family Center and the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
She spoke to a group of more than 200 about the secret, unnamed and widespread culture of girls’ aggression.
According to Simmons, girls’ aggression differs from boys’ in its battlefield and tools. Girls “use backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name-calling and manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims,” she said.
And this covert nastiness, said Simmons, is born of society’s demand that girls be nice.
Still, “research has shown that girls don’t feel less aggressive; they just express it differently. Anger is a universal, biological impulse and yet our society tells girls not to feel aggression. So they repress it until it explodes.”
The result, according to Simmons, is a culture in which girls are afraid of direct confrontation, terrified that if they fight with their friends, they’ll be left friendless. This fear leads to ganging-up, or building “methodical campaigns” against each other in order to secure their relationships before they enter into conflict or one-on-one confrontation.
And it begins young, said Simmons: Girls as young as three or four use their friendship as a tool when they say, “Give me that toy or I won’t be your friend/play with you/invite you to my birthday party.” “This is the beginning of relational aggression,” said Simmons.
No easy fix
Dr. Julie Fine, school psychologist for the Milwaukee Jewish Day School, Hillel Academy and Yeshiva Elementary School, sees the problems here.
“I think it’s a problem in the Jewish day schools,” said Fine, “because I think it’s a universal problem. I don’t think it’s isolated to any one group.”
“I think [girls’ covert aggression] occurs anytime you have a group of girls together,” said Michelle Ring, principal and head of secular studies at Hillel Academy. “You have to assume [that] and prevent it.”
Though she acknowledges that the problem exists at Hillel, Ring said that she can’t think of any girls who have these issues this year.
Ring believes that the key is addressing the issue proactively. To that end, Hillel teachers work not only on conflict resolution but also on self-discipline.
“Discipline is kind of tricky,” Ring admitted. “Discipline is a consequence, but you also have to work on a change of behavior,” toward which Hillel uses a variety of methods.
Last year, the school ran a first-grade girls’ group with Fine in which they worked on social behaviors, accepting each other and expressing themselves. They also use peer mediation. “If you can get girls to internalize [the effects of their behavior on others,] most girls have a lot of empathy,” said Ring.
Hillel implemented a detailed discipline plan last year that defines harassment as “disturbing by pestering, tormenting, or threatening.” Consequences for such behavior begin with a verbal warning and can lead to suspension.
Marge Meyers, assistant director and general studies co-principal of MJDS, acknowledges that girls’ aggression is alive and well at the school. “Does it exist? Yes. Do we address it? Yes. Do you try to sweep it under the rug? No,” she said as she opened a manila folder with material she had gathered on the subject.
The school is a member of the Ophelia Project, an organization that, according to its web site, works to “counteract our culture’s negative effects on girls today” by developing intervention programs in schools, providing mentoring at several age levels and advocating for creation of a culture that nurtures children. The organization sends regular newsletters, which are sometimes distributed to MJDS teachers.
“There’s no easy fix,” said Meyers, who holds a master’s degree in education with a focus on gender equity in the classroom. “This isn’t an issue that schools can fix. It’s a partnership between home and school, family and teachers.”
Though the school doesn’t have a formal written policy on bullying, Meyers said that the school has always had a policy against bullying behavior. The school distributes to middle school students and parents a Code of Conduct, which must be signed and which outlines standards of behavior, using words like “respect,” “cooperate” and “participate fairly.”
Nancy Gorens-Edelman, co-director and general studies co-principal of MJDS, believes that students learn positive values at the school that work to prevent bullying. “Derech eretz [polite and respectful behavior], mitzvot, lashon hara [the prohibition against gossip or speech against others], kavod [respect] — this goes hand in hand with how we treat each other and also how you treat yourself,” she said.
In addition to its ongoing efforts, the school recently ran two programs that aim to create a healthy and inclusive school environment. One was “Mix It Up at Lunch,” at which middle school students were handed table numbers as they entered the cafeteria, so that they would sit with others outside their usual group.
The other program was a discussion with parents of sixth-grade girls of the social issues common to girls of that age.
Character traits
Sora Rauch, principal of Torah Academy of Milwaukee, also recognized the phenomenon. “On a high school level, the word ‘covert’ is perfect. I can’t say that we presently have an issue of aggression in the school though we have in the past.”
Rauch sees social pressure and cliques among the 25 students of TAM, but “this year it has taken a positive spin,” she said. Friendship is used as a weapon, she said, but girls are encouraged to be more studious, more pious.
Like all the schools interviewed for this story, TAM tries to create a healthy school environment that minimizes issues of aggressive behavior. “We’re trying to … build self-esteem and make girls feel successful,” said Rauch. “Our girls really work on themselves; they spend time working on a specific character trait. If a teacher [points something out] the girl will work on it. We’re lucky that way,” said Rauch.
If TAM girls had to describe the traits of an ideal girl, Rauch said, most would put hesed [kindness or performing good deeds] at the top of their list. “[They would probably say that] what makes a person the most special is doing things for their families, for their friends, for people in the community,” explained Rauch. That stands in contrast to the list in “Odd Girls Out” that begins with “very thin.”
Rauch believes that religious studies serve as an effective springboard for discussing relationships and helping to reinforce the girls’ value systems.
She also suggests that because the school is an all-girls’ school, its students avoid some of the problems common in mixed schools. “[The girls are] not as inhibited as they would be in a public school or maybe a school that has boys,” she said, and therefore may more openly express anger and aggression.
Rabbi Eliezer Speiser of Yeshiva Elementary School also believes that the values taught throughout the curriculum — specifically character development — help to prevent inappropriate behavior.
“There have been incidents reported to me. I’m not sure to what extent it is, but it needs to be addressed…. Teachers try their best to be on top of this,” he said, though he admitted that boys seem to have stronger bonds to their rebbe than girls have with their teachers.
“We hope that girls would have a close enough relationship with the teachers that they would report it to them,” said Speiser.
Though the school has no written policy on extensive verbal harassment, it does punish for both physical and verbal abuse.
Speiser believes that behavior differences reflect general gender differences. “Emotionally and biologically, they’re just different. That’s the Mars and Venus of it,” he said.
Parental involvement
As for preventing the problem, “a lot of what needs to happen, needs to happen at home,” said Trudy Sirkis, middle school guidance counselor at MJDS.
“I think you can help the situation by making sure that at a young age, parents set standards for girls’ behavior,” explained Sirkis. That means asking questions, finding out about the social dynamics of the grade and class, and making sure not to exclude students.
Though most parents believe that they have to take less control during middle school, Sirkis believes the opposite. “You have to come on stronger in middle school, not lighter. That’s when you set standards for how your child behaves at a bar or bat mitzvah, for example.”
School psychologist Fine agreed that parents have to set the standard. “I think what parents could be doing is not fostering these attitudes. If a child comes home and says, ‘She’s a nerd,’ that’s not appropriate language. Children should not be allowed to talk badly of peers and should be encouraged to invite everyone to parties, for example.
“I think it’s important that the parents’ attitude doesn’t mirror the child’s,” explained Fine, noting that when parents have elitist attitudes about social class, their children probably will also. “Parents need to curb their own attitudes.”
The JCC will be running a two-session discussion as a follow-up to Simmons’ talk, including a range of related subjects. Dr. Tony Meyer, director of child/adolescent psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, will facilitate the discussions, which are funded by the Dr. Herbert & Ruth Giller Family Endowment Fund, and slated for Tuesdays, Jan. 7 and 21, 7:30-9:00 p.m. at the JCC. For more information, contact Susan Roth, 414-964-0922 or sroth@jccmilwaukee.org.
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