WHat if the bully knows how to fight dirty too?
What if the bully has 5 friends who know how to fight dirty?
Did you not learn that reporting the bully is the only way to stop the bully?
Even if you develop a reputation for violence, how does that help others?
Yes, you should have been more specific. You made a number of sweeping generalisations about a sensitive subject.
And all the evidence available to me in this thread indicates that you are unsympathetic to victims of bullying.
You post comments like ‘Most bullying doesn’t result in lifelong damage’; ‘I was strong enough mentally and physically, and socially adept enough to not be universally thought of as weak by the strong.’
Once kids know this is your attitude, they won’t talk to you. How can you possibly how many kids like this there are?
Also you simply announce that you have been described by friends as ‘easy to talk to’. What sort of reference is this?! What matters is if scared victims will confide in you.
Then don’t make sweeping generalisations!
If 31,000 calls are made annually about bullying, then yes it’s a problem.
You and a few members of your family don’t think bullying is a problem. Well, that is incredibly weak evidence.
The site was set up in response to the problem.
It’s good to know that you think they are biased. :rolleyes: Any evidence to back that up?
It’s typical that you ‘suspect’ something. Do you think 1 person made 31,000 calls?
Oh, we were always told that we should take our problems to the proper authority figure but most children didn’t. Why? Because even if they weren’t a social pariah before they would most certainly become one when everyone figured out they were a rat. I learned in 1st grade that I could not depend on my teacher or the principal to protect me from bullies.
I can’t save the whole world. I’d be more interested in making sure I was protected or that my child was protected.
Marc
I appreciate that there used to be little support from teachers. There was none at my school, for example. It doesn’t change the principle that you need staff involved to deal with the bullying.
Nobody is asking you to save the whole world. :rolleyes:
Don’t you consider your School a community? If your child tells you about others being bullied, do you tell them to keep quiet and not get involved?
Given that I never came into contact with an adminstration that could effectively eliminate bullying I’m not quite sure if that principle holds any water.
Well, if you prefer it another way, I can’t save the whole community. My primary concern is for me and mine. So while telling my kid that he should hit the bully back might not help your kid I’m still going to give that advice. Because in my experience that’s been the only effective way of dealing with bullies.
Marc
And with this witty riposte, brickbacon’s opponents slink away, recognizing the futility of argument against such a keen intellect.
Reporting a bully got you the reputation of being a snitch and many more fights, and the “old folks in charge” did not do anything anyway. For the 5 friends issue, it was very “useful” and fairly easy to catch each one alone. They were always a lot less brave when no buddies were around. It was always amusing how many badasses were not so bad without their “backup”. You see, in an all out street fight, the idea is to do damage any way you can. The bully expects you to be incapable of fighting, and is real shocked when he catches a hard elbow or headbutt to the face (for example). Even if you lose, you’ve made it costly and painful for the other person. You may be bleeding, but so are they. They decide to bother someone else, because it just isn’t worth it to pick on you anymore. They learn you are not a push over like they thought. They start to think they may not win next time. Most bullies really don’t know how to fight, they are relying on their size and your fear. Above all, bullies are cowards. Use that against them.
What is better, to be a victim, or to have a “reputation”? My troubles all ended when I dropped that football player. I didn’t get a “rep” because plenty of people saw what happened. There was no “Steve started it”, no claims of victory from him. A few ridiculously weak sloppy punches from him. One good one from me. The end.
There’s a bit of a paradox caught up in the issue of how kids should deal with bullies. On the one hand, we don’t want to encourage violence. “Avoid solving problems with violence” is a norm that people need to master in order to function in society. As you say above, responding to a bully with violence may do no good if the bully is a better fighter or has friends willing to join in, both of which are likely. I’d also be concerned that if teachers and administrators permitted the targets of bullying to respond with violence then bullies would just find a way to exploit this loophole. A bully could start pounding on some innocent kid and later claim that the victim had been the real bully and he was just “fighting back against bullying”. Given the Machiavellian politics of the schoolyard, there could be plenty of “witnesses” willing to come forward and corroborate the story.
On the other hand, as MGibson says, reporting the bully often does no good. It may even leave the target in a worse position than before. Anecdotally, it seems like almost every case I’ve heard of where a target successfully ended the bullying involved the target beating (or at least hurting) a bully in a fight. But not every target would be physically capable of this. They might be very badly hurt themselves in the process, and then we’re back to the beginning again.
