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Bullying has to stop, now.

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Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#91

Post by duopixel »

fmavituna wrote: post #70
duopixel wrote: post #50

I'd like to read an honest account from a former bully who matured into a fully functional adult. To this day I don't understand the motivation of terrorizing other kids. I've met some former bullies but it seems that they either don't remember or don't want to deal with understanding it themselves.

> To this day I don't understand the motivation of terrorizing other kids. Really? Look at the popular culture around you, comedy movies, youtube videos, blogs all about bullying people (fail blog and all fail culture), look at the front page of reddit etc. I understand that if you don't personally connected but you can see that people enjoy other people's failures and misery. This kind of popular culture and the int…

> people enjoy other people's failures and misery

This is a very grim outlook on life. What I see in popular culture is—for the most part—people being clowns in order to draw attention. I also think that having laughs at the expense of someone else's misfortune is not at the same level as causing misfortune in order to get some laughs, completely different things.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#92

Post by jbrooksuk »

cathustler wrote: post #77
jbrooksuk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids will be kids, eh? Alongside the "sticks and stones rhyme" this sentence makes me tear my hair our every time I hear it. Kids who bully are thugs, not kids. My brother, he's 13, he's a kid, not a thug. He skateboards and hurts himself, plays computer games and does his homework. That is a kid. I feel or you too buddy. That whole sentence gets me really irate.

The kid with a myth of a father, and a mother who trades out her allotted food-stamps for drug money is a thug? Bullies aren't born, they're created; I have not once met a bully who had a perfect life before they decided to get angry and take it out on their peers, because, well, they don't know any better. So, yes, kids will be kids.

I disagree here sorry.

There are kids who have everything except the love and recognition of their parents. This can have a detrimental effect on a childs life, not feeling loved but having everything. Money is not happiness.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#93

Post by digitalengineer »

Mz wrote: post #64
ErrantX wrote: post #15

I don't think anything has touched me this deeply for years. I even got a little teary (which is rare for me). A lot of this I can relate to. School was hell for me, and I still struggle to forgive the adults around me during that period who, despite knowing what I (and others) faced, failed us utterly. Of course, school is rough and tumble - but when things went too far they sympathised, and in some rare cases talke…

One thing we can do is provide more and better societal support for families/parents. My older son was usually the smallest kid in class. He tended to attract bullies. In one case, I learned a little about the situation. The bully's parents were divorcing and he was apparently going through hell at home. Bullies are most likely a product of a negative social environment themselves and coping as best they can. The oth…

Trying to up vote you, but "User mismatch"? I'll take you're advice to heart.

Hope you don't mind me copying some of your advice here:

"They know if someone is disrespecting them, that is a huge red flag and the person should not be trusted because they are likely some form of social predator, whether sexual or otherwise. [b]They do not go along to get along.[/b] They do not get led merrily down some slippery slope.

...The vast majority of the time, child molesters are someone the child knows and trusts, someone who has made an effort to get close and push the boundaries of what the child would accept. My sons have basically a zero tolerance policy for boundary violation, thus they were virtually immune to that type of predation."

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#94

Post by loup-vaillant »

ErrantX wrote: post #81
anonymous wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, to you it is obvious, but not to the teacher. The teacher was her/himself the popular kid in school and cannot comprehend what shy even means. She/he doesn't see a bully and a kid who couldn't take it anymore, she/he sees a respectable well-adjusted upstanding kid well on her/his way to being a respectable well-adjusted successful adult and a psycho holding a chair.

That doesn't make sense. I was the kid with the chair; top of the class, got on really well with most of the teachers, mum was a school governor, history of being bullied... The teacher(s) new exactly what had happened. The administration didn't, though, and it was them that threatened to suspend me. They did account for the circumstances; they brought in the bullies parents and all of us sat around a table to discus…

> The teacher(s) new exactly what had happened. The administration didn't, though, and it was them that threatened to suspend me.

That looks like it is a significant part of the problem: the adults most likely to exercise good judgement on these matters (teachers) don't have the power to do so.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#95

Post by jerf »

cathustler wrote: post #77
jbrooksuk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kids will be kids, eh? Alongside the "sticks and stones rhyme" this sentence makes me tear my hair our every time I hear it. Kids who bully are thugs, not kids. My brother, he's 13, he's a kid, not a thug. He skateboards and hurts himself, plays computer games and does his homework. That is a kid. I feel or you too buddy. That whole sentence gets me really irate.

The kid with a myth of a father, and a mother who trades out her allotted food-stamps for drug money is a thug? Bullies aren't born, they're created; I have not once met a bully who had a perfect life before they decided to get angry and take it out on their peers, because, well, they don't know any better. So, yes, kids will be kids.

