This is a story about Selma Mohammed from Pakistan. Her father was killed in the troubles there. Her mother and Selma escaped to London as refugees. Selma spoke Urdu. She only knew a little English. So she found it difficult to know what she was supposed to do in school.
Selma was good at hockey. She had played hockey in Pakistan. Selma was in the hockey team of her House in school and in the school team. She found she was popular with the other girls because she played hockey so well. But some girls were jealous of her success and bullied her.
One girl called Irene said “We shouldn’t have Pakis in the school hockey team.”
The day of the final match between the two hockey teams of rival Houses in the school. Selma was the captain of the Green House team and Irene of the Red House team. Selma and Irene faced each other with their sticks raised. Selma hit the ball far up the field. Irene ignored the ball and hit Selma as hard as she could on the ankle. She was a strong girl and the blow cracked Selma’s ankle bone. Selma screamed “Aaahh” and fell over.
An ambulance was called and she was taken to the Casualty Department of the Hospital. The nurses were kind and helpful. The doctor said” “The ankle bone is broken. This must have been a terrific blow. Was it an accident or was it done on purpose?”
Selma told him how she had been bullied, how Irene had called her a “Paki” and how the blow had been struck with the intention of driving her out of the school hockey team. The grey-haired handsome doctor who reminded Selma of her dead father said “Bullying must be stopped.”
He telephoned the Headmistress and told her what had happened. As a result there was a whole school policy against bullying. Irene was suspended from school for two weeks and dismissed from the school hockey team.
Selma began to be accepted. She learnt English quickly. She made progress in all her subjects; she had been treated with kindness and helped in the Hospital. Now she was being treated with kindness and helped in school by her friends and by the teachers. When she had first gone to this School these had been the worst days of her life, alone, bullied and not knowing the language. Now her schooldays became the happiest days of her life. She enjoyed learning many subjects particularly Science and Biology.
Her reward came when she passed the examinations with brilliant success. Then she was accepted into Medical School in the same hospital where her ankle had been treated. This meant that she was to train to become a Doctor.
She read the newspapers from Pakistan in Urdu. She received letters from her family there. She was elected leader of the Pakistani students in Britain. She went to the Pakistan Embassy to protest at the cancellation of elections and the continuation of Military Rule there. During the summer holidays she went back to Pakistan. She and her friends and the friends of her father stirred the embers of revolt. Election campaigns there were surrounded by fear, murder and ballot-rigging. She carried a banner with a slogan denouncing the Pakistan Government as corrupt. The police and soldiers moved in, they seized the banner. She was arrested and kept in prison for a week.
She protested and said that she was due back at Medical School and would be a week late. Her guards just laughed.
She was released and got her plane back to London. When she got back to Medical School she had to appear before the Governors of the Hospital. She was summoned into the Board Room with heavy oak panels on the walls and big padded chairs with high backs.
The Chairman of the Board of Governors sat at the head of the long table in a chair with high arms as intimidating as a judge’s seat in a Courtroom. He was a Professor with a bald head, drooping white moustache and white bushy hair just above his ears. He peered through his heavy glasses at Selma at the opposite end of the table: “This is a respectable hospital. Medicine is a highly honoured profession. We cannot have Medical Students who will one day become doctors who are revolutionary fanatics. You are dismissed from Medical school. Have you anything to say?”
Selma looked at him and burst out with fury: “My father was killed in my country Pakistan for wanting Democracy which you take as granted here. I was bullied and imprisoned. Bullying must be stopped!”
The elderly Professor replied with disdain: “Your comments confirm the wisdom of our decision. You are totally unsuitable. You will never become a doctor. OUT!”
Selma found it difficult to get a job. But she needed money to provide for herself and her mother to live. She became a waitress. She then became a shop assistant. She became a conductor on a bus. Selma’s work experience was an unpleasant rush. She worked long hours for little money.
At last through her student union activities her difficulties became known through Moslem and political contacts. At last a door opened in the Soviet Union. There her political activities were a recommendation. She was taken into Medical School in Moscow. She learnt Russian almost as quickly as she had learnt English. Many of her examinations were in spoken Russian rather than in written tests. She qualified as a Doctor.
Her first big trial came after the Armenian earthquake. Many young children were flown to the Hospital in Moscow with broken limbs. She helped set the bones and operated as a Surgeon.
Many of those injured were Moslems. Selma knew how to deal with them and gave them comfort and understanding in their own culture as well as mending and setting their limbs.
Selma worked day and night setting limbs, operating, comforting bereaved relatives, helping children recover. She spent her money at the big toy stores in Moscow and took clothes and toys for the children. She mad the children laugh and play once again.
When the time came to leave Moscow she was given a medallion by the head of the Hospital for all the work she had done.
She returned to Britain and became the first woman heart surgeon. She seemed at the top of the tree.
But Selma wanted a family. Her mother fixed up an arranged marriage for her. Her husband to be was a widower twenty years’ older then her. He had known her father. He had a successful import business and was very wealthy. Her mother was delighted. Selma was not but kept her objections quiet.
However on the day of the wedding Selma got into her red sports car and drove out to the green countryside just as the wedding car arrived at the front door and the bell sounded. All were left stranded in embarrassment at the Mosque including her intended husband. Her mother burst into tears at the shame to her name.
