[HN Gopher] The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in c...
___________________________________________________________________
The persistent and pervasive impact of bullying in childhood and
adolescence
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 154 points
Date : 2022-11-30 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| CalRobert wrote:
| Of course, in some places huge multinational organisations were
| found to be protecting child rapists and by and large got to keep
| running schools. Not sure governments are about to start caring
| about child welfare.
| carabiner wrote:
| Cue HN "it's just words" refrain.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I attended high school in a not-well-known country (Nigeria) and
| the amount of bullying I witnessed was unfathomable. I'm talking
| outright beatings from seniors, and it was legalized (reporting
| to the school authorities will get you more beatings).
|
| I transferred from a chill private school to a public school
| because, well, my Dad wanted me to have some
| "experience"...needless to say, the experience I got was that
| even teens can be extremely cruel to each other...the funny part
| is that most people here see it as normal and laugh about it,
| like they don't realize they're living the equivalent of a wild
| animal farm...but for some reason, I got over the horrific
| bullying real quick...or maybe I'm scarred and don't know it.
| ilaksh wrote:
| That's just a gang that has taken over a school and the adults
| are afraid of them.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Haha, yes, unfortunately that's how it is at virtually all
| government-run schools in my country...pure cruelty is the
| order of the day, and I'm not exaggerating.
| [deleted]
| kingofheroes wrote:
| When I was coming up, especially in middle school, we were always
| told that you should just ignore bullies and they would go away.
| This, of course, never actually worked. And anyone who did fight
| back against their bullies were punished just as severely, if not
| moreso if they swung first, as the bully. This entire approach
| was complete BS and only served to enable bullies because they
| now know that their victims either won't fight back or, if they
| do, the victim will receive most of the consequence.
|
| With the benefit of hindsight, I think its vitally important that
| all children learn some form of self-defense (boxing, karate,
| BJJ, it doesn't matter). I only realized this way later in life
| when I started training in Muay Thai and found I had way more
| confidence standing up to other men, both because I knew how to
| handle myself and because I wasn't as afraid of getting punched
| in the face. Bullies only go away if you make them go away.
| Fighting back is the only real solution victims have in the
| absence of adult supervision (which is often the situation). You
| may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than makes up
| for that.
| pengaru wrote:
| > You may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than
| makes up for that.
|
| The kind of punishment doled out by law-abiding adults to
| children isn't even a blip on the radar vs. suffering a vicious
| bully. It isn't even worth mentioning, punishment for violence
| is a total farce until adulthood. That's basically the whole
| source of the problem; bullys have realized there are no
| consequences.
|
| The best response to a bully is an immediate and vigorous
| aggression resembling that of a honey badger, full stop. I
| agree it's important to teach children self-defense and get
| them familiar enough with conflict to not piss themselves when
| faced with it. It's the children who can get away with fighting
| back without negative consequence, and substantial upside
| potential.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| 100%, the way to avoid being bullied is to not be an easy
| target.
|
| I once had a kid bullying me in middle school. I spoke with my
| mother about it, who recommended I say something to the
| teachers, which I did.
|
| When that didn't work I knocked the shit out of him the next
| time he tried to bully me, to the point that he was running
| around the edges of the classroom trying to get away from me
| while I chased him down to beat on him some more.
|
| He stopped fucking with me after that.
|
| To your point, we both got suspended, but my mother made it
| clear I wasn't being punished and made sure I had fun during
| that suspension.
|
| It's a lifelong skill that will be used as an adult too.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I've written before that as I get older (as a male), I appreciate
| the importance of physical prowess more and more, and definitely
| infinitely more than I did as a teenager.
|
| With regards to taking steps to insulate yourself and
| particularly your male children from physical bullying (=
| assault):
|
| The first stop should be developing a body and a physical
| demeanor that naturally makes any bullies think twice about
| trying to assault you- the perceived cost should outweigh any
| potential benefit for them.
|
| If that fails, and it probably will at some point, because there
| is always someone bigger and stronger, you need to be proficient
| in some kind of striking sport. Boxing is great for this. You
| don't need to be able to go to the final bell with Mayweather,
| but again, you need to be able to hurt the bully enough that in
| the future they'll know that the cost will outweigh any potential
| benefit.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The article has a rather convoluted definition of 'bullying':
|
| > "Bullying, a form of peer victimisation, can take place between
| children, between adolescents or between adults. It is not
| bullying when a parent or a teacher is abusive towards a child.
| While the terms peer victimisation and bullying are often used
| interchangeably, peer victimisation is not equivalent to
| bullying. For example, it is not bullying when two people of
| about the same strength quarrel or fight, but it is peer
| victimisation. An especially important feature of bullying is the
| power imbalance between those who perpetrate bullying behaviours
| and their victims..."
|
| The notion that parental or teacher abuse can't be called
| bullying is nonsensical, as it produces the same kind of behavior
| in children (fearful, submissive, avoidance, etc.). The general
| psychological concept is 'operant conditioning', essentially
| brainwashing by authority figures enforced by violence,
| humiliation, and so on. It's a key feature of all authoritarian
| systems. There's little doubt that schoolyard bullies are merely
| aping the behavior of adult authoritarian figures:
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/operant-conditioning-definition-ex...
|
| The best literature on bullying (and also a criticism of the
| British school system) IMO is "Lord of the Flies" (William
| Golding, 1954). Note it was _not_ a critique of so-called 'human
| nature' in general but of a particular societal construct.
|
| https://crookedtimber.org/2019/11/07/englands-ruling-patholo...
|
| > "Virginia Woolf drew a very clear line between the
| brutalisation of little boys in a loveless environment and their
| assumption as adults into the brutal institutions of colonialism.
| It's long been clear to many that the UK is ruled by many people
| who think their damage is a strength, and who seek to perpetuate
| it."
|
| People are often reluctant to discuss this, because it exposes
| the fact that "free Western democracies" employ these
| authoritarian tactics (perhaps with heavier emphasis on
| psychological control vs. physical control) just as often as
| communist or theocratic states do.
| corobo wrote:
| Heh, decent timing. My last CBT session ended with me realising
| one of my issues may be a lasting effect of bullying.
|
| Essentially I was trying to find out why I procrastinate, beyond
| "it's just the ADHD lol"
|
| Boiled it down and down and down until we hit the core of the
| issue and realised I don't want to poke my head up and ship
| code/sites/ideas/etc because I believe I'll be bullied for it. In
| school doing anything that lifted you up (e.g. good grades) made
| you a target.
|
| The realisation was that that will probably not to happen now. If
| I do something exceptional at 34 I probably wont be bullied by my
| peers (or heck, even if I actually was bullied for it.. who cares
| lol, my peers don't understand the market I work in)
|
| I'd never reevaluated the internalised rule "If I excel, I will
| be bullied" until the other day.
|
| --
|
| On a slightly more positive spin the whole thing made me quite
| sensitive to deception. If someone is trying to deceive or
| manipulate me my subconscious might as well be flashing up a
| Metal Gear Solid exclaim noise for how obvious it seems.
|
| MGS Exclaim for reference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbeEO58Hlfo
| standardUser wrote:
| I strongly relate. I've noticed a lot of my bad habits or odd
| approaches to things are actually simple pain avoidance. Bad
| things happen to us and we unconsciously develop methods of
| avoiding or lessening those bad things. No different than a
| beaten dog flinching at a raised hand. For me, a lot of these
| behaviors have been easy to unlearn, but it took half a
| lifetime to notice them in the first place. And who knows what
| other subtle pain avoidance behaviors I engage in that I've yet
| to see or understand.
| frodetb wrote:
| It' uplifting to hear that these things can be managed and
| unlearned. I hate knowing that I am my own biggest obstacle
| in certain respects.
| a1pulley wrote:
| Does anyone have experience with going to a "school within a
| school" for "gifted and talented" kids? I was trying to figure
| out why I don't remember any bullying from my middle school or
| high school, when it dawned on me that I might have been
| insulated from it by taking classes exclusively with gifted and
| talented kids --i.e., kids from stable/whole/educated
| households. I went to a high school where kids came from a mix
| of blue collar and lower-earning white collar families; does
| bullying still happen at public high schools in wealthy areas?
|
| There's a lot of discussion here about how private school kids
| are insulated from bullying. Does anyone have first-hand
| experience or hard evidence of this? Based on books and movies
| about boarding school, it's hard to believe this.
| jvm___ wrote:
| "If I excel, I will be bullied" or "I need to bring things with
| me to parties/events because people don't value me for just
| being me"
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What? Bringing beer/wine/snacks to parties is just polite.
| projectazorian wrote:
| There are degrees.
|
| Bringing a reasonably priced bottle of wine from a winery
| you like - nice and thoughtful. Bringing a bottle of Opus
| One - you're overcompensating.
| jrgoff wrote:
| There is a difference between choosing to do something like
| that because it is polite (or whatever other reason you
| find compelling) and feeling like you _have_ to do it to be
| acceptable.
| garbanz0 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how the deception part is related to the
| bullying? I don't see the connection
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I wonder if private schools are a way that rich kids can afford
| to be different but poor kids can't. See
|
| https://sfstandard.com/business/inside-ftx-founder-sam-bankm...
|
| Would rich kids be facing much more competition for elite spots
| from poor but smart kids if bullying wasn't part of the
| curriculum in the public schools? Given that only 10% of kids
| get to go to a school where dignity is assured, it could be
| that 90% of the smart kids are being kneecapped and don't reach
| their full potential. One more thing that makes a mockery of
| "meritocracy".
|
| I was glad to see though that New Hampshire (where I grew up)
| finally passed a law making it possible to sue schools for
| bullying like the other 49 states.
|
| https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2021/05/26/families-deserve...
|
| I wonder also how many Enrons and Challenger Disasters we've
| had because many of what could have been our best people had it
| beat into them that self-assertion is not allowed for them.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Private schools are an instance of opportunity hoarding, and
| "opportunity" should be understood in a number of ways. The
| opportunity to buy a certain level of freedom from bullying
| in favour of a "selective" crowd, for instance. Though I
| doubt there is _less_ bullying in private schools, more that
| it manifests in different ways; if I had to hypothesize, I
| might suppose the bullying is of a different intensity
| though.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I was bullied intensely in the public schools. My parents
| were able to get me into a private school for just one year
| and the difference was night and day. For the first time in
| my life I was able to go to school and get respect. They
| sent me back to the public schools for the fourth grade and
| it was war all the time all over again.
|
| Someone I know used to brag about the stunt he pulled to
| embarrass the private high school he went to and I shut him
| up pretty harshly about it because I had suffered so much
| in the public schools and how I would have appreciated the
| privilege that he got more than he did.
|
| Of course he had his own problems including a struggle with
| alcoholism, getting beaten up by the cops, etc. and today
| he is a tenant and I am his landlord so it's not like I
| didn't catch some breaks.
| savryn wrote:
| yeah, when I was trying to figure out 'What is the moment
| before the split second "my fingers just opened a new tab"
| effect, I realized so much of adhd is really consciously or
| subconsciously:
|
| emotional flinching
|
| distraction is just running away from a feeling. I don't
| actually care about the content of the new tab, i'm not
| addicted to the internet, blah blah
|
| ----------
|
| BTW, The old book Focusing by Eugene Gendlin really helped me
| here-- it's on libgen or you can youtube the authors name to
| see some of his one on one sessions he did with people before
| he died. (You can do it yourself without a person tho, it's
| just having a kind listener helps you stick with it)
|
| it's NOT about adhd or focusing on stuff lol, it's the name for
| his diy technique of 'figuring out what the feeling is' and
| unlocks all other therapy stuff that you may do after
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| Thanks for sharing 'distraction is just running away from a
| feeling.' It puts my experience into words succinctly without
| giving a root cause to why I might feel that feeling.
| Separately sometimes I can find a period of my life that
| seems to explain why I act the way I do but I'm also not
| confident in my memory to know if it was happening before
| hand or if I'm just associating two things that are only
| slightly related.
|
| For example: I tend to be a very self deprecating individual
| because I like to laugh and hang out with people who say
| silly things but I also use it as a crutch to avoid
| accidentally offending people. I went to a very bad college
| and so was considered very good at academics while there and
| may have developed this then to fit in. I could also have
| developed it growing up because it was a way to laugh off
| mistakes. I could also just like the sense of humor. Heck
| even this statement I'm replying to that I like so much I'm
| certain I've heard it and resonated with it before but have
| just lost focus of it over time.
|
| Anyway thanks again for sharing, it has helped refined my
| thinking.
