Emily Bazelon’s Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy changed the way I think about bullying. (Side note: that’s now two books with absurdly long subtitles I’ve read this past month.) I picked it up while planning an anti-bullying club at my school, expecting half-decent advice or maybe a few cliché stories. What I found instead was something much deeper: a look at how bullying works, why it persists, and how empathy and character—not punishment—can change the culture that allows it to thrive.
Bazelon follows several students through real situations, from middle-school hallways to online spaces that can feel impossible to escape. She doesn’t simplify what happened to them or turn them into symbols; she listens. That makes the book hard to read at times, but also hopeful, because she keeps asking what adults and students could have done differently.
What I liked most is how she moves beyond “zero-tolerance” policies and focuses on community. She shows that schools can’t solve bullying just by punishing people; they have to build empathy, teach repair, and help students understand the power they hold over one another.
As someone who’s seen how cruel gossip and group dynamics can get, this book felt personal. It made me want to create spaces at my school where students actually talk about what respect and kindness mean, not just hear about them at assemblies. Sticks and Stones didn’t hand me a checklist: it gave me a way to think.
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