Head Master's Blog - Understanding Upstanding

Let’s imagine for a moment: you are with a group of friends in a busy town centre and notice a woman in distress. It could be a domestic argument. Would you intervene to try to help, would you report it to the authorities, or would you carry on in the assumption that someone else would deal with the matter, or perhaps that it is none of your business?

Researchers in the 1960s, in one of the strongest and most replicable effects in social psychology, found that when alone around 70% of people would either speak out or intervene to help the woman, but with other people around them that figure dropped dramatically to only 40%. This phenomenon became known as the bystander effect and centres on the fact that that individuals are less likely to help a victim when there are other people present.

The bystander effect is a powerful psychological reality and this is precisely why it is incredibly important that we teach our young people about it as part of a broader progamme to create a strong community of upstanders, in which each individual feels empowered to speak out against injustice and wrongs, to use their voice and their sense of agency to help others, and to be proactive and vigilant in opposing all forms of discriminatory, bullying or disrespectful behaviour and language. This is a moral responsibility of the greatest significance for us all.

Can schools work in partnership with parents and external organisations to cultivate the moral courage that is the foundation for developing upstanders rather than bystanders? Can schools genuinely make a difference in encouraging students to speak out against injustice and to use their voice to help others when wider peer and social pressures are so heavy? Can schools and parents cultivate practices and routines of kindness and empathy to empower students to feel the compassion for others that is necessary to be an ethical upstander and to withstand the long-established power of the bystander effect?

The answer to these questions is a powerful and resounding ‘yes’; however, the journey to achieve an embedded culture of upstanding is long and onerous, requiring consistent energy, imagination and commitment.

Fully embedded organisational upstanding within schools must, fundamentally, be part of a wider framework of high quality character education in which all staff are committed to the careful and deliberate nurturing of positive character strengths and virtues. Honesty, integrity, compassion, resilience, citizenship, courage – these are the foundation blocks of upstander culture and, as such, form the starting place to tackle some of the issues that our young people are faced with today.

I was delighted that our work at King’s High was recognised recently by the Anti-Bullying Alliance, as we received their Gold School Award as part of their All Together programme, funded by the Department of Education. This, in addition to our partnership with The Diana Award, evidences the strength of our community in supporting one another and standing up and speaking out against all forms of discriminatory, bullying or disrespectful behaviour and language.

Yet, like every other school across the country, we continue to work hard to reflect on and strengthen our culture and our values to ensure that our students are compassionate, active citizens with a committed sense of social and individual responsibility.

Dr Stephen Burley, Head Master