So I think reporting the problem is the best way to go…provided there’s a good system in place that takes bullying seriously. This means punishing offenders with more than a slap on the wrist, but also trying to help them learn not to be bullies and how to interact with people in a less aggressive way.
One thing we also need to get rid of is the idea that someone who reports the problem to an authority figure is a “snitch”. I don’t believe anyone is expressing that here, but it really does only make the problem worse.
Why is someone a loser for being a “snitch?” Now, naturally the bullies in question will say so-they don’t want to get in trouble! But I’ve often seen this from older adults-and from some people here, and it puzzles me. To me, trying to get someone to help you solve a problem doesn’t make one a loser. Sometimes, you have to admit that a problem is too big for you to solve alone.
Fighting back can work in SOME instances. But not for everyone. SteveG1, it worked for you. But, some people are NOT physically capable of beating up their bullies. Often, the kid ends up getting slaughtered. Several of the girls who were picking on me were not only physically stronger than me, but they were the type who wouldn’t hesitate to use a weapon, or get some of their scarier friends after me. I couldn’t keep beating up everyone. As for bringing a weapon myself*, being expelled for having a weapon isn’t exactly something I’d reccomend.
Okay, so to solve a problem, we may have to go to a teacher, or principal. Why is that so bad? Is there something wrong with NOT wanting to be harassed? Is there something bad about wanting the abuse to stop? We always wonder why women in abusive relationships don’t go to the police, or leave the situation. Well, perhaps they learned early on that reporting abuse only makes it worse.
*I do remember at one point taking my little seam ripper from my sewing kit and putting in my pocket after home ec. Just in case.
I already said that I should have been more specific. Although I can see where what I said is ambiguous, I doubt most people thought my comments applied to every country in the world. Sometimes I forget that people in foreign countries are reading this, so I apologize for that. However, I think most people realized that my comments applied to US schools.
The description is relevant because you were making a statement about my character based on a few comments in one thread on an internet messageboard. Every piece of evidence available to me in my real life leads me to the opposite conclusion you have come to.
Just because I may have a different opinion of how big the problem is doesn’t mean I can’t be an empathetic person. When I was a mediator, my job typically wasn’t giving evaluative feedback, it was to listen and try to solve problems(which I did).
But how big a problem is it? Those calls could have been made by 1/3 the number of people. How are we supposed to evaluate how big a problem it is if we don’t have any solid evidence?
I completely disagree with your second point. What do you think it is that makes someone an expert on something? Typically, it involves intensive study and experience in the field. Most of the family members I’ve mentioned have done that. Just because they didn’t write a book about it, doesn’t mean their authority on the issue should be called into question. I think they are more than qualified to speak about childhood bullying.
Did I say one person made 31k calls? Don’t be insulting. The reason why their bias matters is because it gives them a reason suppress anything that doesn’t fit within their argument. Especially since their jobs depend on the fact that they are able to substantiate the need to have such a service. It’s like linking to an H&R Block to bolster a claim that we don’t need to simplify the tax code (the US tax code). Clearly, they have a stake in the matter. Doesn’t mean they are wrong, just that there opinion is biased.
Besides, the fact that they chose not to present the number in any context that could help the reader understand how big the problem is, is suspicious to me. Why not say X% of kids have called our hotline reporting A, B, and C. They don’t even make it clear if the 31k is the number of calls or different people calling. That seems like a vital piece of information. I would like to know why the following questions were not answered?
How many *different people * actually called the hotline?
How severe was the bullying they experienced?
Is the fact that 31k calls were made statistically troubling based on the number of students in UK schools, the incidences of other infractions, etc?
Bullies do maintain the status quo. There are two types of bullies: the lone predators and the group leaders. The single bully will torment the victim either alone or in plain view of others. Picture a bully embarassing them by flicking their ear, pulling out their chair, tripping them, and doing many other sneaky things which the teacher won’t notice and for which the victim will be the one actually punished. “I didn’t do it, he did it” “Oh! How can you accuse Bruce, he is such a helpful student” Then there is the other type of bully. The group leader bully who conspires with his lackies to pull awful pranks on the vicitim and other horrible things. This may be the wost bully, who posseses a school-yardlike power over all the other students. Know this; a bully rarely ever has a bully. You never hear about a bully having a bully and for good reason.