| corobo wrote:
| Yeah the whole "ok but _why_ do I respond like that? " is a
| massive focus now that I've realised there are all these
| internal rules I've been following since early teens and
| possibly even younger.
|
| I'll absolutely give that a look into, thank you!
|
| Also for nerds who have yet to consider it: CBT is like
| debugging code, except the code is your brain. I'd highly
| recommend looking into it where possible, especially if you
| are opposed or wary of the "and how does that make you feel?"
| style of therapy. Fascinating field, and quite helpful for me
| so far.
| [deleted]
| 4qz wrote:
| IX-103 wrote:
| Right. That's why I have my 3 year old scheduled for a nose
| job. I'll probably wait a couple years on the boob job.
|
| /s
| 4qz wrote:
| thewebcount wrote:
| I sometimes feel like I'm in some alternate universe when I read
| stuff like this:
|
| > These new findings indicate that interventions should also
| focus on supporting victims of bullying and helping them build
| resilience;
|
| ...
|
| > These studies suggest that public health interventions could
| aim at preventing children from becoming the target of bullying
| behaviours from an early age.
|
| Have we considered ways to make bullies not want to bully? That
| seems way more productive to me. I'm mean, I'm all for teaching
| kids resilience and self-reliance, but at some point, we have to
| get to the root of the problem, which is the bullies and why they
| want to bully other kids and stop trying to just fix the kids who
| get bullied.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Have we considered ways to make bullies not want to bully?
| That seems way more productive to me.
|
| It is entirely possible that the want to bully can be reduced
| but cannot be prevented. Of course people should do what they
| can to prevent it on the bully side, but it is reasonable to
| also consider other factors.
| hateful wrote:
| There's a term for this: Victim Blaming.
|
| It's one thing to not be so sensitive when it comes to jokes or
| teasing, but this requires a maturity that a child does not yet
| have.
|
| A feel as though a lot of people that say those things haven't
| been victims of bullying, or maybe, at least, not the a certain
| extent that others were (I know I'm treading very close to a No
| True Scotsman with that statement).
|
| I was bullied when I was a child and it was BAD. I can't really
| express how EVIL the bullies were. Like something out of a
| horror film.
|
| Edit: I'm a little confused by the replies - I re-read my
| comment to see if anything was ambiguous. I'm saying that
| bulling is way worse than people think. Maybe it was unclear
| that I am agreeing with the comment I was replying to, not
| opposing it?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If there was something that you could have done yourself to
| prevent or stop it, would you refuse to do it?
|
| If there are skills that could be taught to children to
| prevent their own bullying, would you deny them?
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| I would take it 1 step farther, if you're not teaching your
| children how to deal with bullies themselves then you're
| harming them for life.
|
| There's a point at which the child cannot possibly deal
| with it and you as the parent must step in to protect them,
| but most of the time if a child learns how to deal with
| bullies you don't need to.
| hateful wrote:
| Of course I would. I feel as though this is a false
| dichotomy. It isn't either/or. I wish I got the help that I
| needed and that adults took it more seriously - not going
| into detail, but I ended up almost dying because of it.
| Jensson wrote:
| The study literally says that you should ALSO help the
| victim build resilience, it never says that we should
| stop preventing bullies from bullying.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| > A feel as though a lot of people that say those things
| haven't been victims of bullying, or maybe, at least, not the
| a certain extent that others were
|
| I say those things and my stepfather was abusive to the point
| of choking me unconcious and kicking me in the face with a
| steel-toed boot.
|
| Please, do tell about how I know nothing about dealing with
| abuse at the hands of others.
| jacooper wrote:
| But that's not bullying, that's just straight up Abuse.
| Teever wrote:
| I'd go so far as to suspect that anyone calling this victim
| blaming is a bully themselves and is attempting to make
| people at large less resilient to bullying by advocating
| positions that don't promote resiliency and self control in
| these kinds of situations.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| > Have we considered ways to make bullies not want to bully?
| That seems way more productive to me.
|
| At over 40 years of age I've had to deal with people attempting
| to bully me, most of them are completely shocked when they
| realize they can't.
|
| My point here is that if you think bullying is something that
| stops at graduation then sure, that sounds like a reasonable
| position, but the premise itself is wrong.
|
| One of my favorite lines:
|
| > Bullies don't stop being bullies when they graduate, they
| just get lawyers.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| This is a good point. Policing bullying in school (when
| young) may work if one can catch it in the act but this bully
| behavior never stops in adulthood, it starts taking different
| forms. Being aware of bullies and not being affected by their
| actions helps but they will only find a different target.
| thewebcount wrote:
| Do you think that if bullies were stopped when young, they
| might be able to turn into adults that don't bully?
|
| Regardless, as others have said here, I have way more avenues
| for dealing with bullies as an adult, including but not
| limited to getting my own lawyers.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| A lot of bullies were bullied when they were younger. It's a
| chicken-and-egg problem
| olau wrote:
| I read somewhere that to be successful you need to focus on the
| environment people are in, as in instead of trying to figure
| out who the bullies are, you need to figure out why a certain
| environment leads to bullying behaviour.
| thewebcount wrote:
| That sounds productive to me.
| dionidium wrote:
| This presupposes that bullying is always explained by something
| environmental or that it's learned behavior. But what if
| bullying is just fun for some people? What if human beings have
| differing innate levels of aggression, empathy, and tolerance?
| What if some people see bullying and feel a little pit in their
| stomach -- fear, disgust, anger -- and what if others simply
| don't?
|
| "The blank slate" conception of the world continues to mislead
| us about the domain of effective interventions.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| >But what if bullying is just fun for some people?
|
| We have a word for those people: "sociopath"
| thewebcount wrote:
| I don't understand what point you are trying to make here. If
| some people find bullying fun, they should be taught why it
| isn't fun for others and dealt with if they continue. I mean
| I'm sure rapist think that their rape is fun or empowering or
| something, but that doesn't mean it should be allowed.
| wutheringh wrote:
| The scientific consensus is that more commonly aggressive
| disorders that involve violating others' rights like BPD and
| ASPD are less treatable than anxiety and depression.
|
| Stop trying to apply feels-right reasoning to complex medical
| topics. You're out of your wheelhouse.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I'm not sure how getting to the root of the problem instead
| of treating the symptoms is "trying to apply feels-right
| reasoning to complex medical topics." If the topics are more
| complex, let's address those complexities. I feel like when
| they say, "We should teach kids how to survive bullying
| better," they're the ones trying to apply feels-right
| reasoning to a complex situation. That's a short-term
| solution. If the real, long-term solution is medical
| intervention of some sort, then do that! But don't let the
| bullying continue and put all of the work on the victim of
| the bullying. Sure, we can help them be more resilient, as I
| said above. But the actual problem needs to be addressed no
| matter how hard or complex it is.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Bullying is the social destruction of self not because it is
| the act of one "crazy" person but because bullies have the
| support of the entire community including teachers, other
| students, and school administration.
|
| If it was just one violent person doing one thing it would be
| a minor act. It is everyone being complicit in this act that
| demonstrates to you how worthless you are that destroys you.
|
| I recently wrote a letter to the alumni development office of
| the undergraduate school I went to about why I don't give
| money to them when I was re-traumatized by receiving the
| first alumni newsletter I had received in a long time.
|
| We had a student who waged a war against gays but this was
| the 1980s and people like that were so afraid of AIDS that
| instead they'd bash straight people who showed the slightest
| amount of support for gays. I couldn't leave my room without
| the risk of being assaulted. It only ended when he hit a
| resident assistant in the face with a rock from a catapult at
| point blank range. A gay man and a lesbian woman committed
| suicide because of this nonsense.
|
| This person had support from many groups of people at tech
| including religious people, drug users (this guy was the drug
| dealer who would take the biggest chances to get supply) and
| the school administration. What I found was so wounding was
| that I lost many of my friends over this.
|
| The person I blame most of all was the very popular dean of
| students who told me repeatedly that his "hands were tied"
| but I am sure he would have found something he could have
| done if his daughter was the victim.
|
| The ringleader of this group went to prison a few years later
| because he was caught on tape selling 3 kilos of cocaine to
| an undercover cop. If I heard he was still alive and had gone
| straight I would would forgive him and actually celebrate him
| because he has paid for his crimes and it is such a hard
| thing to go straight.
|
| I would have a very hard time forgiving the dean of students
| because he has received so many accolades from people and is
| seen as a hero (for many good reasons), I grieve more for the
| people who were victims of suicide than I do for my own
| suffering which was minor in comparison. I wonder how many
| other victims there are from before and after I was there. It
| is all the more wounding for me because otherwise college
| would have been a respite and chance to heal from the abuse I
| received in the public schools.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I would say in an ideal world yes, but the fact is that in the
| real world a lot of generalizable anti-bullying
| messaging/curriculum can start from a good place but can easily
| be mis-construed or willfully and purposefully construed or in
| fact morph into such things like critical race theory, etc.
|
| Society will probably need a lot of time to collectively figure
| out where to draw the line between the spectrum ranging from
| "let's not bully a distinct subgroup of people" and "why are we
| unnecessarily over-empowering a distinct subgroup over all
| other groups".
|
| In the meantime, those people in the subgroups need support.
| spicyramen_ wrote:
| I used to help classmates that were bullied by defending them
| either by stopping other kids hitting them or hurting them
| verbally. Kids can be evil. Some people are unaware what can
| cause to other peoples lives. Now I have 2 boys, I teach them how
| to box and good manners. Reality is that they can face bullies
| and they should be ready to engage in physical fight, words
| sometimes don't matter
| aurizon wrote:
| One of the huge problems in schools, as well as in cyberspace is
| bullying in social ostracism (shunning etc) as well as beating.
| It trains people to 'shed water' in their actions. Surrender to
| bullies, yield to their demands and otherwise 'toady' to them.
| Anyone who objects or fights back feels the weight of the online
| or schoolyard pack members. This is, I feel, exacerbated by the
| relentless increase in the cost of teacher oversight. The use of
| teachers is an abuse of their role as teachers. They need a class
| of staff - watchers etc. There were often student monitors when I
| was young to supplement the misuse of teachers in lieu of
| employed as watchers. What is the solution? There is a need for
| the halls/stairwells/yards to have a watcher present on each
| landing, hall segment, entry, exit and all corners of
| yards/approaches. This is a lot of people to add to the budget =
| it is neglected, this is why they stopped using teachers $$. The
| only solution is remote watching with a central operating room.
| Sounds like China? - not so much. China has a hated government,
| as recent riots show. There is an old adage, 'In loco parentis'
| https://www.lawnow.org/search/?q=loco
|
| We have all read/seen Lord of the Flies -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies
|
| What we see in unfolding in schools (and in our neighborhoods) is
| the same sort of structure engendered by a lack of supervision by
| 'Parentis' over various groups. So we must assert control in
| schools/yards/neighborhoods/online to the degree needed to limit
| the levels of oppression exerted by peers/cliques/gangs so people
| are free to go about without some one/gang/clique wanting to
| exert control.
|
| So if we put 4K cams in schools/yards/halls with a watch room -
| is that OK, what if we have 'true Parentis' watching this stream
| as well as staff members? If Johnny bullies Lenny and one of the
| parents tells Johnnie's parents - who looks at this later and
| chastises Johhny - will this work? Will he not care = it's a
| jungle, he has to 'man up' a Lord of the Flies response?
|
| The same thing plays out in many schools/cities, the hordes of
| students and gangs and street people are a large LOTF experiment.
| This HAS to be solved. To what degree do other countries have
| this problem?
| roel_v wrote:
| Lord of the Flies was fiction though, not only that, it was
| bullshit. when it happened in reality, the exact opposite of
| the book happened: https://medium.com/illumination-
| curated/real-life-lord-of-th... .
| aurizon wrote:
| I can see that being how it would go down with a bunch of
| peers from similar strata. Sadly the public school milieu in
| the USA/UK is a bully-archy....that more closely parallels a
| LOTF scenario - absent supervision.
| gatane wrote:
| You have 40 or more kids on a room, all day. What could go
| wrong?
|
| Welcome to the school system.
| b800h wrote:
| Being rather contrary here, but is there any evidence that
| bullying actually _improves_ some people 's lives? As a victim of
| childhood bullying, the experience was awful, but I learned a
| thing or two as well.
