Same here. I was actually advised - by my high school’s principal and guidance counselor - to drop out of high school if I couldn’t handle the bullying. They attempted to make this solution palatable by offering to let me take my GED test early.
Lawsuit hell. There should be criminal charges — against the bully, against his parents, and against the school administrators, for starters. I’m surprised they didn’t take pictures with tumbs-up signs.
Y’know, almost every time I mention that my two oldest daughters are homeschooled, I get the question “well, doesn’t their socialization suffer?” Yeah, right. As if these bullies are the kind of people I want my teenage daughters “socializing” with. In fact, one of the (numerous) reasons behind the decision to homeschool was based on an experience my oldest daughter had with bullies, and the principal’s decision to do nothing about it. My oldest daughter, in 7th grade at the time, was harrassed daily by a group of about 4 girls. They called her a slut, told her she was dirty (they never saw our water bills!), told her she was “too fat to be allowed to live”, and on and on. Our daughter would cry, and beg us not to send her to school, almost every morning. Finally, I called the principal, and reported all of this, and was told “we can’t do anything about it unless they threaten physical violence”. Well, about two weeks later, one of the girls told my daughter she was going to “pound [her] face in the ground”, so I thought ‘aha! the threat of physical violence! now action will be taken!’ but, sadly, not; I was then told that no action could be taken unless actual physical violence occurred!! What? My daughter had to get her face pounded into the ground before anything could be done?? That was her last year at public school.
I don’t believe that zero-tolerance policies should have to be in place before schools will react in a reasonable way to abhorrent behavior! The kind of thing that’s in this article happens all the time, in schools all across the country, and it’s sad beyond words. As others have said, I’m not one for frivoulous law suits, but if the school boards were hit in the pocket often enough, maybe they’d get up off their asses and do something!
norinew, if I have kids (I don’t want to right now and wouldn’t anyway due to my current living circumstances, but you never know what’ll happen down the road), there is no way on Earth I’m sending them to a public middle school. And quite possibly not private either, unless it’s a school which actually takes this stuff seriously. I was damn near suicidal at that age, due to being the school target for everything except physical violence. I think I’d rather have been beaten up than endure the mental torture I went through – not to say being beaten up isn’t serious, but at least it’d have been a change.
Unfortunately, schools don’t have a clue how to deal with bullying. They’ll tell the victim stuff like “We’re doing all we can,” and “Ignore it and they’ll stop.”
Bull. Shit.
First off, you’re doing nothing except trying to make me feel better. It’s nice knowing my only friends are the teachers. :smack: Second, ignore it? Are you fucking nuts? I’m dealing with harassment every moment I’m not in class, from everyone around me. And you want me to ignore it?
I’d like to see a school actually DEAL WITH THE BULLIES once in a while, instead of just saying stuff to the victim to “help” them. Back to my example of “ignore them and they’ll stop” above, I personally feel this is the most damaging thing you can tell a person in this situation. They know they can’t ignore it, so this makes them feel worse and more powerless. And even if you don’t react, you still hear what they’re saying (in the case of verbal abuse). So you don’t even get the satisfaction of telling them to fuck the hell off.
Yeah, I have issues, but never once did my school try to honestly help me when I was having problems. My mother took me to a shrink for a time. My thoughts? “How’s this gonna help me? My problem is the other kids!”
Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. After she found out that homeschooling wasn’t going to be the cake walk she was expecting, oldest daughter tried to talk us into sending her to private school; but, we’re not made of money (in fact, right now we’re mostly made of poverty), and her grades were never good enough to rate a scholarship; plus, I understand that private school kids whose parents pay their tuition harrass scholarship kids. :eek: Our youngest (4 years old) is in public school now, in an excellent pre-school program. We plan to send her to public school through kindergarten, for the structure (oh, okay, and to get her out of my hair a few hours a day 
), but starting first grade, she’ll be homeschooled, too. [minor hijack]We found an on-line curriculum we’re really happy with (our middle daughter uses it) that only costs $20.00 per mont, per student; we’ll probably use it for our youngest, too, when the time comes. I know that public school is, theoretically, free, but it’s really not. Between the $8.00 for the school-approved combination lock; $25.00 for the school-approved gym uniform; and the multitude of fund-raisers, I bet most parents put out more than $20.00 in the average month![/minor hijack]
The bullying I experienced in middle (then called junior high) school was terrible, but nothing compared to what others have experienced. But it taught me many things—not to bother complaining, because nobody will do anything. That’s a lesson that has been difficult to overcome. When you have it reinforced in your brain that fighting back or complaining does nothing or makes things worse, you give up trying. And then later, people will berate you with, “Well, why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you tell someone? You must have enjoyed being a victim, then, since you didn’t do anything!”