Selma busied herself in further studies and becoming even more qualified in her profession. Every summer she went back to Pakistan. She continued her links with the democracy movement there.
After one tiring day of demonstrations she went afterwards with her friends to a music festival to relax. The leader of the group danced and sang popular songs of the past and present, the people and the history of the country, of the need for the people’s voices to be heard and then there would be love. He had striking eyes and a pencil thin moustache. She met him and they went to dinner together.
They went to the hills and mountains on trips. He took her to see his parents. Selma fell in love with Sa’ad, for that was his name. They married in a Mosque in the hills where his parents lived.
She obtained an entry visa and he came to live with her in England. He appeared in clubs and for Moslems and sometimes on television.
She became pregnant. They had a baby girl and she called her by the same name as her mother. Her mother came to see the baby in hospital and Selma and her mother became friends again.
Her happiness was complete. And all of this would not have been possible if she had not stood up to the bullies in school and the English doctor in the hospital had not said to her:
“Bullying must be stopped!”
For this drove her to overcome prejudice, bullying and enabled her to reach her full potential: to keep her feet on the ground and to reach for the stars and to user her talents to help others, sick and ill, whether in body or mind.
Chris Sewell of Twickenham Labour Party and Alliance for Peace, Justice and Human Dignity
Between April 2000 to March 2001 ChildLine counselled over 138,000 children and young people
In a survey undertaken in 2002 by Children’s BBC [CBBC] Newsround in which children who alleged they were being bullied were asked about their experiences the main place in which bullying took place was at school – 94% of those who responded made this claim. The most common form of bulling was verbal with 72% but 17% also reported being physically bullied. Only 9% reported that they told a teacher about the bullying. Less than a 1/3rd reported that the school helped tackle the bullying problems being encountered.
Meanwhile 19% of those claiming to being bullied admitted that they were bullying someone else.
In a press release dated March 25th 2003 Childline reported that more than two-thirds of secondary school pupils in England would not find it easy to tell a teacher if they were being bullied - because they believe they would not be taken seriously or would suffer reprisals as a result of 'telling'. This disturbing finding comes from major new research on bullying, commissioned by leading children's charity ChildLine. The charity set out to uncover why, despite the mandatory introduction of anti-bullying policies by schools, ChildLine still speaks to around 20,000 children every year whose lives are made miserable because they are being bullied.
The results of the ChildLine-commissioned research, conducted by the Thomas Coram Research Unit and funded by the DfES, were announced in London on 25 March 2003 at a ChildLine conference - Bullying: How to Beat It.
Researchers
consulted almost 1,000 children to find out what action they believe ought to
be taken in schools to tackle bullying – the first time such a significant piece
of research on bullying has focussed on the opinions of young people. Bullying
has been a key issue for policy-makers in recent years, but despite policy developments
the problem continues - for the last six years bullying has been the single
biggest reason for children to call ChildLine. This new research has enabled
ChildLine to come up with recommendations to help schools find ways of dealing
with bullying. The charity is calling on schools across the UK to act now and
alleviate the trauma suffered every day by many of their pupils.
ChildLine's Chair, Esther Rantzen OBE, said: ' Bullying simply should not exist
in the UK’s schools. Since 1998 every school has been legally obliged to have
an anti-bullying policy in place, yet, as ChildLine hears every day, bullying
is still rife. The message that children are giving through this research can
be heard loud and clear – many schools are simply not doing enough to tackle
a problem that can be addressed. Interestingly, the research found that there
is no single factor that makes a school more likely to have a bullying problem
than others. It doesn’t matter whether the school is a small rural primary school
or a sprawling inner-city comprehensive – what matters is whether the school
takes bullying seriously and enables children to feel that they can talk to
teachers who will take effective action to stop it.'
The research found that:
ChildLine's Chief Executive, Carole Easton, commented: 'Bullying leaves children feeling worthless, traumatised and too frightened to go to school and often has long term effects on their mental health and self-esteem right into adulthood. ChildLine is at the forefront in the fight against bullying - through our helpline and ChildLine in Partnership with Schools (CHIPS) programme we've built up extensive experience of helping schools and children to deal with bullying.
'For
more than 10 years ChildLine has been telling teachers that anti-bullying policies
must be constantly revised and that a one-off initiative such as a talk in assembly
is no good. We’ve been saying that they must take appropriate action to deal
effectively with cases of bullying and that children should be believed and
involved in designing anti-bullying initiatives that suit their school. These
tenets are fundamental to ChildLine’s work in schools and they have been borne
out in the results of this important research.'
From the research, a set of recommendations have been made to help schools prevent
bullying. These include:
ChildLine’s ideas and proposals may be good ideas but they came too late for one, and possibly two, pupils who committed suicide in June 2003
In June 2003 Northumberland County Council was forced to start an internal inquiry into the deaths of two pupils from Hirst High School in Ashington. On June 16th 2003 Gemma Dimmick, aged 15, killed herself. This was the day after a memorial service for Karl Peart, aged 16, had taken place to commemorate his death only two weeks previously. Both youngsters left suicide notes.
BBC News reported that Karl Peart’s parents had ‘said he had suffered years of bullying’ and ‘that he had been taunted through primary school and routinely attacked throughout his secondary career.’