| goda90 wrote:
| Bullying encompasses such a broad range of actions, it's
| possible some cases can be a strengthening/educating experience
| in hindsight, but others can be absolutely life destroying. My
| experiences with bullying were pretty mild. I'd say they taught
| me patience and standing up for myself when it's the right
| time. But they were mild experiences. I can't imagine the
| impact of what I've seen in some videos taken by high
| schoolers.
| janef0421 wrote:
| The same could thing could be said of almost any experience.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I doubt there is any more upside to bullying than there is to
| any other bad experience that teaches healthy skepticism.
| dboreham wrote:
| Builds character.
| themitigating wrote:
| For everyone and are all the traits that it builds positive?
| maire wrote:
| My experience gave me tenacity and resilience.
|
| My experience was not as bad as some others on this list. I
| believe that is because girls are psychological bullies, and
| boys are physical bullies. My husband was chased and beaten up
| until he the beat up the lead bully.
|
| I met my lead bully as an adult. I was surprised to find out
| that she did not realize she was a bully. She acted as if we
| were childhood friends. One of her friends apologized to me, so
| others certainly realized.
|
| Her life did not go as well as my life. I suspect it was
| because the traits that made her a bully as a child did not
| work for her as an adult.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| If you look at countries that have large private and
| comprehensive education systems (and which aren't well-
| segregated like the US), it is very obvious that you are
| permanently ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids
| every year.
|
| Whether you learn something from it or not, the purpose of
| school is to learn. If you went into work every day and had
| someone beating you up every day, would you be productive?
| Probably not (and btw, the only reason we have systems where
| this happens at all is because of what adults want, not what
| kids want).
| ryanklee wrote:
| Every experience has something to teach, but that just means
| all experiences are alike in this one regard. It's an
| absolutely horrible way to justify the various strains of hell
| that run through the world.
|
| Please replace the word bullying in your question with the word
| rape or mutilation or imprisonment or starvation and see how
| horrible that line of thinking is.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| "School is the only place where modern humans will experience
| violence".
| jxramos wrote:
| why is that exactly, there is some weird
| purification/concentration of social things that only happen at
| school. Is it the spike of age cohorts (+/-6mo) all thrown
| together without any regulating factors that would occur with
| older wiser children (say +6 years) being able to correct the
| misbehaving individuals? Is it a factor of the sheer
| outnumbering encountered from high student to adult ratios? Is
| bullying less likely to occur when the adult count increases?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the US, probably a combination of reduced birthrates means
| there is less density of children, in conjunction with real
| estate development that requires cars to travel point to
| point, effectively filtering out situations where children
| get together without adults.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Teachers/admin can't long-term isolate the shitheads unless
| they go _really_ far--notably, it 's very hard to be kicked
| out for bullying that's short of repeated cases of extreme
| outright violence. A teacher and even school admin can't
| "fire" a chronically disruptive and/or bullying student.
| Other students can't vote with their feet and flee the
| classes with the worst bullies. They're stuck and no-one has
| the power to fix the situation.
|
| That's why it's so bad. One employee starts pulling dumb shit
| and several employees report it to the manager, good chance
| that employee's not going to be able to keep it up much
| longer or they'll be gone. Yes, abuse happens at workplaces,
| but school-type bullying doesn't have the same kind of cover
| it does in a school. Several students report a bully, that
| bully will still be there next week. And next quarter. And
| maybe in their class next year. Still being a bully.
|
| Selection bias during admissions gets talked about a lot when
| it comes to private schools, but they also have the
| superpower of being able to tell a kid who won't shape up to
| GTFO permanently. One family's tuition isn't worth risking
| several other students leaving. This can and does happen, and
| it doesn't solve all the problems, but it means the worst of
| the worst don't stick around like they do at public schools,
| poisoning the whole school atmosphere.
| themitigating wrote:
| If an adult attacks someone they can go to jail or at the
| minimum are arrested for assault. In school the consequences
| are much less serious
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| That's nothing to do with school though, just youth. Kids
| who get into fights in the summer months away from school
| aren't sent to jail for it like adults. Being at or away
| from a school isn't a factor in that difference.
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| Nah, that doesn't ring true to me. I got into plenty of scraps
| during the summer when I was a kid. Nothing that rose to the
| asymmetry I would describe as bullying, but certainly it was
| violence. And besides the overt fights, many of the games we
| played were essentially organized fights.
|
| Maybe things are different now, with kids spending too much
| time indoors playing video games instead of running around in
| the woods. But I think violence is generally an outcome from
| boys being together and relatively unsupervised. The insidious
| part about violence in schools is the double-jeopardy you face
| from administration; first you get your ass kicked by the
| bully, then you get your ass kicked again by the bureaucracy
| putting you through the wringer.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| A number of military personal might beg to differ with you. But
| I'm willing to hear justification for your comment.
| pegasus wrote:
| Only in the military? Wouldn't it be easier to steelman the
| argument by inserting the missing "most"?
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Certainly not only the military. I was countering an
| absolute statement, I don't need to list all exceptions to
| prove the statement wrong. I only need to list one.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Is that some manipulative jingoistic pro-military shaming?
|
| A boxer obviously will see violence, so will a pigskin
| football player. Those are things they signed up for and the
| violence is part of the voluntary activity.
|
| A soldier (or policeman) signs up to be in war, either an
| active one or one that might happen.
|
| A high school student, a cube worker, a barista, a fireman,
| they do not sign up for violence.
|
| The difference is that children have no choice but to go to
| school. They are sent to the slaughter.
| [deleted]
| badcppdev wrote:
| But they will witness violence all the time through media of
| different types. Which affects you in a different way.
| BetaDeltaAlpha wrote:
| FYI: The full quote is "Public Schools are prisions for
| children, and are one of the only places where many people will
| experience physical violence."
| [deleted]
| black_13 wrote:
| HPsquared wrote:
| Reminder that this study is only showing a correlation.
|
| It could also be the well-known effect that "weaker" (physically
| or mentally) people are more likely to be bullied.
|
| The way to test causation is to have a "control" group with
| normal environmental bullying levels, and a second group which is
| otherwise identical to the first, randomly targeted by the
| scientists for extra bullying. This would of course be unethical.
| It also wouldn't be double-blind, and also wouldn't be the same
| process anyway. In short, it's impossible to prove empirically.
| civopsec wrote:
| > It could also be the well-known effect that "weaker"
| (physically or mentally) people are more likely to be bullied.
|
| Dang, I was going to post this suggestion as a joke (because
| "proof that weak people deserve it"--get it?).
| lukas099 wrote:
| I don't think anyone said anything about 'deserving it'.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "It could be that "weak" (physically and/or mentally) people
| tend to get bullied more."
|
| This is absolutely true in my experience. It's the same way
| that many criminals prey on the smaller/older/weaker in
| society. Why pick a target that has a good chance of winning in
| a fight? I'm sure plenty of others have anecdotes, but I fought
| a bully, won, and they were always friendly after that.
| paradox242 wrote:
| This is why I am going to emphasize to my son that if someone
| begins to bully him, the sooner he corrects the bully's
| assessment of him the sooner it will likely stop. This may
| include violence (with many caveats) if necessary, as
| frankly, it's the only language they often understand and
| respect. I am not happy that this is the case, but this
| behavior appears to be a universal part of the human
| condition. Based on my experience, adult intervention or even
| supervision cannot be counted on, so it will be something
| that eventually he will need to learn to handle himself.
|
| Bullying in it's most common and less extreme forms appears
| to be a way of reinforcing group conformity and norms, as
| it's often directed at those who are different in appearance
| or behavior. By calling attention to this with name calling
| or teasing, they publicly demonstrate their own in-group
| status and as a side-effect also pressure the target to
| conform to group expectations. Over time, this can be just as
| insidious and damaging even though violence may not be always
| involved.
|
| In the most pathological form, you have a person that has a
| lot of internal uncertainty around their own position in the
| social hierarchy (which actually may be quite high already
| and part of what makes this pathological) for which bullying
| is a way to assert their dominance over another. These are
| the bullies that we all know and which seem to fixate on a
| particular target or group, and are the type I alluded to in
| my opening paragraph. They are not necessarily spoiling for a
| fight (that is something else entirely and distinguishing the
| two can be difficult) but rather have identified their target
| as being someone weak or low status enough that they will not
| fight back nor will anyone rise to defend them. However, if
| the target does fight back and even if they lose, if this
| happens consistently then that is often enough to update the
| calculation on their end about whether the benefits outweigh
| the costs (after all, they could eventually lose the fight or
| at least it could be close enough that they don't win
| convincingly which is almost as bad) and their attention will
| shift elsewhere.
|
| There is also a greater likelihood that others may stand up
| for you if you stand up for yourself. It is another tendency
| of human psychology that I have observed that those who do
| nothing and essentially "take it" are viewed with contempt
| even if those observers also disapprove of the bullying.
| There seems to be some general undercurrent of disgust with
| perceived weakness, but this is perhaps rooted in some sense
| that the risk of intervention is less likely to be
| reciprocated. After all, if the victim doesn't appear willing
| or able to do this for themselves, why would they be expected
| to do so for someone else?
| scythe wrote:
| This isn't a study, it's a review of studies. You will also see
| this:
|
| >Establishing temporal priority - what come first, bullying
| victimisation or poor mental health - is an essential first
| step. Indeed, one important alternative hypothesis that must be
| ruled out is that early mental health symptoms account for both
| an increased risk for being targeted by bullying behaviours and
| also for later psychopathology. Findings so far have shown that
| over and above early signs of poor mental health prior to
| bullying victimisation, being bullied in childhood or in
| adolescence is associated with new symptoms/diagnoses of mental
| health problems, and especially with later symptoms of anxiety
| and depression (Arseneault et al., 2006; Bowes, Joinson, Wolke,
| & Lewis, 2015; Kim, Leventhal, Koh, Hubbard, & Boyce, 2006;
| Stapinski et al., 2014; Zwierzynska, Wolke, & Leraya, 2013).
| These studies are robust not only because they controlled for
| symptoms prior to being bullied but they also controlled for a
| range of other potential confounders, including gender,
| parental socioeconomic status and low IQ.
| civopsec wrote:
| Nah, people aren't interested in the studies anymore after
| they get to do their correlation-not-causation mic-drop.
| blue039 wrote:
| I was bullied pretty severely as a kid. So bad in fact I was put
| on medication just to deal with it. I was a weaker kid when I was
| younger owing to the fact I was sick a lot.
|
| In America there is a concept of "zero tolerance" that keeps the
| bullied compliant and the bullies in charge. It was not until I
| started to get very violent that the bullying stopped. I would
| fight at a moments notice even sometimes in classrooms. Spent a
| lot of time suspended and my parents had conferences. I never
| lashed out at anyone. Though if someone tried to insult me, push
| me around, etc I would immediately switch modes and start
| swinging. As I got bigger and stronger it became less of an
| attack of weak punches to full blown knockouts.
|
| The only way we can solve bullying is by teaching our kids that
| violence is not only necessary but expected. Teach them to be
| violent, and teach them to control it. You must defend yourself
| from these people. Enrolling your kids in an actual martial art
| (some combination of boxing, bjj, muay thai, etc) will help. When
| they break a bullies nose/arm/etc and get suspended you should
| not only encourage them to continue you should celebrate the
| victory. You can't win with bullies by "being the better person".
| Bullies aren't beat enough at home, so it's your job to bring the
| beatings to them. School systems are DESIGNED to protect bullies
| and subjugate the bullied. In America, they are prisons. The
| sooner children realize this the sooner they realize the methods
| to staying alive aren't much different.
|
| "If you are not capable of violence you are not peaceful, you are
| harmless."
