Last week at Liberty middle school in Liberty Missouri, and 8th grade bully beat a younger, smaller boy so bad he required 4 days of hospitalization (story).
This was of course in a school with the typical “No Bully” signs everywhere.
The parents had notified the principal thru certified letter of the problem with the boy but the school ignored it. The bully though had had several reprimands for previous incidents.
Now ever since the horrible tragedy at Columbine there has been increased attention on reducing school bullying. From my experience, it varies by school. In many cases teachers and administrators look the other way or sometimes even encourage it. Heck, IMO, PE teachers, were often bullies themselves back in the day and relive it as paid staff. They also often ignore bullies because they make great athletes.
In my day (1970s), schools didn’t give a shit. Boys will be boys, snitches get stitches, etc.
Today, schools have certainly gotten better at paying lip service to stopping it and holding assemblies to say "bullying is bad, mmmkay?". As far as actually *doing *anything, it varies widely based on the school and even the specific personnel within a school.
My kids' elementary school was great. Bullies got one suspension, and if that didn't straighten them out, then they were gone. No, we don't care that you spent a lot of money on a house in this neighborhood to get into the top-rated school in the city; we don't care if you threaten to go over our heads to the school board;yes we know who you are, but we don't care - if you can't discipline your little shit, he/she doesn't get to be here. Immediate expulsion. Worked great. My kids loved elementary school and felt safe.
Middle school — not so much. The first Vice Principal would take any complaints, and immediately address the situation and put a stop to it. She was so good, she got promoted to be the principal at another school. The new one will take your complaint, tell you there wouldn’t be a problem if your kid didn’t make himself such an easy target, sigh and begrudgingly call the other kid in, listen to the bully deny everything, and conclude we can’t tell what really happened. Try not to do it again.
So basically, it depends on the school and the administation.
The above basically describes the situation is my school district. It’s a big improvement over my elementary school days {in the same district}, when the target of the bully{s} would have to run all the way home.
Unfortunately, our school district’s “zero tolerance policy” is much, much too broad.
Nowadays kids get expelled for “incidents” that may or may not have warranted a simply 3 day suspension 30 years ago…
While the progress schools have made in combating bullying are laudable, in the end you have to be willing to get rid of kids who are threats to other kids and schools are still reluctant to do that. Violent kids are a cancer that can ruin the education of the kids around them. That cancer needs to be cut out.
Ain’t nothing going to change, no matter how much money or hot air they throw at this issue, until someone, somewhere finally acknowledges that children who bully - are being bullied at home. In truth there are boatloads of parents who bully their children into compliance on a daily basis.
You won’t stop bullying if you aren’t willing to acknowledge what everyone knows to be true. And every single school teacher knows this to be true.
I saw that article the other day and was floored. That bully should not ever be allowed to step foot in that school again. And the family of the kid who got beat up was talking about suing the school district, but nothing about legal action against the bully’s parents. My first reaction would be to press charges against the bully, let him spend a couple years in juvie.
I going to go way out on a limb here and say that bullying among human children cannot be stopped. I know of no culture, present or past, where bullying among children did not exist. If anyone can cite such a culture I’d really like to read about it (no snark, I’m being honest).
The problem is that bullying seems to be innate among humans (and an awful lot of animals). Physically asserting dominance is how things are worked out “in the wild”. Among humans, the issue seems to get better with age, but never completely disappears. Once the reasoning and judgement part of the brain develops sufficiently (generally thought to be mid- to late 20’s), bullying is used less and other strategies - like cooperation - are used more. Until that time, asserting dominance through physical and verbal intimidation is often the default. In working with youth for many years I have seen countless instances where, even among a group of youths who all had been victims of bullying, a “pecking order” will be established and bullying behaviours will emerge. When I would sit down with the newly emerged bully and point out that they were engaging in the same behaviours that brought them into this group, they often rationalized and downplayed their actions.
It’s pretty clear to me that the behaviour is rooted in the feeling of power that comes from it. I’m not sure that feeling can be erradicated among humans in general, much less among children. Like a drug, the good feeling requires more and more perceived power to get the same result. You know - power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As long as power feels good, bullys will exist. If bullying were to be magically stopped in schools, it would simply move somewhere else.
TL&DR - The question should be “Have schools done enough to minimize the opportunities for bullying to take place and punish it appropriately when it occurs?”.