OK, but what's your point? So the bully has a hard life. OK, yes, that's true, so sad (really, no sarcasm), but what do you plan on doing about it?

Your argument often ends up implicitly turning into "Therefore, we shouldn't punish the bully, it's not his fault. Therefore, I guess, well, we'll do nothing." You've cognitively narrowed your focus to just the bully and forgotten everyone else who is getting bullied.

That's not goodness or justice, that's terrible. A very common form of terribleness that some people seem very inclined to, but I don't think it's ever just to get so caught up in the hard life of a bully or criminal that you forget entirely about the victims of the bully or criminal. I don't know what's so cognitively tempting about this point of view, but resist it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to secretly advocate for or justify any particular solution either. But there must be some way to contain the bullying; there's no value to anyone in letting one bad seed's poison spread.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#96

Post by Mz »

digitalengineer wrote: post #93
Mz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing we can do is provide more and better societal support for families/parents. My older son was usually the smallest kid in class. He tended to attract bullies. In one case, I learned a little about the situation. The bully's parents were divorcing and he was apparently going through hell at home. Bullies are most likely a product of a negative social environment themselves and coping as best they can. The oth…

Trying to up vote you, but "User mismatch"? I'll take you're advice to heart. Hope you don't mind me copying some of your advice here: "They know if someone is disrespecting them, that is a huge red flag and the person should not be trusted because they are likely some form of social predator, whether sexual or otherwise. [b]They do not go along to get along.[/b] They do not get led merrily down some slippery slope.…

No, I don't mind at all. Thank you.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#97

Post by moron4hire »

Nursie wrote: post #85
moron4hire wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mandatory attendance. You can't force someone to learn when they don't want to. Stop treating schools like prisons and the attendees will stop acting like inmates.

School is a combination of daycare and training. We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life. It also allows more people to work - someone else is looking after the kids. There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing fo…

Mandatory schooling is more about keeping people OUT of the job market than it is putting people INTO it. If schools were about training, they'd look more like universities (and if universities were about advanced training, they'd look more like business environments).

How many kids study to pass the test? How many teachers teach to get the kids to pass the test? And thereafter they forget everything. I see grown-ass adults who can't calculate a simple 20% tip on paper, and more who can't do it in their heads, and that's an EASY one. People, working in industry, who don't know that the US has 50 states. I've seen programmers with computer science degrees counting on their fingers to add numbers.

Again, you can't teach something to someone who doesn't want to learn, and you can't prevent someone from learning who does want to. Schools get the credit for education, but they're just present. The mandatory aspect did nothing.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#98

Post by moron4hire »

thejteam wrote: post #75
polymatter wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, what scares you about ability-based classes? The single strongest motivator for me to do well at school was to get into the top set which was free from bullies.

The problem with ability based groupings across age groups is that doesn't take into account learning velocity, ie the speed at which people learn new things. For example, a second grader that is at a fourth grade math level is likely to learn much faster than a fifth grader at a fourth grade math level. And you don't want to put advanced 8 year olds in a class with slow 11 year olds. That in itself is an invitation…

The problem is the classroom environment itself. The lecture format is an antiquated relic. We don't ever do the lecture format again once we leave school, which I think is pretty good evidence that it's garbage.

You might submit conferences as a counterexample, but I would submit them in favor of my argument.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#99

Post by stared »

Nursie wrote: post #85
moron4hire wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And mandatory attendance. You can't force someone to learn when they don't want to. Stop treating schools like prisons and the attendees will stop acting like inmates.

School is a combination of daycare and training. We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life. It also allows more people to work - someone else is looking after the kids. There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing fo…

> mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

[citation needed]

...and on the other hand putting smart kids _willing_ to learn in an uninspiring and oppressive environment. (Bad for their learning and devastating for their still developing personality.)

IMHO it's hard to find a worse crime against natural curiosity and willingness than _forcing_ people to do something.

Re: Bullying has to stop, now.

#100

Post by digitalengineer »

Mz wrote: post #96
digitalengineer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to up vote you, but "User mismatch"? I'll take you're advice to heart. Hope you don't mind me copying some of your advice here: "They know if someone is disrespecting them, that is a huge red flag and the person should not be trusted because they are likely some form of social predator, whether sexual or otherwise. [b]They do not go along to get along.[/b] They do not get led merrily down some slippery slope.…

No, I don't mind at all. Thank you.

I'm trying to educate my little girl in standing up for herself. The thing is she is kind and considerate, even to bullies. She's doing judo now and when she's 7 she wants to do kids-Krav Maga. I hope that helps her understand she is not powerless. (Krav Maga for kids is also about understanding bullies and situations).
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