But you, apparently, are working in a school where the administration is aware that such problems do exist, where the administration isn’t overcome by a conviction that all children are basically good beings. I know that your situation is not universal.
I won’t deny that school teachers posting in this thread are taking prompt actions against bullying. But please don’t assume that your (and your colleagues’ - stated - intentions and actions) are universal for every teacher. They are not.
That’s the classic tactic. Works like a charm. Every. Fucking. Time. And the teachers can’t do a damn thing about it, because “boys will be boys”. I know that tactic intimately, and I never allow my children to even start on that slope in their behavior towards other people. In my home, that kind of behavior is nipped in the bud. Promptly and with a clear message.
That’s pretty strong. I’ve never forgiven them, and I probably never will. Couple of years ago I got a message on FB from one of the worst I had to live with during high school, asking for forgiveness. I’m still unsure of whether my chosen course of action (deleting the message while swearing incoherently and wishing that person a nice career in the nether regions of Hell) was better than the alternative (sending an answer stating that since I believe in full responsibility of one’s actions, I would wish the person good luck in living with the knowledge - which by the way was roughly 20 years overdue - for the rest of his life).
Forgiven and forgotten are two very different things.
Logically, I had no choice but to let go of those wrongs as the people responsible have escaped punishment, and to seek vengeance myself would be counterproductive to my life. Any action I could take would be perceived as grossly out of proportion to childhood wrongs, damaging as they were. I have not forgotten though, and would not allow any of them a “clean slate” with me should they come seeking it. They are dead to me. Since I can never be fully satisfied, the only real choice is to forgive to my capacity to do so and move forward. To do anything else is for me at least, to be sent down a path that would end badly. The real world isn’t a movie, or even the world of the past where the aggrieved can track down tormentors of the past and serve them cruel judgment.
I got picked on 6th and 7th grade. In the 7th grade I eventually had enough and got in a couple of fights. No one bothered me much in the 8th grade. So I know of at least one case where it was a solution.
I’m glad you had fun attacking a point I never brought up.
Bullshit. While I’m glad you’re willing to concede that “most” teachers aren’t indfifferent sadists, you’re over-reaching when you say plenty actively sided with the bullies. How many of these teachers did you encounter, and what did they do to make you believe they were on the side of the bullies? Did they encourage the them, and did they just not combat bullying as effectively as you would have liked?
No. Shut up and hand over the quarters before I shake them out of your pockets.
Fair enough.
[GODWIN ALERT]
Yes, we should have just politely asked the Axis to stop invading countries, setting up puppet governments, raping civilians, performing disgusting and unethical “scientific research” on living human beings, and sending millions of people to death camps. If we kept it up long enough, I’m sure they would have stopped. Fighting them didn’t stop anything.
Honeyplease, **Bosstone **fucking owned you. You might as well have tried replying “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”
Some of them just ignored it while it happened right in front of them. Some of them called kids “tattletales” when they told on the bullies. Some of them ignored bullying while punishing any kids who fought back or complained. Some of them were bullies themselves. Some openly told the bigger kids to bully the smaller kids, “keep them in their place”.
:eek: Did you go to school in some kind of a war zone?! I have never once seen a teacher encourage a kid to bully someone else in order to keep them in line. That sounds like some crazy movie bullshit.
His posts spend quite a lot of time detailing the ways in which the victim can be taught to react in a mature, self aware way. I personally find it implausible to expect this when applied to a child under duress.
There is not merely as much emphasis in his posts placed on teaching the *bully *to play nice with other children.
In my humble opinion that is where the focus should be.
I was actually thinking of that exact conversation when I was typing.
Violence does not address root causes, but it can prevent symptoms. And when you’re someone who has no power to address the former but is suffering from the latter, that can make it an attractive and viable option. It is not always or even necessarily often the *only *option or the *best *option, but there are times when it will be.
Yup. I call bullshit. It’s POSSIBLE, but it’s also tremendously unlikely.
Like I said before: what the teenage mind perceives as reality might very well be the reality for that individual, but now that I experience this world as an adult, it doesn’t often jibe with actual reality. How we perceive things isn’t always how things actually are.
Sure, there are some assholes who are teachers, but the vast majority are GOOD PEOPLE who would do ANYTHING to protect their students. I’d imagine that the average teacher does more to protect kids every single day than any of the people sitting here throwing stones in this thread have done in their whole lives. I get it: you were bullied- that’s awful and no one should suffer that. But what are you doing NOW to stop bullying besides sitting here attacking the character of those of us that DO something? And yes, I realize most are going to come in and say, “But Diosa! You’re clearly one of the FEW GOOD teachers.” And to that I say: bullshit. You’re attacking my coworkers, my friends, and even members of my family. Do you people even realize what would happen if what you’re saying DID regularly happen and other teachers heard about it? Of course not, because we’re all encouraging bullies, right? Eesh.
Maybe it was obvious TO YOU that the bullying was happening right in front of the teacher, but I’m willing to bet the teacher didn’t notice because they have 30 kids to take care of (or in the case of some of my friends: they have classes of 50 to 60 kids at once). Etc etc.