A bully enforces the status quo by sending a message to those bullied and also those who are not bullied. You are either a kid who is “alright”, a bully, or a victim. The interesting thing is that bullying oftentimes is most prevalent in elementary school and peaks during middle school. In high school there is less bullying, or perhaps bullying which is more subtle. Finally, you rarely hear about bullying in college. I think that it all has to do with the bully maintaining the school yard structure of jocks, nerds, goths, and so on. This structure is exaggerated in middle school with divisions between jock and nerd sharply drawn. Think of the typical middle school bully getting the best lunch table, the best kick ball, the front of the line, and so on and so forth. And, at the same time, putting the other kids in their place. There are benefits for being a bully.
As for when they are “not kids anymore”, it seems to transform into something else in high school, college, and in the work force. Then the structure is modified from the cafeteria to the office, the wants are not the best seat on the bus, rather the new position everyone is veying for from the boss. The things they want and the ways to get those things have changed.
Are humans the only species that has bullies? I’ve seen my dogs be both bullies and bullied when they get in pack situations (e.g. at the dog park or when I bring them with me to visit my mother who has 2 dogs of her own). Certainly wolves have a pecking order and the omega seems to take a lot of crap in the documentaries I’ve seen.
If other species show bully-like behavior, would their reasons be all that different from the reasons why humans do? When I’ve watched the dogs, I’m not sure if the bullying is enforcing the status quo, but it does seem to be to enforce the individual dog’s position in the hierarchy (which may be the same thing).
For example, one of my dogs is usually the low dog in the group when we visit mom and her two dogs. Often when another dog is introduced to the group of four, one of my mother’s dogs (the one that’s the boss dog normally) will suddenly jump on my dog and force him onto his back. (Actually, it doesn’t happen much anymore now that we know to expect it, but it used to before we knew what was going on.) My poor dog wasn’t messing with the alpha dog or doing anything but going along with his doggie business and suddenly he was jumped on. For the most part, the dogs all got along well, it was only when a new dog was introduced that we’d see this. I’m not sure if the alpha dog was trying to show the new dog that she was tough by demonstrating it on my poor dog or just show that at least she wasn’t the weakest.
Thanks for the apology - this is basically a US board, but I hope we foreign chaps can provide another insight.
I think also that experiences in the UK are reasonably relevant to the US.
I appreciate that I know practically nothing about you in real life. However you must realise that this is a message board environment. Of course you are welcome to post strong views, but there is very little point in saying here ‘I know this’, or ‘my family knows this’. The only way here to turn your claims into proof is to post a cite.
Your brief comments on bullying in this thread did not give a sympathetic impression - and since you have posted no cites, I have nothing else to go on.
Here are some of your quotes:
‘bullying wouldn’t be a big deal now if it weren’t for kids being coddled by their overprotective parents’
‘The main problem isn’t kids being physically tormented, it’s the fact that being picked on bruises their precious egos’
‘All I’m saying is that the dangers of bullying are dramatically overstated. A large part of this is due to parents whose kids are soft and can’t deal with anything that damages their fragile egos’
‘You need to get over it and stop being a baby. A scar is not a serious physical injury.’
‘I think that most of the bullying that goes on in schools is basically harmless.’
‘Of course it’s a problem when kids are getting put into the hospital, but thats not that common’
‘This has created a large group of people who freak out as soon as life hands them some lemons.’
Yes, but having strong views on whether there is really a problem is not the best way to reassure nervous victims. To draw a parallel, many years ago there was a BBC documentary on one UK regional police force dealing with rape claims. (We all know that this can be a terribly difficult and upsetting crime to investigate.) The police used male detectives to interview the females, in a crowded police station, and the detectives had views like ‘how were you dressed?’ ‘did you lead him on?’ ‘what is your sexual history?’. After a storm of protest, future claims of rape were dealt with in a private room, by female police officers who had been trained for the interviews.
You seem to evaluate evidence by what you already believe. Not a scientific approach. **There is solid evidence for the UK ** - 31,000 calls annually. What proof would you need that there is a bullying problem in the US?!