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| > _In America there is a concept of "zero tolerance" that keeps
| the bullied compliant and the bullies in charge. It was not
| until I started to get very violent that the bullying stopped._
|
| Exactly my experience as well. Fighting back is the only thing
| that ever made the bullying stop. I fought back once in the
| locker room against a boy two years and two feet older and
| taller than me, basically lost the fight immediately, but
| because I fought and wouldn't submit, everybody else stopped
| the fight and after that day I was never bullied in school
| again.
|
| The reason I never fought back sooner is because I was scared
| of the rules even more than the bullies. The "Zero tolerance"
| rules made clear that if I fought back I would be just as bad
| as the bullies, and in just as much trouble (except I'd
| actually be in more trouble, because my parents would be livid
| at me for getting suspended while the bullies' parents wouldn't
| give a shit.) "Zero tolerance" means zero due process. It's the
| school administrators essentially siding with bullies by
| default because it makes the paperwork easier. Absolutely
| immoral. It should be their responsibility to figure out who
| actually started the fight and punish the perpetrator but not
| the victim.
|
| In the end I didn't get in trouble after all, because locker
| room fights were beyond the eyes of adults and nobody ratted
| anybody out. I resent the teachers and the administration the
| most, for making me afraid to stick up for myself. The kids who
| bullied me were psychos or broken people, and I find it easy to
| forgive them. But the administration did harm to me by being
| lazy bureaucrats.
| tristor wrote:
| Absolutely agree. The law I ran afoul of was called the "Safe
| Schools Act" and predictably did nothing of the sort. Zero-
| tolerance is zero-accountability and zero-sense. It does
| nothing to address or resolve problems, just makes the lives
| of petty bureaucrats easier.
| cnity wrote:
| Attaching glowing review and positive outcome to a violent
| action in childhood is dangerous (though it did serve you,
| yes). The reason is obvious: it can lead to being drawn to
| situations likely to lead to the same result and praise.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Bullies aren't beat enough at home
|
| This I have to disagree with. Some of them I believe have a
| terrible home life and are handing down the abuse to whomever
| is a weak target.
|
| You may be right in other cases though, and that had never
| occurred to me. Lack of respect and self control may stem from
| neglect or lack of parenting rather than abuse.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| The problem is that they need to be beat for the right
| reasons.
|
| The violence rate of east Asians who were spanked at home
| hard by their parents is likely astronomically lower than
| Americans who weren't spanked.
|
| It's not about being spanked, it's about why you were
| spanked. Be just.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| >Muh bullyocaust
|
| Sweetie, that's a cope. Bullying is a choice. It's this kind
| of pro-crime, pro-rape thinking that lets all the bad things
| happen to people. It's always a choice. Plenty of people
| happen to go through much worse things without hurting other
| people. Like for example, the victims of the bullies. So it's
| clear that there's no inherent reason for the bullies to do
| it, they just want to.
| JackFr wrote:
| A famous American college basketball coach once said "A
| basketball fight generally lasts two punches. Make sure you
| throw both of them."
| kneebonian wrote:
| I was bullied quite a bit in school, now my boys are starting
| school and I have them enrolled in BJJ, and the first time my
| kids comes home upset because someone was picking on him I'll
| tell him to put that kid in guard and don't let go until the
| teachers physical remove him.
| conductr wrote:
| What age did you start them with BJJ? I've been considering
| for my 4 year old but not sure if that's too early. It seems
| too early to tell him to punch the bully in the face (what I
| did as a kid) but I like the idea of equipping him with the
| ability to subdue a bully until an adult can take control.
| kneebonian wrote:
| So the gym I train at (they grabbed me after I saw my kids
| doing it) has a rule that they need to be at least 3 and
| potty trained, so our youngest started a little bit ago and
| is more working on the skill of listening and paying
| attention than some of the techniques but my 5 yo is
| learning some good stuff and is soon going to move from the
| young children's class to the youth class where the
| emphasis moves from holding still and paying attention to
| actual BJJ.
|
| So I'd say 4 is a good age to start, if you need to find a
| good gym I'd recommend going over to old.reddit.com/r/bjj
| and asking for advice on there, you'll probably get some
| good advice.
|
| Also it makes wrestling with the kids way more fun when
| they try and practice their BJJ at the same time.
| conductr wrote:
| Great thanks for the feedback and resources! This led me
| down a path to discover we have a dojo in our
| neighborhood I was unaware of and they have an age 3-5
| class. Just in time for winter break too! Thanks again- I
| would have just assumed he was too young for BJJ but this
| is pretty exciting actually. I probably won't do it
| myself but he can practice on me at home :)
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> School systems are DESIGNED to protect bullies and subjugate
| the bullied. In America, they are prisons._
|
| Most US public schools and low-rate private schools are like
| this. If your children are in an ultra-competitive public or
| private school however, the bullies are tossed out, the schools
| confident in the 100% ironclad certainty there is another
| family literally grateful for the opportunity to place their
| child in the new opening within 24 hours. The student body goes
| through cycles of forgetting this until a new bully is
| expelled, then the bullying simmers down to much more subtle
| forms.
|
| In the ultra-competitive private boarding schools, the kind of
| over the top physical bullying you hear about in public schools
| is nearly non-existent because they will expel on far lower
| thresholds for bullying.
|
| But yes, if your children are in US public school or you are a
| child in a US public school, generally speaking fighting back
| regardless of the zero tolerance consequences tends to stop the
| bullying better than going through toothless school policies.
| Bullies tend to prefer soft targets over porcupines. If you are
| being bullied and choose to fight back though, then go in at a
| location with adults to intervene quickly nearby expecting to
| get hurt and lose (in the sense the bully has the physical
| upper hand), but never defeated (in the sense you and the bully
| have to be separated before you stop). If it is a group doing
| the bullying, go for the leader.
|
| The US public school systems' bullying problem won't stop until
| the bullies' parents know that they have a no-recourse, no-
| litigation-overturning consequence to bullying that sees their
| precious no-fault snowflake expelled to "lower class" schooling
| if they run out their options.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| While this will stop the bullying there is a serious risk of
| this affecting your ability to get into a competitive high
| school or college. My cousin defended a friend from a bully in
| middle school and the bully's parents called the cops on him.
| The charges were eventually dropped but the record stayed
| around and almost kept him out of the highschool he wanted to
| go to.
| troon-lover wrote:
| racked wrote:
| Fully agree. I unfortunately never had the balls to fight back,
| but every time I think back about it, I wish I'd just fucking
| punched someone. Even now, 20 years after the fact.
| dboreham wrote:
| > keeps the bullied compliant and the bullies in charge
|
| I've seen some of this in our local schools: meetings held with
| the head teacher to "hear both sides" when one side is a bully
| asserting their right to bully the other side.
|
| > kids in an actual martial art
|
| I had this idea, based on my experience as a kid, but never
| actually got around to enrolling them. They're in college now
| and so I guess it wasn't necessary.
| Sakos wrote:
| > I've seen some of this in our local schools: meetings held
| with the head teacher to "hear both sides" when one side is a
| bully asserting their right to bully the other side.
|
| This is endemic in modern culture. The need to treat two
| opposing opinions as equally valid and balance them against
| each other as if there's some sane middle-ground to be found.
| There's no middle-ground between slavery and non-slavery. Or
| between the earth is flat and science.
| trgn wrote:
| Yes 100%, there's a reason for this. Distinguishing right
| from wrong is an absolute act, and we have been conditioned
| to associate that with religious zealotry or raving lunacy.
| By hearing both sides, people are shying away from taking
| responsibility. Also, by holding up an ethos (e.g. bullying
| is categorically wrong) to others, we hold up a mirror to
| ourselves. Hypocrisy is instantly revealed then. (Note for
| example that the religious right has no problem being
| hypocrites ).
| kneebonian wrote:
| > They're in college now and so I guess it wasn't necessary.
|
| Just saying man if you are looking for a Christmas present
| for them get them a membership to train at a BJJ gym, if you
| have a daughter it will keep her safe, if you have a son it
| will give him the opportunity to interact and build
| relationships with people he doesn't know, and may not
| normally associate with. BJJ is all about technique over
| physicality and carries a low risk of injury.
|
| For both of them it will give them the confidence that if
| they end up in a bad situation they know they have the skills
| to respond calmly. In addition if the gym is any good they'll
| have them do some rolling so they'll be able to learn to stay
| calm under pressure, which is a very transferable skill.
|
| Just a suggestion.
| voski wrote:
| I was also bullied a lot. Especially between first and eight
| grade. I was much bigger than everyone else but I would never
| fight back. I always felt bad about potentially hurting someone
| else so I would just take it.
|
| The kids couldn't actually physically damage me since I was so
| much bigger. They did cause a lot of psychological harm. I had
| a very negative predisposition towards anyone that I met. I
| just assumed everyone would be hostile towards me and would
| want to make fun of me. I still struggle with this mindset and
| I am in my thirties. I will usually be very shut off from
| people I do not know.
|
| There were a couple of times that I did stand up for myself.
| Each time the bullying completely stopped.
|
| I thought I was being the better person by not fighting back
| but that was not true. I was being harmless. That harmlessness
| invited more violence.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the key term here is learned helplessness. Children
| and to a lesser extent adults push boundaries. Establishing
| strong boundaries is a key part of developing a sense of
| control over one's life.
| leto_ii wrote:
| Based on your virulent tone I suspect you still harbor strong
| resentment against your childhood bullies. I somewhat get that,
| I was bullied too and I still hate those kids.
|
| As an adult however I realize that my bullies were actually
| abused children who had a rough time at home and took it out on
| me at school.
|
| > When they break a bullies nose/arm/etc and get suspended you
| should not only encourage them to continue you should celebrate
| the victory.
|
| Sorry, but this is completely sociopathic insanity. Celebrating
| one child maiming another? What is this, the hunger games?
|
| > Bullies aren't beat enough at home, so it's your job to bring
| the beatings to them.
|
| Do you think it's ever ok for an adult to beat a child? You
| have it all wrong, it's the kids who are beat who become
| bullies.
|
| > If you are not capable of violence you are not peaceful, you
| are harmless.
|
| Capable of violence is one thing, systemically encouraging it
| as part of normal upbringing is however strictly antisocial.
| troon-lover wrote:
| tristor wrote:
| I pretty much concur. The worst part of being bullied for me
| was that I was punished for defending myself by the adults
| around me. I got charged with assault in middle school after
| winning a fight with a kid who chased me to the bus stop with a
| metal pallet strap whipping me, as soon as we were off school
| grounds I turned on him and beat him down with a textbook.
|
| We both were arrested and charged, and I was told to my face by
| a judge that "there is no such thing as self-defense in
| schools." Which is not only a bald-faced lie, it's
| unconstitutional. You have a right to be secure in your person,
| and a right to self-defense, well established by the Supreme
| Court in case law and described in the Declaration of
| Independence.
|
| I also didn't get bullied again at that school after that
| incident. Self-defense is not just a right, it's an imperative.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| I think you go a bit far, but I agree somewhat.
|
| I was picked on a fair bit in school. The nature of "zero-
| tolerance" meant that fights were quick. I recall one day just
| being shoved into a a door threshold unexpectedly. I had had it
| at that point from this person, so I took my heaviest book out
| of my bag and slammed him in the head with it as he was already
| walking away triumphantly. Looking back, he could have been
| seriously injured. Many people witnesses and laughed at him.
|
| He never bothered me again.
|
| But how can you know someone will leave you alone or just
| escalate things?
| kneebonian wrote:
| > But how can you know someone will leave you alone or just
| escalate things?
|
| You don't but in the animal kingdom most animals haven't
| evolved to be able to overcome their predator, they've just
| evolved to make it difficult enough for their predator to
| decided to look elsewhere for food. Make sure they know if
| they pick on you their going to have trouble and they'll go
| somewhere else.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 2devnull wrote:
| " studies suggest that public health interventions could aim at
| preventing children from becoming the target of bullying
| behaviours from an early age."
|
| Sounds almost like victim blaming. If true, if there's something
| about the bullied that causes them to be bullied, perhaps
| bullying is actually a form of social correction. Not that nature
| should be our guide, but often harsh social behavior is
| functional from an evolutionary standpoint. That said,
|
| What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know
| What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil
| in return.
| trillic wrote:
| Who's laughing now?
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhosLaughingNow
| themitigating wrote:
| Who determines what is socially correct?
| 2devnull wrote:
| The bullies. From an evolutionary perspective it would
| ultimately come down to those who get to choose their mate.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > " studies suggest that public health interventions could aim
| at preventing children from becoming the target of bullying
| behaviours from an early age."
|
| > Sounds almost like victim blaming.
|
| The public health measures could be directed at the bullies,
| no?
| hristov wrote:
| Bullying as social correction is a very bad type of social
| correction. This way the social correction is done by the
| dumbest and most violent members of society in order to conform
| society to their vision. And then society grows up to become
| dumb and violent. Well lets not kid ourselves, this is exactly
| what has been happening in human history, and that why humanity
| continues to be mired in suffering and conflict and is
| intentionally destroying its environment. But this is something
| we have to change. Social correction should be done by trained
| adults that know exactly which traits are bad and to be
| corrected.
|
| I think when the article says "that public health interventions
| could aim at preventing children from becoming the target of
| bullying" they refer to more health based intervention. Such as
| helping kids to be healthy and not malnourished, or overweight
| from eating bad food.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > " studies suggest that public health interventions could aim
| at preventing children from becoming the target of bullying
| behaviours from an early age."
|
| > Sounds almost like victim blaming. If true, if there's
| something about the bullied that causes them to be bullied,
| perhaps bullying is actually a form of social correction. Not
| that nature should be our guide, but often harsh social
| behavior is functional from an evolutionary standpoint. That
| said,
|
| A distinction needs to be made between post-facto "victim
| blaming" and prevention that involves potential victims.
| Conflating the two leads one to oppose good measures out of an
| allegiance to an unrealistically perfect, ideologically-
| motivated fantasy (that social problems can and should be
| solved _only_ by authorities applying pressure to the "guilty"
| people").
| lukas099 wrote:
| > Sounds almost like victim blaming.
|
| I disagree. They are not suggesting that the interventions
| specifically target the victims.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I didn't do a close read. My comment was in response to this:
|
| " research has identified some factors that predispose
| children to be targeted by bullying behaviours. These studies
| suggest that public health interventions could aim at
| preventing children from becoming the target of bullying
| behaviours from an early age."
|
| To be clear I said nature shouldn't be our guide. Nature
| often means that life is nasty brutish and short. I even
| quoted the famous Auden poem as support. Sheesh!