At the start of every year, and every couple months after, you pass out anonymous ballots to every student telling them to write the names of three bullies on it. You collect them all, find the most popular names written, and with 100% accuracy you will have the entire bully structure of your school right in front of you. You make the teachers of these bullying students aware of this fact, and when there’s trouble and they are involved you’ll know who’s guilty (along with other info from teachers, students etc.) You inform these students if they are involved in too many future incidents they will be suspended and eventually expelled. And you follow thru. You give up on the bad apples because there is no reforming them. They will end up in prison, dead, or some combination regardless.
Until, of course, the popular kids lead by the bully all write down the name of the social outcast that everyone dislikes. Now, the kids have thwarted your plan and the downtrodden may get even worse treatment.
It’s worth noting that the majority of kids are bystanders, and while some are unable to move themselves to action, others implicitly support the bully’s actions. The kids who get picked on are usually (but not always) very well liked by everyone else.
Not if all that’s done is moan, but making it clear as soon as they are detected that both are Unacceptable Young Sir/Lady does.
My school baaarely had it, because it got cut short by anybody who saw it. I got bullied by other kids once, in K1. The brother of one of my classmates saw it and did a decent performance as a “7-or-8-year-old avalanche” (keep in mind, when you’re 4 or 5, 7 or 8 is almost an adult). Any bullying by children got nipped in the bud.
Sadly, bullying by teachers wasn’t, but hey, adults are always right, right?
I think people will always harbor certain anti-social feelings. People inclined towards feelings of arrogance, hateration, and jealousy will feel these things no matter how much we try to shame them. I also don’t think it’s realistic to expect all the kids in the class to love one another.
But I think behaviors can be effectively controlled. If the mere accusation of bullying was enough to get a kid expelled, I think we’d see a huge drop in bullying/teasing behaviors. The kids who would continue to bully would be the same minority of kids who break all the other rules. But the majority of kids would keep their mean thoughts to themselves.
Now, I don’t think we should be so harsh that we’d expel kids for just being mean. Little girls love to roll their eyes and stick out their tongues at their nemesis. That’s a crime that deserves an extra homework assignment or recess period spent in the library, not expulsion. But it should still be reigned in.
Workplace harrassment still exists, despite all the decades of HR training we’ve had to sit through. But I don’t think this signifies how “natural” workplace harrassment is. I just think that workplace harrassers are afraid enough of the consequences to stop doing it.
That’s a problem that parents used to be able to solve pretty easily: sticks and stones, yada yada. Seems to me that most of the suicides that resulted from purely verbal abuse were by teens who were outcasts in their own homes as well, neglected, or were coddled and the parents inadvertently gave the bullies power by saying, “OMG! That’s horrible! How can they say that to you!” When I encountered that kind of thing my folks just explained to me that my worth isn’t tied up in other people’s opinion, unless they matter. Random mean girls shouldn’t matter. Who the hell are they that I should care what they think?
This is a case where anti-bullying campaigns saying “Words DO hurt” is not very helpful.
That was assault; it was a crime. I don’t think it should be called bullying either. In fact, if the kid had a skull fracture so severe that he was leaking spinal fluid, some kind of attempted homicide charge is appropriate, IMO. Anyway, that kid needs to be charged with something. I’m not big on charging juveniles as adults, but if the assailant is in a secure facility until he’s 21, it won’t break my heart.
I had a longer post, which my cat wiped out by walking across a touch-screen. Generally, I agreed that bullies need to be dealt with sternly, but I also think that kids who are consistent victims, particularly the ones who are being victimized by the class at large, out to be offered some kind of intervention as well. I think some of these kids start off with slightly underdeveloped social skills, and the more isolated they are, the more behind they become in their ability to deal with other people effectively. Some gentle lessons in remedial social skills in a safe place where they can also talk about their feelings of having been a victim should be at least offered (not required, though). I don’t want that to sound like I’m blaming the victim, but social skills are like anything else: some people are better at them than other people. We give extra help to kids with speech impediments, reading problems, and kids getting behind in math, why shouldn’t kids whose social skills lag get a boost as well?
It won’t eliminate bullying, to try to help kids develop better social skills, but it might keep the kids who are being constantly piled on by the class at large from being “that kid.” It also might give the powers that be a clearer opportunity to detect a real problem that hasn’t been diagnosed. I’m pretty sure a bullied kid in my public elementary school had mild autism, now that I look back. He was fairly bright, and it never would have been diagnosed in the 70s, but it still gets missed a lot now.
Again, please don’t see this as victim-blaming. Bullies are a problem all by themselves, and should be dealt with swiftly and sternly, but I think bullying is a multi-faceted problem.