You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Whatever happens, it’s always your fault. It takes a while to unlearn this sort of lesson.
I’m all for homeschooling. A while back a coworker friend had her daughter in homeschooling, because the kids were bothering the daughter, and the school was kind of crappy anyway. The girl was doing fine with homeschooling and was advanced academically. However, on a regular basis at work, other coworkers used to give this lady a hard time about homeschooling. How it was “unfair” to the kid, that she was “missing out” on the socialization, all the fun stuff. All these coworkers were from an era and part of the country where school was fun—or at least for them. Little bucolic farm schools, where everyone loved each other, or something. They had no frickin’ clue that things are not like that anymore. So they were constantly giving this poor woman a hard time, expecting that she justify herself because she decided to pull her kid from a nonproductive and damaging school environment.
I was pretty much the only one who had a clue what this woman’s kid was going through. Even though my school experience (bad as it was) probably wasn’t as bad as things can get today, I had a clue. Growing up as a fat chick with bad skin (especially in the Southern California area) can be arduous. I got so sick and frustrated, hearing these clueless women clucking about their dandy times at the country school. Spare me. Those days are frickin’ over—at least in many parts of the country. Many people who choose homeschooling for their kids have a pretty damn good reason for doing so.
Unfortunately, it’s “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for the schools. They aren’t allowed to actually discipline the students (I’m talking CORPORAL PUNISHMENT here, folks, for serious physical bullying offenses), because they would be sued for “abuse.” Suspension doesn’t work for the bullying sort - it’s vacation for them.
Yep. The ever-popular “Well, if you wouldn’t let it bother you so much, they wouldn’t do it.”
This from my algebra teacher after six months of ignoring the bullying until one day, I finally ran from class crying my eyes out. Instead, I was the bad one for leaving class unexcused.
Fuck that. If my kid is ever bullied and the administration brushes it off, they’re going to be facing the biggest fucking lawsuit they’ve ever seen. And I’ve never considered suing anyone for anything. I get the feeling parents don’t take a stand because well, if the administration says it’s their kids fault, then it must be. And because the bullies’ parents are probably just as big of bullies as their kids.
Ava
[QUOTE=whiterabbit]
norinew, if I have kids (I don’t want to right now and wouldn’t anyway due to my current living circumstances, but you never know what’ll happen down the road), there is no way on Earth I’m sending them to a public middle school. And quite possibly not private either, unless it’s a school which actually takes this stuff seriously.
[QUOTE]
Let me tell you, private schools aren’t much better. I attended Catholic school from K-6 grade, until I finally begged and pleaded enough with my mother for her to take me out and put me in public school.
Public school was a frickin’ dream for me after private. You want some fucked up kids? Look in a private school. Turns out, my mother had wanted to take me out of that school but was having a hard time due to family pressure (our family had attended that school for decades). Turns out, the other parents bullied her. Wonder where the kids learned the behavior?!
I used to cry every morning before school, it was a hellacious experience. Sounds quite similar to your oldest daughter’s, norinew. I remember opening the medicine cabinet and holding a bottle of pills for a very long time when I was 12, just to try to get away from the daily abuse at school. 12 fucking years old. I was lucky though, and no one gave me a hard time in public school. It was a great experience, actually.
I still feel the effects of the harassment though, I often have to give myself little “pep talks” convincing myself that I’m not ugly, don’t stink and am worth something. My only consolation is that karma is a bitch, and every last one of those bullies if they haven’t already, will eventually get thiers.