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| > Sounds almost like victim blaming. If true, if there's
| something about the bullied that causes them to be bullied,
| perhaps bullying is actually a form of social correction.
|
| This is only true if bullying actually corrects something which
| is a big logical leap to just leave to an appeal to nature.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It's actually a different problem than most people realize. What
| happens is that you have criminal assault and abuse being
| tolerated by adults and then blaming the victims. To try to
| understand, take the behavior of the "bullies" and imagine it is
| being done by adults.
|
| It really comes down to a lack of responsibility and
| accountability for managing the behavior of children in schools.
| Instead of dealing with children who are totally out of control,
| they blame the victims and compartmentalize the assaults as being
| somehow different since they involve children.
|
| These assaults are actually even more critical to address in
| childhood because as they are allowed to form patterns that
| persist in criminal assaults and fraud in adulthood.
|
| This type of failure is one reason that we don't truly have a
| civil society. There is this facade of order, but really at the
| heart it's just the animal kingdom. There is some aspiration by
| those with the responsibility, but on average the teachers etc.
| have little real resolve, courage, or capability to actually deal
| with the broken and dangerous children that are common in
| schools. So they blame the victims.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| It seems to be very hard to distinguish between bullying and
| rough play. Rough play is a developmental requirement
| (particularly for young boys) across the hominoid clade (and
| likely wider). Being denied it also has real and lifelong
| consequences. For further reading, Frans de Waal has done a lot
| of work in this area.
|
| Educational policy informed by this research usually looks not
| to intervene in physical conflict between equally matched (by
| size/age) peers. It also looks at conflict management and
| resolution as a primary responsibility of the peer group,
| rather than the adults/teachers, with the escalation path being
| to older peers before adults.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Humans have physical games with rules. "Bullying" is nothing
| like that.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Depends, if it becomes chronic rough play you know something
| might be wrong. If you're close enough and can see that it's
| asymmetrical and the victim is always the same, someone
| should intervene.
| TylerE wrote:
| An interesting approach I read - I think it was a novel,
| honestly, but may have been an autobiography - was that
| fights were not just tolerated but sanctioned, with one big
| proviso: In the gym, with boxing gloves and headgear on, and
| fists only. Going down or taking a knee ends the fight.
|
| Let 'em work out the tension, but with very minimal chance of
| hurting anything.
| bentley wrote:
| I was a peaceful kid and no good at gym class, which played
| some part in why I was bullied. What benefit would I have
| received from officially sanctioning my regular physical
| humiliation?
| TylerE wrote:
| Well, for one it forces the school to scknowledge thst'd
| it's happening, which is at least half the battle.
|
| And of course both sides must agree, you can't be forced
| in to it.
| ilaksh wrote:
| This is completely unrelated to the harassment, abuse and
| assaults labelled as "bullying".
| macinjosh wrote:
| I am here for safe and supervised middle school duels. It
| would have helped me a lot.
|
| I went to a strict religious school and a kid who bullied
| me over years pushed me too far one day and I started after
| him, got maybe one kick to his leg in. Teachers stopped me
| immediately, but never did the same for the years of verbal
| abuse mocking me for my weight though. I ended up getting
| spanked by the principal with a thick wooden paddle in
| front of my teacher that day. This was the mid to late 90s.
| I heard once the kid who bullied me is in prison now.
| erdos4d wrote:
| You should get the straight facts on that kid and what he
| did and confront the school over it. They obviously
| failed across the board with him and probably someone got
| hurt for him to get time. They could have done things to
| correct his behavior, instead they punished you for
| lashing out against his abuse. This needs to show up when
| people search that school so other parents know how they
| really are and avoid sending their kids there.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I wonder how many people would be still willing to fight if
| they were forced to delay for some amount of time (hours?).
| My hunch is it'd be very few, which would be a win.
| mc32 wrote:
| There is also "rough teasing" which isn't quite bullying
| --but can turn into bullying sometimes. It often calls for
| take but give. This typically can happen within your in-
| group.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Rough play is voluntary, being a victim of bullying isn't. I
| say this as someone who engaged in rough play, got bullied,
| and was a bully, at different times.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Learning how to respond to antisocial behaviour by a peer,
| and being able to resolve conflict independently, are two
| very important skills that it's critical to learn. Being
| seen as someone who needs adult help to resolve peer
| conflict is socially disastrous for young people. We do
| children no favours by intervening in this developmental
| process.
| anonym29 wrote:
| There seems to be a disconnect between what you think
| bullying is and how it actually manifests. Between
| adults, the behavior would be classified as unprovoked
| assault & battery. Someone punching you in the back of
| your head while you weren't looking, without a word being
| said between either of you, because the other person's
| peer group dared them to is not a failure of the victim's
| conflict resolution skills.
|
| To be clear, as a victim, I was subject to unprovoled
| physical battery like this more time than I can count
| between the start of middle school and my second year of
| high school. As a bully, in my senior year, I never
| engaged in any kind of physical violence, just name
| calling and verbally provoking someone prone to emotional
| outbursts.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think this post speaks to the problem of broadly
| discussing "bullying".
|
| As you point out unprovoked battery and name calling fall
| under the same terminology, but the appropriate responses
| are obviously not the same.
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >being able to resolve conflict, independently
|
| A shame sometimes the best way to resolve a conflict is
| eye gouging the aggressor before they permanently break a
| part of your body
|
| The thing that stuck with me the most by getting the
| "resolve your conflicts by yourself" treatment was that
| no matter how much someone is being a piece of shit, the
| only one you can count on is yourself
|
| Everyone else will watch as you break, and only intervene
| if you fight back. And punishment is only ever dished out
| in equal measures between aggressor and victim
|
| Noticing that was probably the start of considering
| people to be rotten by default, reasons are needed to
| assume someone isn't
| cannaceo wrote:
| "Solve the problem yourself". Yeah, you've never had to
| deal with being chased by bullies and having the shit
| kicked out of you for no reason. Bullying is not a
| conflict between peers anymore than a woman getting raped
| is a conflict between peers.
|
| As an adult these problems are solved for you by either
| human resources, the police, or being able to avoid the
| situation. Maybe that's why you don't walk around the
| rough part of town alone at night. As a kid you have no
| control over your environment.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Well, bullying is many things, and I think the exact
| issue is that the conversation lacks nuance. As I
| mentioned in my first post, conflict which is evenly
| matched should not be regarded the same way as conflict
| which is not. If you are attacked by a group of people,
| or someone substantially larger than you, then
| intervention is warranted. Ideally this intervention is
| carried out by older peers. If you're being bullied by
| one of your peers, you need to learn the skills to
| resolve that conflict. Sometimes escalation is the best
| tool, sometimes avoidance is. There's no panacea, but
| it's something we all need to learn.
| [deleted]
| cannaceo wrote:
| Can you give an example of what being bullied by a peer
| would look like and what skills would be required to
| resolve that conflict?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around,
| taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names,
| etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to
| establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees
| you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best
| course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict
| - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in
| prison - you don't want to end up at the bottom of the
| dominance hierarchy. The best way to avoid that is to
| make friends and be more trouble than you are worth.
| bentley wrote:
| In adulthood I've never had to resolve a problematic
| interaction through physical violence, and I hope to
| never have to. The methods I _have_ used--distancing
| myself from the bully, reporting to management
| /HR/oversight agencies--are quite like the methods I used
| to avoid bullying in childhood. I never used violence
| back then either.
|
| The only meaningful difference between now and then is
| that in adulthood I have more such avenues and they are
| much more effective. The fact that they were less
| effective in childhood is an indictment of the
| administrative and social structure we have constructed
| schools to have, not of nonviolent methods themselves. I
| reject your assertion that it's helpful for a bullied
| child to model behavior on chimpanzees in the jungle or
| criminals in prison. Becoming violent in childhood would
| have had negative long-term effects on me, and I'm glad
| nobody back then gave me the "advice" you're sharing now.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Or perhaps the conclusion here is that administrative
| intervention is not effective on children the same way as
| it is on adults.
| bentley wrote:
| Given that my interactions with adults outside of school
| (and later, when I was pulled out of public school to be
| homeschooled) were almost always positive, I'm willing to
| specifically blame school administration and/or their
| techniques.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you problably have some sampling bias in your
| adult interactions.
|
| Im guessing most of them don't involve the lowest
| functioning portion of the population, eg, people who
| regularly comment violence, rape, and beat their wives,
| or are currently incarcerated. Public schools cut across
| the entire population spectrum and include children with
| legitimate social and cognitive deficiencies.
|
| Adults also have more developed brains and better
| incentives to obey. a hostile worker might still care
| about losing their income, car, or house. It is hard to
| find comparable incentives for children and young adults.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Good response. Toxic organisations (at whatever scale)
| fail to maintain an atmosphere where bullying is rejected
| and people are helped to be their best. Children should
| be taught to recognise toxic organisations and be given
| courage to exit them. And internalize that you do this as
| an adult too. There are situations where assault or
| battery could arise, and it is good to have some training
| in how to deal with those situations. Bullying, assault,
| battery are all abusive: it's just bullying is legal and
| the others are not.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want
| to end up at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy.
|
| The simple fact that you think it's not a problem to
| somewhat approvingly compare schools to prisons is
| already a bad sign. Schools shouldn't be like prisons.
| Prisons shouldn't be like prisons either, but that's
| another story...
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Approval has nothing to do with it - we are apes living
| in dominance hierarchies, children even more so.
| leto_ii wrote:
| That's just not true. There are many kinds of social
| relations, dominance being just one particularity nasty
| one. Other apes also exhibit a whole range of social
| relations. It doesn't have to be a dog eat dog world out
| there, and most of the time it actually isn't.
| MrJohz wrote:
| I'm not the person you're replying to, but I was bullied
| as a child, and honestly, the problem is hard to deal
| with. I was not good at socialising, I found it difficult
| to read social cues, and I was kind of irritating a lot
| of the time. None of that excuses bullying, of course,
| but ultimately a large part of what caused that bullying
| was my own behaviour. If I'd have been more socially
| adept, if I'd realised that the social group I'd found
| wasn't supporting me and if I'd put more effort into
| making worthwhile friends, I wouldn't have been in that
| situation.
|
| In the end, I needed to change for the issue to be
| resolved - which I did, and, along with moving to a new
| environment which helped reset a lot of my social
| interactions, that helped a lot. Obviously that's not
| some instant magic wand solution - I went through five
| long years of this experience, with various teachers and
| other adults trying to help me before things started
| clicking and I started being able to move on - but in my
| experience there aren't really many better solutions.
|
| So, while I can't reiterate enough how unacceptable
| bullying is, and what a negative impact it had on those
| years of my life, I do agree with the previous poster:
| the ultimate solution to being bullied often lies in the
| hands of victim (n.b. not literally: I never found
| violence helped me), and trying to resolve the situation
| via visible external intervention may well have little
| impact. For me at least, a better social education would
| have made me much more prepared to deal with the issues
| that I faced.
| cannaceo wrote:
| "The ultimate solution to being bullied often lies in the
| hands of the victim" is the reality that people who are
| pushing for anti-bullying measures are trying to change.