Bear in mind that it’s prefectly possible for victims to be too scared to report anything. They may refuse to speak to a stranger on the telephone. This means the number of victims could be much larger.
As I said, **on this message board ** there is limited value to personal claims (especially when they claim something doesn’t exist).
In particular why do these members of your family: ‘My aunt and uncle have both worked at a University for 30+ years. She is an administrator in charge of an EEO program. He is a professor. A different Aunt is a professor at that university, and has been for about 8 years.’ have any knowledge of School bullying?
My family have approximately the same experience as yours - why do you dismiss their knowledge?
Your instant reaction to my evidence was to challenge it. Because it didn’t agree with your belief. It’s insulting to me that you argue here without evidence.
Wow. A registered charity set up to help victims must be biased. Because you say so.
Oh, you mean solid evidence like that which you’ve presented to support your position? Let’s see, you’ve made 28 posts in this thread and repeatedly claimed to have made an “extensive study” of the topic of school bullying, but you still haven’t produced a single citation, quote, paraphrase, or even a title. And it’s not like people haven’t asked for them.
The reason for this should now be obvious to everyone: you’re lying. I suppose it’s possible that you really did once read something about bullying, but if you did you don’t remember it. Either way, you have no special experience or knowledge of the subject and no support for your opinion, as is evidenced by your own posts.
What’s really obnoxious about this isn’t merely that you’re a blowhard, it’s that you couldn’t even bother to spend a few minutes with a search engine to help you to better fake it. I haven’t claimed to be an expert on the subject, but it didn’t take me long to establish that the library of the School of Education at the major American university where I’m sitting right now has several books on the topic of school bullying. I’ll cut and paste a few titles from the catalogue:
Bullying in American schools : a social-ecological perspective on prevention and intervention / edited by Dorothy L. Espelage, Susan M. Swearer.
Publisher: Mahwah, N.J. : L. Erlbaum Associates, 2004.
Bully-proofing your school : a comprehensive approach for middle schools / Marla Bonds, Sally Stoker.
Publisher: Longmont, Colo. : Sopris West, c2000.
Bully busters : a teacher’s manual for helping bullies, victims, and bystanders / Arthur M. Horne, Christi L. Bartolomucci, Dawn Newman-Carlson.
Publisher: Champaign, Ill. : Research Press, c2003.
Peer harassment in school : the plight of the vulnerable and victimized / Jaana Juvonen, Sandra Graham, editors.
Publisher: New York : Guilford Press, c2001.
And the list goes on. There’s not a single title in the catalogue that says anything like “Bullying: The Overstated Problem” or “Bullying: Are We Too Concerned?” They’re all books about the serious problem of bullying and how to deal with it. Apparently a fair few people who are real experts in the field disagree with your opinion that bullying is an insignificant issue.
Of course, books I haven’t read (I’d be happy to go look at them, but they’re all checked out – looks like someone here must be doing an extensive study!) and that those of you out there in cyberspace may not have access to at all don’t help much. Another few minutes with the search engine turned up this short, easy, brochure for parents on bullying, prepared by ERIC with the support of the US Department of Education:
http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps2250/bullying.html
This is written for the layman so there aren’t a lot of statistics, but it does say that about 15% of students are regularly involved in bullying either as the targets or the aggressors. Even if I shared your revolting and sociopathic view that human suffering can be “statistically insignificant” then I think I’d have to admit that one in seven is a significant number. The pamphlet provides a cite for this figure, which I will also paste in here:
Olweus, D. 1993. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. ED 384 437.
Note that this is pre-Columbine.
The conclusion to this pamphlet says, and I quote, “Bullying is a serious problem that can affect a student’s academic and social progress.” What it does not say is “Bullying is not a serious problem that students could deal with easily if they weren’t mollycoddled by their overprotective parents.”
