A Former Lieutenant Governor Rises to the Defense of Bullied Children

Loser. It’s a tough word to be on the receiving end of, both in the schoolyard and in politics.

The difference is, when you’re in politics, you’ve made the decision to put yourself into a position where you can win or lose. In the schoolyard, it’s usually an involuntary, painful label. It goes with “nerd,” “dork,” “wuss,” and a million other insults. One hurts because it represents a professional setback. The other is just aimed to hurt.

Now a politician who recently felt the sting of a tough loss is trying to spare children the psychic pain of the schoolyard label.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the oldest daughter of the former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, has taken the job of president of Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me after losing a hard-fought race for the governor’s office in Maryland last fall. Operation Respect is the rapidly growing brainchild of the singer Peter Yarrow, the “Peter” of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul & Mary.

Ms. Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor (she served from 1995 until 2003), was considered one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars before her defeat in November. The outgoing governor, Parris Glendening, disparaged her campaign, calling it poorly run, but other political analysts took it as a symbol of the strategic troubles that have lately plagued the Democratic Party.

After staying out of the public eye for a few months, Ms. Kennedy Townsend, 52, heard about Operation Respect through a mutual friend of hers and Mr. Yarrow’s.

The group runs character-education programs incorporating discussion and study, as well as music and videos, aimed at teaching students not to undermine one another’s self-esteem through the bullying, petty insults, and cruel offenses that have long been schoolyard staples.

Mr. Yarrow founded Operation Respect in 2000, having been inspired by the song “Don’t Laugh at Me,” which is an everyman’s plea for understanding and respect. Since then, he has helped to provide almost $500,000 for the organization through benefit concerts and cash gifts, and the organization, which has an annual budget of approximately $1-million, has increased the distribution of its curriculum materials, from 15,000 copies in 2001 to 25,000 last year.

The song, written by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin, features lyrics like “I’m a little boy with glasses/The one they call a geek/A little girl who never smiles/’Cause I have braces on my teeth/And I know how it feels to cry myself to sleep/I’m that kid on every playground/Who’s always chosen last/A single teenage mother/Tryin’ to overcome my past.” It is one of the key elements in the Operation Respect classroom program.

It has also found a fan in the organization’s new president, who said that she wishes she could have played it for some of her daughter’s teammates many years ago, when, as the only girl on her youth soccer team, she would come home in tears after a round of all-boy teasing.

As for Ms. Kennedy Townsend herself, she says she was never bullied as a child. That does not mean, however, that she endured less than her share of heartbreak, having endured first her uncle’s and then her father’s assassinations.

A lawyer by training, Ms. Kennedy Townsend has followed in her famous family’s tradition of public and philanthropic service.

The first member of the Kennedy family to lose an election when she ran for Congress in 1986, Ms. Kennedy Townsend followed that loss by helping found the Maryland Student Service Alliance in 1987. The group’s mission dovetailed with one of her chief achievements as lieutenant governor, as she successfully pushed the state legislature to require all Maryland high-school students to perform community service before they graduated.

Now, she is back in the nonprofit world with Operation Respect, an organization that she believes carries forward the thread of character education that she first picked up when she was pushing for the community-service legislation.

“I realized students shouldn’t do service alone, but they should learn to be nice to each other, to be kind and respectful. You want to send them to a school where there’s a caring and nurturing environment, and where they can learn some courage to do the right thing.”

Looking forward, Ms. Kennedy Townsend, who is being paid $110,000 annually, sees her job as a mix of lobbying state legislatures and the federal government to include character education and assignments related to teaching students mutual respect as part of school curriculums, and of helping expand the distribution of Operation Respect’s learning materials.

In an interview, Ms. Kennedy Townsend talked about her new role:

Why is putting a halt to bullying and ridicule important?

It’s important for a number of reasons. It really hurts children and can scar them for life. There’s been a recent study about what it particularly does to girls, and it showed they have higher levels of suicide because of bullying. The second issue is that kids stay away from school because they’re fearful of being bullied. And if they do go to school and they’re bullied, the teachers have to take time out from the classroom to deal with the bullying. Most kids succeed when they feel loved and cared for. When they feel special, there’s this argument of higher expectations. The more you can develop a respectful environment, the better off the kids are going to be, and the better off teachers are going to be.

What makes it more of an imperative now?

The bullying has grown, and there’s been attention paid to it. I was in schools 15 years ago and this was not brought up as a major issue, but I hear about it all the time now. After the tragedies at Columbine, the public at large started to pay more attention to what goes on in schools. Before that, people thought it was part of growing up, and after that, they started to look at the psychological ramifications.

What about the role of parents?

Any parent knows they need all the help they can get. When my child is a student, I don’t want her to learn she can be hurt, I don’t want the other kids to be hurting her, and I don’t want her to be hurting the other kids, either. Learning character is tough. There are temptations all the time to hurt people, and learning not to take pleasure from someone else’s pain takes work.

Would future politicians benefit from character education?

If you go into politics, it’s a rough business. That’s what I agreed to do, and I was eager to run. But you should have a different criteria if you want your child to be educated. They should enter a different environment. You want them to be full human beings when they leave school, before they enter politics. I think what you learn in school affects you. There’s a reporter from The New York Times, Adam Clymer, who is working on a book about Teddy [U.S. Sen Edward M. Kennedy]. When we spoke, he said he thought he was one of the 10 most effective senators in U.S. history, and the reason why is because his mother taught him good manners. He learned to get along with people and respect people, and so they could get things done.

What’s your favorite Peter, Paul

I love “Puff the Magic Dragon,” but I also, very frankly, love “If I Had a Hammer.” The lyrics. “It’s the hammer of justice, the bell of freedom, and a song about the love between brothers and sisters, all over this land.” It combines the need for justice and the need for friendship and love.

ABOUT KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND, PRESIDENT OF OPERATION RESPECT: DON’T LAUGH AT ME

Education: Ms. Kennedy Townsend earned a bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law.

Previous jobs: Ms. Kennedy Townsend was the lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 until 2003. Before that, she was the founder and executive director of the Maryland Student Service Alliance. She has also worked as a lawyer in the Maryland attorney general’s office and for the Department of Justice.

Nonprofit board service: Board member, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation; former chair, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial.

Books on her bedside table: Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, and Wild Ginger, by Anchee Min.