| thewebcount wrote:
| But isn't one really useful way to learn by having people
| older and wiser than you step in and explain the
| situation to everyone involved? You don't just throw a
| bunch of math symbols at a child and say, "learn how to
| do arithmetic." You teach them what numbers and numerals
| are and how to manipulate them. You teach them easier
| concepts first, and then build on them. That needs to be
| done for both bullies and their victims, too. Most people
| will not "just figure it out." That's abusive in itself.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> We do children no favours by intervening in this
| developmental process._
|
| Will you do the same when your child is being bullied?
| How do you think that may affect them and their
| relationship with you? How do you think a child feels
| when they realize that the adults around them do not have
| their back? What does it do to their sense of safety and
| their self-esteem?
|
| I have lived through this and have my personal take on
| these questions, but I'd love to learn about yours.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Like with most things, I think the right move for an
| adult is to help the child solve the problem themselves,
| rather than do it for them. As other posts have
| mentioned, learning when and how to apply violence is a
| critical skill. We (particularly children) do not live in
| a post-violence society. Children should of course not
| feel abandoned by those closest to them, but being
| overprotective can have its own negative consequences for
| development.
|
| It's clearly a fine line to walk, but if you're being
| bullied then what you need is to _learn_ how to address
| /discourage that behaviour - not an intervention.
| Otherwise all you're doing is deferring the learning
| experience until next time. Past a certain window it's
| _very hard_ to learn this skill, and you can be stuck
| with a helpless mentality for your whole life.
| [deleted]
| oblib wrote:
| I got pretty good at avoiding fights with bullies and
| dumbasses. And I never started a fight. I always made an
| effort to avoid fighting.
|
| But I did become a "fan" of boxing at a very early age
| and studied how boxers fought. How they setup opponents,
| threw punches, and especially how they avoided getting
| hit. Most kids don't do that so it's pretty easy to gain
| an advantage. And bullies tend to leave kids alone who
| they know will fight back.
|
| I grew up in some pretty rough neighborhoods so I was
| motivated to learn.
| mcguire wrote:
| Homicide and suicide are the second and third leading
| causes of death for teens and young adults following
| accidents (primarily motor vehicle). (If it matters to
| you, males are much more likely to die and females are
| more likely to report bullying.)
| thegrimmest wrote:
| well of course - how else are the healthiest members of
| our population going to die?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Putting aside outliers like kids wity cancer, there is
| what is diplomatically called "death by misadventure". Or
| less diplomatically winning a Darwin award.
| oblib wrote:
| My advice is teach your kids how to fight.
|
| I grew up with 2 brothers and lots of cousins and learned
| how to fight by watching boxing on TV.
|
| I fought my 2 year older brother to a draw when I was 6
| years old. I dropped a 15 year old kid who was way bigger
| than me and bullying me by kicking him in the balls that
| same year and then stood over him while he was on the
| ground writhing and crying in pain and told him he was
| lucky I wasn't kicking his face in. He never came near me
| again.
|
| By the time I started school kids in my neighborhood knew
| I would fight and when I started Jr. High kids in school
| already knew I would fight, and I was not a big kid, I
| was pretty small compared to most kids my age.
|
| When I was 14 a kid I didn't know and was way bigger than
| me hit me in the head with a hockey stick at a city park
| and knocked me out cold. When I came to he was skating
| away from me. I skated as fast as I could, caught up to
| him and jumped on his back and knocked him down and I
| started wailing on him. I really don't remember how but I
| ended up sitting on his chest slugging him in the face as
| hard and fast as I could when I started hearing people
| yelling "Stop! Stop!" and realized there was a crowd of
| people watching me.
|
| When I was in my late teens I started taking MMA classes.
| That taught me how to use an opponent's force against
| them and when I was 21 I literally bounced a guy who'd
| been pestering me for years to "wrestle" off his bedroom
| ceiling. He was in my face pestering me again so I gave
| him and little shove and he came back trying to shove me
| as hard as he could, so it was mostly his energy, I just
| redirected it. He was in shock because it happened so
| fast. I was stunned at how well it worked.
|
| When people know you will fight back they tend to not
| mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that
| can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back
| sticks with you and hurts forever.
|
| Bullies will only keep bullying kids who don't fight
| back. I taught my 5 kids this and none of them were
| bullied in school.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| > When people know you will fight back they tend to not
| mess with you and getting hit is not the worst thing that
| can happen to you. You'll heal up. Not fighting back
| sticks with you and hurts forever.
|
| 100%
|
| I once had a kid walk up to me and tell me he had to show
| me something out in the recess yard. We get out to a
| certain spot, he bends down and picks up a screwdriver
| and throws it at me, slammed into the side of my head. To
| this day I have no idea why, didn't know the kid.
|
| I chased him back into the school building, he turned a
| corner and the principal was standing there talking to a
| teacher. I remember very clearly he drew up next to the
| principal and had a shit eating grin on his face.
|
| I removed that grin from his face very quickly, he
| thought I was afraid of the consequences of beating him
| in front of the principal. He learned otherwise.
|
| To the principals credit, once I told him the story, saw
| the knot on my head, AND the screwdriver I got away with
| absolutely no punishment.
|
| I've never been one to start things, and in fact often
| times I let them go too far, but I've never actually been
| afraid of a fight. I used to move a lot as a kid and at
| some point I just got used to having to fight atleast 1
| person at a new school, once people realized you wouldn't
| take their shit, they didn't give it.
| soco wrote:
| As we all read stories about bullied kids, or even this
| study above, not having help to resolve peer conflict
| isn't especially useful to kids' development either. So,
| how exactly should they handle it by themselves? Gang up?
| Outgun the bullies? I'm sorry but I can't even imagine a
| good way, any good way, how a bullied nerd kid can get
| out of bullying by themselves.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| My understanding is as follows:
|
| 1) If you're roughly evenly matched, you should fight
|
| 2) If you're not, your peers should intervene - "pick on
| someone your own size"
|
| 3) If this doesn't work, escalate to older peers
|
| 4) If that doesn't work, escalate to adults
|
| This relies on children being taught and encouraged to
| intervene in unfair conflict, which the research
| indicates they are naturally inclined to do.
| soco wrote:
| So basically you advocate not only educating the own kid,
| but also educating their peers to intervene, and also
| educating the older ones to police the area, and
| educating the adults in the end. Do you really think this
| is a realistic policy, over the lifetime of your school
| kid? In an ideal world, no idea, but in this real world
| Id say zero chance. However I can tell you how it works
| around here (Switzerland, by no means perfect either)
| where school personal will usually intervene - and
| somehow the bullied kids manage to learn their social
| skills as well. Yes we might be apes but even among apes
| the social structures are so different that the
| comparison is mostly meaningless.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| This was basically how things have worked and continue to
| work in (particularly rural) areas where policymaking is
| lacking and people are left to their own devices.
| "Bullied" kids seek help from their immediate peers, from
| their/their peers older siblings, and from adults,
| roughly in that order. Parents typically do not hesitate
| to suggest aggressive escalation as a conflict resolution
| strategy. This strategy is often applied successfully.
|
| I'm suggesting that the current "zero tolerance" approach
| practiced in North America does more harm than good by
| halting this process before it can resolve conflict -
| thus harming both the bullied and the bully.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| "This was basically how things have worked and continue
| to work in (particularly rural) areas where policymaking
| is lacking and people are left to their own devices."
|
| So in rural areas if a child in school grabs another
| child, throws them on the ground, and starts beating them
| in the middle of math class, the teacher will not attempt
| to intervene?
|
| Sorry but I don't believe this.
| mcguire wrote:
| One notes that rural teens and young adults die of
| suicide at nearly twice the rate of those in urban areas.
| (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarti
| cle/...)
| bentley wrote:
| The problem with American zero tolerance policies is not
| that they attempt to stop violence, but that they find
| the bullied to be as culpable as the bully, because
| "participating" in violence is what's considered wrong,
| not instigating it.
| bentley wrote:
| My own experience growing up in rural America is not so
| romantic. Bullies were sometimes those who had a numeric
| advantage when it came to having relatives who were peers
| and adults at the school. Their victims, often, outsiders
| who were not physically strong, had no big siblings to
| protect them, and were not "favorites" of the teachers.
| Such children would not benefit from your strategy.
| zadler wrote:
| There isn't one of these steps that bullied children are
| not doing that they could do to resolve their issue. If
| your point is that their issue could be solved with
| education; well maybe, maybe they need parenting also...
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I think the point is that the education system has to
| embrace this strategy rather than fight it with zero
| tolerance policies.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Do you hold this same view about adults and police?
|
| Are we denying women a chance at personal development by
| having police arrest rapists rather than forcing women to
| develop the necessary skills of interpersonal violence to
| defend themselves?
|
| ...where is the line?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm simply pointing to a body of research that shows we
| have this area of development in common with our ape
| relations, and that the strategies juvenile apes use to
| resolve conflict largely apply to children too.
|
| With regards to sexual assault - we surely should teach
| vulnerable people the necessary skills to avoid violence.
| It (used to be) common sense not to drink in the company
| of strangers, especially if you are physically vulnerable
| (regardless of your sex). None of this is exclusive to
| punishing perpetrators, which we should of course
| continue doing.
| mcguire wrote:
| You might wish to examine the statistics on the
| relationships between rapists and their victims.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| And you might want to examine those on alcohol
| consumption and sexual assault.
| mcguire wrote:
| Problem: " _Existing research indicates that (a) being
| bullied in childhood is associated with distress and
| symptoms of mental health problems...; (b) the
| consequences of childhood bullying victimisation can
| persist up to midlife and, in addition to mental health,
| can impact physical and socioeconomic outcomes._ "
|
| Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Solution: Let 'em work it out themselves.
|
| Working-it-out is an effective approach for two people
| who want to solve an issue - an issue that they're both
| fairly responsible for.
|
| But where you have one child experiencing long-term and
| unearned mistreatment at the hands of many peers -
| attempts at working-it-out are such a mismatched response
| that more mistreatment seems likely.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I don't see how this research controls for the zero
| tolerance policies which have been in place for a long
| time, and which lots of research suggests serve to
| prolong and escalate conflict.
| mcguire wrote:
| Source?
|
| I have a pretty low opinion of the zero tolerance
| policies because they seem to primarily operate to the
| benefit of the bullies in this case: the bullying is not
| readily visible as a problem to the adults and when it
| is, many of them think as you do, that kids will be kids
| and they should work out their problems themselves.
| However, a fight is an immediate problem and the obvious
| instigator is the victim of the bullying.
| Teever wrote:
| They are very important skills to learn, and they're ones
| we as a society haven't really learned because we're
| still dealing with this problem.
| granshaw wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's data/studies on this, but I feel that
| bullying is a bigger problem in the US than in eg Europe and
| Asia. If so, would like to see more discussion on why that is
| and how we could improve things by comparing
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I dont buy it. Ill bet bullying is way more normalized in the
| UK.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Not sure about Asia, but in Europe bullying is as common as
| in US.
| granshaw wrote:
| Interesting, good to know
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| The US compares relatively well because, despite having
| comprehensive education, the system is also designed to
| segregate schooling areas.
|
| In Europe, bullying is worst in countries with comprehensive
| systems (UK/Nordics/Eastern Europe, unsurprisingly they are
| countries that have left-wing education systems built for the
| social justice goals of adults, not learning outcomes of
| kids). I believe it is as bad or worse in Asia although for
| different reasons.
|
| Btw, there are also quite good stats about sexual violence
| against girls and, unfortunately, you actually see these
| levels are highest in comprehensive systems in Europe. This
| is likely due to under-reporting elsewhere but it is very
| strange to see somewhere like the UK come out worse than
| Afghanistan in violence against girls. I think people should
| also ask why this kind of stuff isn't known (again, it is
| because schools are designed for social justice for adults,
| not for kids...it is an unfortunate reality of our world).
| wwweston wrote:
| > UK/Nordics/Eastern Europe, unsurprisingly they are
| countries that have left-wing education systems built for
| the social justice goals of adults, not learning outcomes
| of kid
|
| Learning outcome rankings are commonly pretty high for UK
| and the Nordics -- there's a number of metrics, and some
| asian countries come out outlier strong depending on the
| test, but it's pretty common to find Finland, Sweden, and
| the UK in the top, and Finland in particular seems pretty
| enviable by a number of standards.
|
| Also, learning outcomes for kids _are_ social justice goals
| -- people who think of their social values /goals in those
| terms (vs people who use "social justice" as a drive-by
| disparaging/othering term to signal their own ideological
| allegiances) are almost always concerned with broadening
| positive educational outcomes. Perhaps you don't share
| those goals, or perhaps you believe that some social
| movements are promoting policy that isn't well-optimized
| for those goals, but it's _entirely false_ to state that
| they 're mutually exclusive.