“Violence is never the solution” is easy to ridicule by citing examples where violent reaction was necessary and proper. But if we yuck it up and point dirisively at any soft headed pacifist yoyo who’d believe such a thing, we’re losing the essential truth of the statement.
Note that the statement was not “violence is never effective” and it also wasn’t “violence is never called for.”
Violence is a tactic. It’s a tactic sometimes used by bullies, by governments, by criminals and law enforcement officers and even some times by people tired of being vicitimized. Tactics can be parts of strategic solutions, but they aren’t themselves solutions. And every tactic has a set of related consequences, violence being particularly laden with negative and lasting ones. Which means violence is almost always reserved as an escalation tactic.
There are tactics that are suitable to a counter-bullying strategy that have fewer negative consequences. The most common nonviolent tactic is appeal to authority, but that, for a variety of reasons, isn’t usually a high yield tactic, which is why many of you seem to stop paying attention as soon as somebody advises against physical retaliation.
But there are direct nonviolent tactics that don’t involve “telling” and don’t rely on the awareness of teachers or guardians (although in most cases, they need to be made aware that bullying is going on). These other tactics also offend many parents or past victims because they involve combinations of “fixing the victim” (by teaching them behaviors to avoid and behaviors to practice) and even more controversially humanizing the “bullies.”
Most educators and parents know this - all kids have the capacity within them to behave improperly toward other children. This includes bullying. That doesn’t turn every kid who bullies into a “bully,” it just means they’re behaving in a way that needs correction. Being smacked in the face by the kid they’re tormenting may in fact be exactly the correction some of them need in some situations, but it’s traumatic for the kid who has to do it and in most other cases only makes the one doing the bullying see themself as a victim.
Believe it or not (and many of you won’t), telling a bully in front of others that you don’t like what they’re doing and want them to stop it often makes them… stop what they’re doing, at least for the moment. In more extreme cases, like some have cited here, that won’t work at all, but at minimum it’s a first step that lets the bully and just as importantly their peers know you won’t sit quietly and allow yourself to be bullied. It also makes the bully think about what they’re doing, which usually improves the immediate situation. (Ever ask a kid why he or she did something stupid and get the answer “I dunno”? Kid’s telling you the truth.)
Questioning a bully in front of peers about what they’re doing and what they want also gets results. This is a form of resistance that asks the bully to account for him/herself, which kinda takes the fun out of it for them. Again, this won’t work well when the bullying is entrenched or extreme.
Looking the bully in the eye as you object and question is also effective, as it shows the bully (and peers) that you are confident in opposing their actions. That you feel righteous. Most importantly, that the real possibility is there that you’ll offer stiffer resistance if pushed.
These things are only tactics, just like violent response is a tactic, but their likely consequences are far less negative than violence, and don’t require post hoc justification to teachers and parents. Just like violence, they’re never the solution to bullying, but they can be the opening salvos in a victim’s antibullying strategy.
Are you fucking retarded? Where do you think those behavior patterns come from? Where do think they get re-enforced? Over and over and over again? Breaking a behavior pattern is an incredible hard thing to do for adults. When you are the victim of bullying, you have your self worth stripped away. Nobody cares about you. Nobody is going to do shit for you. Maybe you are just a worthless piece of shit who fucking deserves to be bullied.
But did you eyes gloss over when you read this?
[QUOTE=Filmore]
Because it was not used by her as a tool to educate me. It was the consequence of her self-esteem being shattered and her emotional collapse. Yes, I did immediately feel the consequence, but at what price? Maybe she carries that moment around as an emotional scar. I so wish she had different coping mechanisms so that my rude comment would have just bounced off her.
I wish she had instead said, “Filmore, it’s hard enough to go through life like this, please don’t make it any harder.” It would have had the same effect on me, but she hopefully would have felt empowered and not like a victim.
I don’t blame her for not having the confidence–she was just a kid, like me. How is a kid going to be self aware enough to figure these kinds of things out? Instead, the adults around her should help her figure these things out. When she is bullied, don’t enable the victim mentality. When she is teased she doesn’t have to stop it herself, but she should be educated on the steps she should take to make it stop. This isn’t saying she deserves to be teased. It’s acknowledging the fact that she will get teased and here are the steps to make it stop.
[/QUOTE]
Or are you just too fucking stupid to understand what he is saying. He is saying that she should have been tougher so his little insult shouldn’t have made her cry.
For one the dick face doesn’t seem to realize that he may have been the 40th person to call her a name that day. No, he is such a self centered asshole that he believes that he alone made her cry at that moment.
But you, not understanding that he actually complained that his victim did not educate him on how to be a better person is BLAMING THE FUCKING VICTIM. So I guess MeanOldLady is code for StupidFuckingCunt.
That’s right, I called you cunt. But you won’t let that bother you since you don’t have that victim patterns that make others weak and to blame for everything others do to them.