But that’s just one source. Here’s another link for parents:
http://www.focusas.com/Bullying.html
Here’s a link from a mental health site, based primarily on data from Northern Europe (a region unlikely to be affected by Columbine hysteria). The article says that Scandanavia has an unusually low frequency of bullying compares to the rest of Europe, but even there they seem to feel it’s an issue worthy of concern:
http://www.cbu.dataphone.se/EngBarnrapp/bullying.html
And for variety here’s something on workplace bullying among adults:
There’s a lot more, but you get the idea. And that’s just what I, an admitted non-expert, could easily dig up and browse through online. What I was unable to find was anything to support your claim that bullying is not a serious problem and that parents shouldn’t get so worked up over it. If anything, the experts seem to feel it’s underaddressed. You’ve had ample opportunity to come up with something, anything, to bolster your contrary position, but the best you can do is this:
*Not only am I questioning the authority of your relatives (spending all day working at a university surrounded by adults makes one an expert on childhood bullying?), I’m questioning your account of their views. Heck, I’ll go ahead and question their very existence. For all I know you’re an orphan. You haven’t provided as much as an anecdote about what anyone in your family has ever said on the subject of bullying, so why should we take your word for it that they’re all big experts and all agree with you?
If your mother the schoolteacher wants to come on here and offer her views then I hope her opinions would be treated with more respect than you’ve shown those of the teachers that have posted in this thread, but I don’t see any posts from her. No matter how qualified she may be to speak on the subject, she isn’t doing it here – you are. And your qualifications are non-existant.
No, we have a cat who is a bully. She’s our smallest cat, about half the size of the next smallest. She stalks and terrorizes certain of the other cats. She especially likes to perch on the side of the bed and make this weird noise when one of her targets passes by. She sounds like a high pitched siren warming up. If they bolt, she does nothing. If they don’t bolt, she attacks.
If one of her victims is on a lap, she’ll jump up and make that noise in an attempt to drive them away. A sharp “Cosmo!” stops the noise momentarily, but she’ll pick it up again in a minute. If a victim is eating, she has to eat. If a victim is drinking, she has to drink. What’s funny is that if I make eye contact with her, she chirps and purrs and acts like nothing is going on.
No problem. I agree that many issues are relevant.
Accept that I never claimed to “know” something. I expressed my opinion. My opinion is mostly based on reading cites that argue that bullying is a big deal, yet fail to make a solid case detailing the breadth and depth of the problem. I could post similar studies and explain why I don’t buy their arguments if you’d like.
Also, I only brought my family’s history in to this argument because someone asked me to.
You took many of those out of context. Besides, I did post a cite outlining the number of violent incidents that happen in US schools.
OK, but your analogy is flawed. Even if I thought someone I was dealing with was a baby, I wouldn’t ask them questions that would make them feel uncomfortable. I don’t think I would have a hard time doing this.
If you are claiming this is an instance of “who I am” speaking louder than “what I say”, then I think my personal character (of which you know little about) is germane.
The number of calls is not solid evidence unless that can put those numbers into context. You would need to know how many different people called, how many students there are in the UK, etc. The number itself means very little out of context.
Also, I have never stated it wasn’t a problem, just that the problem is overstated.
Show me where I dismissed your knowledge, or your family’s experience?
I love how you chastise me for providing personal claims, yet many of the posts in this thread are people talking about the ways bullies used to torment them.
You don’t think bullying happens in college?
You provided no evidence. You provided a number of calls taken by a call center. That number means nothing all by itself. It gives no information about how big the problem is. That’s the crux of the argument. Nobody has denied that there is bullying.
Besides, why shouldn’t I scrutinize clearly specious “evidence”.
Not because I say so,** because they are a registered charity set up to help victims**. Their job is to help people that claim to be victims of bullying. Of course, they are biased. This is common sense.
Common sense: the sum total of one’s prejudices.
It is not “common sense” so much as your presumptive inference.
There are (for example) rape counselling centers in the U.S. where men are defined as the enemy and all attention by any man toward a woman who did not explicitly seek that attention is considered a prelude to rape (or, in extreme cases, attempted rape). There are also many rape counselling centers in the U.S. where they discourage that attitude on the grounds that it trivializes actual rapes and damages the effort to reduce rape in this country. Your claim regardding the UK anti-bullying group is equivalent to presuming that a rape counselling center is biased toward over-reporting rape without knowing any information regarding that particular center.
Are you really that thick? There is a reason why I said you were a joke. In fact, I figured I wouldn’t even respond to your incoherent ramblings, but since you decided to slander me, I figured I should. I did provide a cite. You clearly don’t read very well. It outlined how many violent incidents happen in US schools. Those numbers don’t leave very much room for frequent incidences of bullying that result in hospitalization. As I said in post #41:
One reason why it’s harder to find people doing studies supporting my opinion is that there is no money involved. You can’t visit schools (like many did at my old school) and tour the country saying the problem is overstated. It is not a matter of not having evidence, it’s that fact that my side of the issue can’t be sensationalized and commodified.