|
| And as they say, "citation needed" for stats about bullying
| or sexual violence.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I came to similar conclusion. My children go to an elementary
| school in Canada and there is bullying even in good schools.
| The things that these little kids do is incomprehensible to
| me. I went to elementary school in USSR and I never saw what
| my children experience in Canada(at least I don't remember
| it, but I do know that the schools in USSR had bullying
| issues with teenagers).
|
| Is it because children have too much freedom in school,
| innatentive/overworked teachers? My wife tends to think it's
| the food(sugars) and TV/computer games (even first graders
| spend significant chunks of their free time playing Minecraft
| and other games). Is it because of playdates culture and not
| being free to play on the street with neighbours after school
| which helps socializing kids?
| [deleted]
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Let's be honest, playing Minecraft is more likely to be the
| reason you're bullied, instead of being the source of
| bullying.
|
| Well, unless you count getting griefed on MC as bullying...
| quacked wrote:
| > Is it because of playdates culture and not being free to
| play on the street with neighbours after school which helps
| socializing kids?
|
| All children need to be "socialized", which means "taught
| the local method of the art of civilization". Currently in
| the western world there IS no "local method of the art of
| civilization". There's barely even a "local people". Most
| people grow up around transplants and whirling hodgepodge
| of rapidly-evolving ethno-social practices that never comes
| close to stabilizing on a single, repeatable way of life.
|
| The US's and Canada's failures to raise up kids to behave a
| certain way is due to the fact that the modern western
| world is in a local period of flux/chaos. Children rarely
| see their full-time working parents and live in
| environments where they have little freedom and few
| trustworthy allies that will remain with them throughout
| their whole lives. The several people I know who grew up in
| the USSR did not experience this, and while they
| experienced shortages, authoritarianism, and poverty, they
| also experienced very intensely local community with people
| who they understood and expected to live the same way.
| (This broke down across ethnic lines, of course.) The
| necessary fixes are far more pervasive and difficult than
| many people realize, and mostly start with "fixing the
| adults" rather than "fixing the kids".
|
| Bullying is a deeply primal instinct, with the end result
| of establishing a social hierarchy with the most powerful
| and violent on top and people who will listen to them and
| provide goods and services on the bottom. The reason that
| adults who commit crimes end up in prison is that modern
| western governments keep a really well-armed and nasty gang
| on a leash (police) and have a system to deal with the
| bullies who don't learn how to keep their bullying in line
| with social acceptability. (For instance, you can
| emotionally torture an employee into depression, but you
| can't punch them in the face.) I believe that the bullying
| we're seeing children do now is closer to status-jockeying
| in a post-civilization world than as a consequence of our
| current society's setup. They're trying to establish
| hierarchies and social norms for themselves, because
| they've never observed or been taught any.
| trgn wrote:
| Play dates really create needless friction because they
| don't allow children to click organically. The restoration
| of the public realm, making it safe for children, is the
| most pressing challenge for america.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Dunno about Canada, but in the US schools have _very_
| limited options for dealing with problem kids, and class
| sizes are way bigger than they 'd be if we really wanted
| every kid to have a great education (we would be aiming for
| about half what they are now, in that case)--more social
| problems is one consequence of that.
|
| If we could "sacrifice" the top ~10% most-disruptive
| students--just keep them out of the ordinary classrooms--
| it'd improve everyone else's experience and ultimate
| educational attainment immensely. My wife used to be a
| teacher and days when the _right_ couple kids both happened
| to be sick, all the lessons got done faster than the time
| she 'd allotted, giving time to cover bonus material, and
| she said you could just _feel_ how much more relaxed and
| jovial the atmosphere was, and could see it on the kids '
| faces. Consider how much benefit it would convey if that
| were _every_ day and those effects could compound over
| years. First person who figures out a way to do that that
| doesn 't condemn the 10%ers who actually have a chance of
| reforming, and that's palatable to constituents, will have
| done more for US education than anyone else has in a
| century, probably.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| My personal experience was that Western schooling was much
| kinder than Asian (Indian) schooling (parent's job had me
| moving countries every 3 years). Having been a bit of an
| outsider in both systems (didn't have the years of shared
| history in Western circles and accent was too American in
| Asian circles) and extremely timid, while I did initially get
| bullied in Western schools, it was nowhere near as pervasive,
| underhanded or nasty as it was in the Asian schools I
| attended.
|
| In the Western system I could more often rely on just
| ignoring or complaining to a teacher to result in some
| action, in the Asian schools I went to, many of the teachers
| and other parents seemed almost complicit in the bullying
| (somewhat unsurprisingly, especially the English teachers).
|
| I still remember that on my first day in an Indian school in
| 4th grade after having gone to school for ~3 years in NY, I
| had been mocked and called stupid in front of the class by
| the math teacher for writing out how I answered a problem
| differently from what had been taught to the rest of the
| class. Completely ruined me on math for several years because
| it made me too hesitant to ask questions about fundamental
| things I didn't understand and as a result I had terrible
| fundamentals. I only really managed to get over that by
| spending the entirety of 8th grade self-teaching myself math
| after school.
|
| The way I like to think of it these days is that Western
| education made me enjoy learning and helped build up my
| confidence, while Asian education made me cynical and better
| at reading people (which isn't a bad thing to me now, but I'd
| still rather never go through that again).
|
| Of course this is just anecdotal so it doesn't say a lot
| overall.
| cliquecover wrote:
| As someone who went through the Indian education system,
| teachers were some of the worst bullies who would
| frequently abuse their power.
|
| - A teacher posed a question to the class and I and another
| boy answered immediately. The teacher was upset and said
| "cliquecover and boy are always putting themselves forward"
|
| - A few senior students demo'ed a cool robotics toy they'd
| built. Our science teacher mocked our class for not being
| as intelligent as them, instead of explaining how we could
| build one (doubt he knew anything about it).
|
| - A university lecturer openly ridiculed all the female CS
| students as "useless"
|
| - A tendency to obscure their incompetence and lack of
| understanding by focussing on petty details: eg a math
| teacher ridiculing us for not knowing our multiplication
| tables and forcing us to memorize them, instead of teaching
| useful skills, English teachers being obsessed with
| spelling and handwriting instead of general reading and
| composition skills
|
| - Universities engaging in extortion by refusing to release
| student's personal documents unless they would take up the
| first job offer they obtained via university placements.
|
| Very few intelligent people in India would become teachers
| in the kind of school I went to. They would rather take up
| software/IT/private sector jobs, so you get mediocre non-
| entities who have free rein to treat students as they
| please.
| kingofheroes wrote:
| Not to downplay the severity of the problem in America, but
| bullying is pretty damn severe in East Asia. The "nail that
| sticks up gets hammered down" quote often used to describe
| the situation there. Search "japan bullying" in Youtube and
| you'll find a long list of videos talking about the issue in
| Japan in particular.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I know it's not exactly a reliable record, but Japanese
| high school anime are a popular genre and pretty
| consistently depict a fairly intense atmosphere of
| bullying. It's often not the focus so you have to read
| between the lines a bit in some of them, but it's usually
| there. Not sure how much of that's true and how much is
| fictional trope.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by Japanese high school anime?
| Some anime, particularly in the slice of life genre,
| depict a idealized version of high school where there is
| no bullying.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'd offer that the problem is compounded (and actually really
| the root) by anti-social parents who are unable or unwilling to
| parent appropriately, then raising hell when teachers attempt
| to cajole the student into being pro-social
| zadler wrote:
| As well as that the parents of the victim are easier to deal
| with even when the child is damaged than the parents of the
| bullies. And the parents of the victim may also be complicit
| in the victim blaming. It's absurd to think it's something
| that could be fixed in a generation also.
| devwastaken wrote:
| >These assaults are actually even more critical to address in
| childhood because as they are allowed to form patterns that
| persist in criminal assaults and fraud in adulthood.
|
| It's this kind of logic that creates it actually. Trying to
| create Uber safe environments for hypothetical outcomes results
| in those behaviors being suppressed and mutated later. Children
| are designed to bully, the same as every other mammal species
| plays when young. If they were not, you wouldn't find it in
| every place where children are throughout the planet.
|
| We can only mitigate severe effects. Smaller schools is the
| most significant step, but it will never happen.
| agumonkey wrote:
| What's usually blamed on bullying victims ? Is that a lack of
| assertiveness ?
|
| In society there's often a reflex to blame girls from trying to
| hitch hike, like stepping in risky activities.. but for
| bullying it seems completely passive and unwarranted.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| i was bullied for a number of years at a local school in my home
| town (northern UK) from the age of 5 until 10 by the son of my
| school's headmaster (!!). i was even caned by that headmaster for
| "telling stories" that his son was bullying me.
|
| i learned most of this much, much later as an adult, but TL;dr my
| parents met many times with the headmaster, who simply refused to
| believe his son would bully anyone. my father and the headmaster
| apparently almost came to blows (but didn't, my dad is a good
| man) and the upshot was that i was withdrawn from that school and
| sent to a very austere Georgian quaker boarding school for the
| remaining 8 years of schooling. the change of school of course
| removed the headmaster's son's bullying, but introduced other
| [boarding school type] issues which likely scarred me in other
| ways. but at least the bully was gone from my life!
|
| n.b. some ~25 years later i did actually meet the
| bully/headmaster's son at a random event back in the UK; he had
| no memory of the bullying and i was heartened to observe that his
| life was a disaster and he was desperately unhappy.
|
| that made the ~5 years of bullying feel at least like it got me
| _something_.
| creativeideas wrote:
| I'm always concerned when I see these types of studies that the
| conclusions drawn from them will lead to "cures" that are worse
| than the disease. God help us should we ever succeed in
| eliminating all the challenges of life - we'll evolve into
| spineless blobs.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Many arguments here against bulling prevention seem to conflate
| two different issues.
|
| They lump squabbles between similarly weighted peers with the
| situation where individual children get systemically singled out
| for mistreatment.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Bullying seems to be a human universal. This is really sad and it
| makes me wonder what come be done?
|
| Lord of the Flies is the most realistic book about children that
| I know.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| There was an example more recently of kids being shipwrecked
| and working cooperatively. Not a refutation but food for
| thought.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-...
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I completely agree about the problem, and some of this thread has
| the answer: fight back. Being adults, we naturally focus on what
| the adults can do. Of course if someone in authority sees bad
| behavior, they should stop it.
|
| The problem is all the bad behavior they _don 't_ see. The
| bullies just learn to do it when no adults are watching. Teaching
| the kid how to fight back is a great solution and several answers
| have said that.
|
| But suppose he or she just can't (sick, handicapped,
| uncoordinated, tiny, etc.)?
|
| This is where the kids who are _not_ being bullied can step in.
| Teach your big strong kid it 's not cool to just watch it happen;
| confront the bully yourself. Protect the kids who can't protect
| themselves.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The advocacy of violence implies the ability to succeed in
| doing it. Perhaps you don't recall the vast difference in size
| and strength in adolescence.
|
| Couple that with GROUPS of bullies, what do you advocate?
|
| Well, the modern solution to war is more firepower, and that is
| the firearm. So essentially, the end state of advocating
| violence is school shootings.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| So now it's _groups_ of bullies, not just one? That wasn 't
| part of the problem statement.
|
| Also firearms: that wasn't part of it until you brought it
| up, either.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So bullies are people that stress the societal boundaries
| of acceptable behavior.
|
| The advocacy of violence in response is a further stepping
| over of a societal boundary, essentially the same one used
| by bullies.
|
| So the boundaries are crossed, both legal, institutional,
| and societal.
|
| But you want to be pedantic about "problem statements"?
| That firearms and school shootings are some boundary that
| is fantastical and doesn't get crossed in the real world
| (that is, the USA conception of the real world)?
|
| You want boundaries on the problem statement, which is
| about using violent extralegal means to address violent
| extralegal threats?
|
| What a bizarre comment. Like, you don't think gangs exist?
| You don't think bullies who crave power and strength don't
| crave strength in numbers? You don't think gun violence
| exists, exists at schools?
|
| Are you in some fantasy land where BJJ is the solution for
| world peace? Are you some gun nut scared that this will
| cross into gun control? Are you just some spectrum resident
| pendant/troll?
|
| Weird.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Lots of people on this thread advocate for fighting back.
| I don't know why you have a problem with it.
|
| "Bullying" on the original article had nothing to do with
| firearms & school shootings, as you would know if you
| read it. It has to do with one nasty kid picking on
| another one. It very rarely makes the news.
|
| If you need to have the last word, go ahead. I'm not
| replying any further.
| bentley wrote:
| Not that it holds much scientific value, but my impression
| from reading news stories about school shootings is that the
| perpetrators usually were already known in their social
| circles as bullies, not bullying victims.