Yeah, I got a lot of grief in particular from my MIL. She had 6 kids. Five boys, one girl. A few of her boys (hubby among them) were harrassed at school, but never flinched at kicking the crap out of their bulliers (is that even a word?), so the bullies eventually left them alone. Her only daughter was one of the “beautiful people” in school; you know, tall, slender, pretty, smart, popular. School was honestly fun for her. She was a member of the Prom Court two years in a row, boys tripping over themselves to get a date with her, 20 gazillion really close friends, yadda, yadda, yadda. MIL tried to convince me that by homeschooling my daughters, I’d be robbing them of this experience. Well, my daughters just are not cut out of the same cloth her daughter is. My oldest daughter is overweight and emotionally messed up (and, dare I say, academically lazy) and at the same time very bright; a recipe for harrassment. My middle daughter is tall, slender, pretty (in fact, looks very much like MIL’s only daughter), but has strong geek tendencies, and in general just doesn’t “fit” with the popular crowd; she’s also almost spookily bright, and I’m convinced that public school would never have brought out the best in her. All in all, a completely different recipe for public school misery. I politely told my MIL that, since we’re the girls’ parents, we have to make the parenting decisions, but thankyewverymuch for your concern!
I thought that was my own special hell.
“What do you think you did to cause him to do that?”
“What do I think I did to cause him to push me down and jump up and down on my head until my nose broke? Gee, I dunno.”
This is exactly the kind of shit that made me pull my daughter out of public school when she was in middle school. She had her counselor tell her the exact same crap when she was being harrassed and bullied in junior high and middle school: “You should try harder to fit in.”
Fuck off. She used to like school until Middle School sucked it all out of her. She fell into depression, you couldn’t blast her out of the house with dynamite in the morning, she started cutting herself and contemplating suicide. She has never been fat but she stopped eating almost completely.
I dropped out of college to homeschool her and get her through therapy and she has been a totally different person.
My son will start Middle School in a year. He has emotional issues, OCD and ADHD. He’s an easy target once they figure out his buttons, even though he’s bigger than kids two years older than him. Things have been great so far because of the quality of teachers he’s had in Elementry school. But I am so afraid of sending him on into Middle School.
[QUOTE=lezlersLet me tell you, private schools aren’t much better. I attended Catholic school from K-6 grade, until I finally begged and pleaded enough with my mother for her to take me out and put me in public school.[/QUOTE]
Wow. Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised – that’s why I specified a school that actually has a way to handle this stuff. I wish I knew of such a way…but I don’t. All I know is I’m not doing that to my kid – of course, if I have a kid who actually gets along well with peers at that age, I will rethink. And if my kid is caught bullying another, be said bullying mental, emotional, physical, or otherwise, they will be in the biggest damn trouble in the history of the universe. Oh yeah. They will wish for death as a more pleasant option.
I’m 28 years old. If I’m in a store by myself and I hear people laughing, my first thought is invariably, “They’re laughing at me!” I now tell that thought to fuck off, but it’s still there.
I guess I can’t blame the bastards for messing up my coding, can I. Arrgh.
Fuck.
Y’know, in the “real world,” this kind of action will get the perpetrator sent to jail on assault charges. Why the hell doesn’t this happen to high-school bullies? I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, I’m genuinely curious.
… and then there are those well-meaning parents like my mother who will tell their bullied child, “They’re just jealous because you’re so smart!” What a perfect way to put your smart child on the road to mediocrity! I mean, once that child’s mind makes the connection that “smart” = “getting beat up” it’s not far to the concept that “not so smart = not getting beat up”. No wonder my 136 IQ translated to a C grade point average.
I remember being bullied off and on in private (Catholic school)
Oh, but they tried to help-the principal (a nun) told some of the kids to leave me alone because I was “special” and I had “problems.”
Oh yeah, thanks Sr. Roberta, that REALLY helped!
:rolleyes:
What the hell is “middle school”?
Depending where you are, usually 6th, 7th, 8th grades. Sometimes 7th, 8, 9th. Sometimes only 7th, 8th. Also known as “junior high.” An intermediate school between elementary and high school.