Pretty slanderous statement. Why would I lie about something like that? What would be the point? Clearly, you don’t accept their expertise in the matter, so why would I lie? For the record, nothing I have every said on this board has been a lie. It’s pretty sad that you resort to calling me a liar because you think the study I’ve done on the matter is invalid. That is a truly one of the more pathetic acts of cowardice I have ever seen.
That’s my point. Books like that typically don’t get made. You can be sure that some people will buy books on why bullying is a huge problem. You have overprotective parents, educators, weak kids who were bullied (who have become weak adults), etc. This is a built in advantage. It has nothing to do with being right or wrong, just that is isn’t a market for people advocating a sensible response to bullying. It’s made even more difficult because nobody is saying that there isn’t a problem.
Except that if you actually read those cites, you see that they often make outrageous and inconsistent claims. It seems like many of these “experts” just throw shit against a wall and hope it sticks. I briefly skimmed your cites and came up with this. I will find more if you like, but I think this illustrates my point fairly well. One cite says:
“Bullies appear to have little anxiety and to possess strong self-esteem. There is little evidence to support the contention that bullies victimize others because they feel bad about themselves. […] Victims of bullying may be anxious, insecure, and cautious and suffer from low self-esteem, rarely defending themselves or retaliating when confronted by students who bully them. They may lack social skills and friends and thus are often already socially isolated. Victims tend to be close to their parents and may have parents who can be described as overprotective.”
contrary to what many people here have expressed. Another one of your cite claims the following:
"*Bullies, as a rule, have more aggressive attitudes towards their social surroundings and a positive attitude about violence. Further, it has been shown that bullies are steered by impulses, they need to dominate others and do not show any empathy for the victim [5,6,9]. **Many studies have found that under the aggressive surface, the perpetrators are insecure and have low self-esteem ** * [10-12]."
One cite I found states the following:
*"Why Do Some Children and Adolescents Become Victims?
-Victims signal to others that they are insecure, primarily passive and will not retaliate if they are attacked.
-Consequently, bullies often target children who complain, appear physically or emotionally weak and seek attention from peers.
-Studies show that victims have a higher prevalence of overprotective parents or school personnel; as a result, they often fail to develop their own coping skills.
-Many victims long for approval; even after being rejected, some continue to make ineffective attempts to interact with the victimizer."*
Most of these cites are bullshit. They make claims that they don’t back up. They state anywhere between 80% and 5% of people are bullied/bullies. There numbers are pulled completely out of their asses. Playing dueling cites doesn’t bring us any closer to what they objective truth is.
First, every cite you guys provide states that childhood bullies grow up to become criminals and thugs, do you not think my family members would see some of them in the college environment? Not to mention the fact that bullying doesn’t stop in high school. Your own cite detailed the extent of workplace bullying. Do you not think these people went to college? Did they stop being bullies for those 4 years?
You don’t have to accept my account of their history or their opinions if you don’t wish to. I don’t feel the need to convince you of something you never plan on accepting.
I worked on a committee dedicated to this subject for 2 years. That is probably more than you have done.
I tried to convince my mom that she should pay 15 bucks to argue with some guy on the internet but she wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. If your whole claim amounts to questioning my authority or the existence of my family, then there is very little I can do to convince you.
Yes, a rape counseling center would be bias. First, because every crime/problem reported to an authority is not true. Plenty of people will claim they were raped or severely bullied when they, in fact, were not. The job of a counseling center is not to investigate these claims. These people’s claims are not scrutinized. That alone will mean there numbers are off. Plus, any center that reports the number of calls rather than the number of people calling should be considered suspect. That is a big difference; the former gives the reader an entirely different perspective of the problem.
I did not say that the center was biased and would therefore deliberately forge number solely due to that bias. I said that they way they manipulated numbers and failed to put them into context leads me to believe that they would. The bias that exists at a rape center may or may not portend such a proclivity. I would have to look at the specific claims they made to made such a claim.
So the only people who can be expected to make unbiased review of a subject are those who knows nothing about a subject?