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| I have ADHD and Aspergers. Which results in extremely high
| anxiety. I did not get along with other children or people. In
| fact; I found them completely boring and had no desire to
| interact with anyone. My instinct at school was just to avoid
| them all. Eat alone, hang out in the school library.
|
| I have run into parents who homeschooled their children and let
| them follow their curiosity. Some of the results I saw them get
| were completely out of this world. The kids taught themselves
| multiple languages and instruments.
|
| I'm going to be faced with a similar choice with my kids. I will
| likely put them through public elementary school. Junior high I
| feel is abusive to children.
|
| They are going through very complex hormonal and emotional
| changes and on top of this you dunk them in a tank surrounded by
| parasites who are garaunteed to act like savages.
|
| With mobile phones and cameras.
|
| I think I could see a strong argument to skip junior high and
| high school altogether and explore home school.
|
| If anything like what happened to me happens to them (and I
| honestly didn't have it that bad), I will seriously consider
| pulling them out.
|
| The damage that was done to me lasted 15 years. That is
| unacceptable.
|
| I personally had severe acne. Putting me in junior high to get
| taunted - irreparable self esteem damage.
|
| Parents need to understand.
|
| Let's be honest. The elephant in the room is human beings get
| ahead by bullying Eachother and forming mobs and cliques.
|
| This behavior has shown up at every job I have ever had. The
| dumber the people are the more likely they will use this
| "strategy" to get ahead. It is the go to dumb person strategy.
|
| You can only avoid it often by working at smaller companies or
| developing much better social skills.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > [guaranteed] to act like savages.
|
| While assigning them to read and discuss Lord of the Flies...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| One of the things that happens is similar to the group
| psychology of hazing.
|
| A person perceives abuse as much worse than the person that
| deals it out. Hazing is the person being abused then delivering
| worse punishment than they received to the next round of
| people, again because their perception of the original hazing
| abuse was worse than what their abusers perceived.
|
| School tolerance of abuse/bullying is essentially this hazing
| cycle occurring over generations, more slowly.
|
| That's not the only fucked up human psychology loop in play.
| Denial, stockholm syndrome, and of course, laziness all come
| into play.
| theonething wrote:
| We're strongly considering homeschooling our kid. We have
| reservations (read are scared of how hard it sounds compared to
| sending them off to school) but hearing about experiences like
| this move us in that direction.
|
| It sounds like a best of both worlds. Avoid bullies and other
| bs associated with institutional education and instead have a
| customized, curiosity driven education.
| poisonborz wrote:
| ...and also to keep the kid in an associal bubble.
| Socialisation and experiencing/handling all kinds of people
| in life is the most important skill to be learned in school.
| I woulnt want to give this up for comfort.
| theonething wrote:
| > and also to keep the kid in an associal bubble.
|
| There are other ways to socialize kids besides school. As I
| understand it, things like field trips and social
| gatherings are an important part of a well balanced
| homeschool experience.
|
| E.g. instead of just studying about government from books,
| take a field trip to city hall, observe a public meeting
| and talk to people there. Homeschooling gives you that
| freedom.
|
| Anecdotally, I personally know homeschooled young adults
| that are confident, have great social and communication
| skills and are doing very well in life thus far.
| dandanua wrote:
| The problem with bullies will never be solved if we don't solve
| the problem with teacher first.
|
| Teachers, in essence, is the most bullied class in social
| hierarchy. They have low wages, huge overtimes, tremendous
| responsibility of upbringing children, yet almost no real
| authority over them. It just doesn't make any sense.
|
| Because of this I'd bet that most teachers nowadays are either
| spineless, or bullies themselves. Teachers that can display a
| real leadership are miracles.
| kreelman wrote:
| Great that this has made it to the front page of Hacker News.
|
| So sad that this happens. I changed schools 5 times and only 2 of
| them had no bullying. It's true that it changes you. There are
| some good resilience changes that happen, but there are bad
| changes too.
|
| ...Unfortunately I think it is the human condition to want to
| have power over others. It would be awesome if there was some way
| to fix this, but we are all a bit broken I think.
| hristov wrote:
| This is very important to talk about. I think I still have issues
| from being bullied and I am in my 40s now. My issues are anger,
| but more importantly social anxiety and much worse social skills
| than I wish to have at this age.
|
| Just in case any psychologist are reading this, I would like to
| point out a type of bullying that I experienced but it is never
| talked about. It is basically sexual harassment by closeted
| homosexuals. One kind of assumes that homosexuals are these fey,
| thin mild mannered and fashionable kids, but in reality a lot of
| the fat nasty bullies were self hating closet homosexuals. I was
| always a target for them because I had this childhood disease
| that made me very thin and tall and pale, and apparently that is
| very attractive to those scumbags.
|
| And they bullied me verbally and physically and always made me
| feel like shit. The worst part is I did not know what was
| happening to me because I did not know much about homosexuality
| (I grew up in a communist regime that preferred to sweep that
| stuff under the rug). So I grew up thinking there was something
| seriously wrong with me.
|
| There is a lot of talk about bullying of gays in school, but
| there is also the problem of bullying of heterosexuals by
| homosexuals. To solve this, schools should teach their kids about
| homosexuality early. Probably as soon as puberty because by then
| these kids will be confronted by it. And while schools do teach
| that sexual harassments is wrong they should make it clear that
| the same holds true for homosexuals. I have a feeling that a lot
| of gays think they are special and above the general society
| rules about sexual harassment. Even in my forties I still get my
| drinks spiked from time to time! And most importantly teachers
| should be taught to recognize and prevent sexual harassment in
| the homosexual context as well as the hetero one.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I was moderately bullied, there was actually this one guy who
| gave me panic attacks and I'd go at great length to avoid him: eg
| was crossing the street or avoiding certain neighborhoods where
| we could've run into each-other. It didn't last too long and
| luckily I didn't get physically harmed too much, so I consider it
| didn't have a deep impact at the time but from time to time I
| still have a nightmare, something like once every 10 years or so,
| I guess it left some scars on my subconscious. Luckily I'm not
| easily bullied and nobody can affect me much except for people I
| really care about.
| mihaic wrote:
| One aspect of today's society that would have seemed strange to
| anyone 100 years ago is that any verbal/psychological abuse of
| any kind is bundled as more ok than minor violence.
|
| Violence is almost never the answer, but modern bullies seem to
| be artificially building situations where it's the only answer,
| since they know they'd get their way otherwise.
|
| It's true that many abusers become this way due to violence at
| home, but abandoning any option in responding to force with force
| seems absurd.
| scohesc wrote:
| I was bullied both in school and by my own father (who has
| Asperger's and a mean streak of narcissism) growing up -
| definitely suffering the long-term and forever consequences in my
| life because of it. Low self-esteem, no confidence in myself,
| can't talk to anybody without second guessing everything.
|
| I'm trying to pull myself out of the slump but after living on my
| own for 3 years I still have troubles with relationships - not
| trusting anybody, etc.
|
| The sooner we can identify children who are being abused at
| school, at home, and adopt corrective measures (ideally keeping
| the child at home instead of throwing them into the foster
| system), the better off society will be.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| FWIW, someone very close to me experienced a similar childhood
| and found CBT and Internal Family Systems therapy really
| helpful.
| scohesc wrote:
| Thanks for acknowledging and supporting - mental illness is
| such a hidden "we don't talk about this" thing in society and
| people don't pay a lot of attention to it because they can't
| easily directly observe it in others.
|
| Only recently I've been able to actually talk or mention my
| upbringing - I was always shamed and threatened never to tell
| anybody about what was going on or else "I'd rip the family
| apart". It's hard to fully realize the scale of the abuse
| until you metaphorically swim to the surface and stick your
| head out of the water to see the world around you with a
| different lens for the first time.
|
| I've been using a combination of strategies to try and find
| my way out of the mess I was thrown into - I've been seeing a
| psychiatrist for CBT sessions every 2-3 weeks for almost 10
| years and have found it helpful, along with attempting to
| make daily entries in a journal (the ADHD gets in the way
| sometimes heh).
|
| I'll definitely look into IFS therapy as well. I did some
| cursory reading and it seems like that's something that would
| help me.
| bored-econ wrote:
| I really wonder how many americans and asians here think, that
| schools in Europe are inherently less affected by bullying. I
| went to a public school in germany. I attended school from around
| 2000s-2010s, so i had a mixed bag young teachers affected by
| modern pedagogics, middle aged teachers and teachers who clearly
| showed influence of nazi like pedagogy (it's called ,,schwarze
| padagogik" (black pedagogy) in german an was popular until the
| late 70s.
|
| At least one girl and three boys dropped out of my high school
| year (we had 3 classes with around 20-30 students) explicitly
| because they had been bullied! Then there was at least one
| student, who repeated a year because of bullying. Then there were
| like two female and male students who got heavily bullied, but
| made it through high school without disturbances.
| codazoda wrote:
| This reminds me that I should write down the experiences I
| remember as a child, including being chased over three miles by
| half a dozen kids. I finally crossed into an older woman's yard,
| she recognized what was happening and asked me inside. I'll never
| forget the beautiful polar bear rug in her living room. She got
| her keys and drove me home.
|
| Lucky for me I sprouted between elementary and junior high, I
| also got meaner, and the problems stopped.
|
| I turned out okay but I'm sure it shaped me in various ways.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I wish we could be honest with our kids that sometimes you need
| to be mean in order to not be destroyed by mean people.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I consider people who aren't honest with children about this
| to be bad people:
|
| They're helping the abuse by lying to those children in their
| role as a trusted adult.
| haswell wrote:
| I hear what you're saying, but I think it's important to
| take a more nuanced viewpoint rather than reducing such
| parents to "bad people".
|
| I think it's fair to criticize such people, or point out
| why it's a problematic approach, but many parents are just
| trying to do what they believe is the right thing,
| misguided though it may be.
|
| Education and correcting misconceptions is important, and
| applying a binary mindset to anyone who shields their kids
| in this way is not going to move the needle, nor is it
| likely a fair representation of these individuals.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| If a parent were to ask a known pedophile to babysit you
| wouldn't blink at calling them bad people.
|
| It's the same thing, this is clearly harmful. If you're
| uncomfortable with calling them bad people, then call
| them bad parents.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Everyone is trying to do what they think is right -- you
| can read the pro-social statements of many dictators.
|
| I think teaching your kids not to defend themselves is
| obviously bad parenting -- and the people who do that, to
| the result of their own children getting hurt, are bad
| people.
| david422 wrote:
| This is a difficult lesson to learn and also can be a
| difficult lesson to act upon (unfortunately).
| CalRobert wrote:
| Unfortunately what I mostly learned is that money allows
| you to shield yourself to some extent. The true appeal of a
| "nice" neighbourhood isn't the fancy houses, it's that the
| police might care about you. The appeal of a private school
| (aside from hobnobbing with kids of rich parents) is that
| bullies can get kicked out of a private school much more
| easily than a public one.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Similarly, to have a tolerant society, intolerance can't be
| tolerated.
| p0pcult wrote:
| For the downvoters:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| ilaksh wrote:
| This illustrates the core problem: victim blaming.
| evancox100 wrote:
| Where is any blame being assigned to anyone?
| solumunus wrote:
| I think you're replying to the wrong comment.
| progrus wrote:
| My parents basically said "If you keep getting bullied, assault
| the bully, try to draw blood, and we'll take you out for ice
| cream if you get suspended."
|
| Highly recommended for any parents of boys out there - it is the
| best way to address this problem.
| bradlys wrote:
| I mean - great advice if you're as big as the bully. As a kid
| who was often smaller than kids 2-3 younger than him all the
| way to his senior year in high school... Can't say that advice
| would go over well.
| troon-lover wrote:
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > we'll take you out for ice cream if you get suspended.
|
| Is that before or after their arrest, incarceration and
| juvenile court hearing?
| dsego wrote:
| It can also backfire, depending on the kid's psyche. A troubled
| child could imaginably interpret that as carte blanche and
| overreact to a perceived threat or retaliate and get into
| serious trouble.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Well shit I guess they should just do nothing and die then.
|
| My decision to cross the street could result in me getting
| hit by a car, I'm still going to do so. Life is risk, these
| types of comments are useless.
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