Mar 5, 2016 3 min read

Anti-bullying programs have become mainstays in many schools, and though there are questions about whether or not they are fully effective, they must be credited with bringing awareness to bullying and making students and their parents realize being terrorized by a belligerent classmate is not a “phase” or a standard part of growing up.

Now, some educators are wondering whether the 2016 presidential campaign – to be precise, the Republican campaign – could undo whatever headway anti-bullying programs have made. How can teachers tell their charges to be respectful of their peers when they see the strutting, boasting and belittling of Donald Trump and, however briefly, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who tried to give Trump a serving of his own medicine?

A story last week from the Associated Press datelined from Buffalo, N.Y., highlighted the fact teachers want students who are old enough to do so to follow the campaign – making them aware of how our democracy works can impart more lessons than a whole semester of civics classes. But consider some of things they witnessed so far:

• Trump boasting before a Detroit debate audience Thursday night that the size of his manhood was more than adequate;

• Trump snarling he wanted to punch a protester in the face as that protester was being escorted out of one of the New York billionaire’s rallies;

• Trump mocking a reporter who has arthrogryposis, a joint condition, by flailing his arms around at odd angles in front of a guffawing crowd;

• The Republican frontrunner dismissing undocumented immigrants from Mexico as murderers and rapists, calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, promising the United States would commit war crimes by killing the families of terrorists, and suggesting torture be brought back, with prisoners being waterboarded and worse;

• Trump responding, predictably, that 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was a “loser” and “a choke artist” after Romney denounced Trump Thursday for, among other things, “the bullying, the greed, the showing-off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics.” Trump went on to suggest, in seeking Trump’s endorsement, Romney “would have dropped to his knees.”

You get the idea.

Buffalo school administrator Will Keresztes told the AP, “If students are following this election – and they should be – we have a lot of re-educating to do.” Keresztes noted if students used rhetoric like that being deployed on the campaign trail, it would violate his district’s code of conduct and New York’s Dignity for All Students Act.

Of course, American politics has never been as polite as a Sunday-afternoon debating society, and there are plenty of examples of scalding language being bandied about, whether it’s Richard Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew writing off hippies and the Black Panthers as “a damn zoo” or Harry S. Truman using the word “hell” the way some people use “and” or “the.” Plus, our presidents have never been plaster saints. They are just as human as the rest of us.

But the rhetoric in this campaign has been particularly vicious and ugly, and much of it has been perpetuated by one candidate.

Is he really someone we would want our children to emulate?