Zero tolerance teasing policies

Great Debates
21

I got teased my whole life in school, and I can’t say that it hasn’t affected who I am today. I still look back at my first 12 years of education as having been a miserable experience.

I am resonably Ok now, but I still have my moments of lack of confidence, and I think it goes back to this teasing.

I am sure that something needs to be done.

I am also sure that zero tolerance is not the answer, I just don’t know what the answer is.

I do agree with an earlier post that said that if teachers spend their whole time tracking down the teasers, then no educating would be acomplished.

I suspect thst this is something only someone that has lived through the misery can truly appreciate.

Greathouse and Rman, I applaud your sentiment, I just can’t agree with it. I think you should seriously try to answer even sven.

22

I got teased like crazy in elementary school because I was the skinny, pasty-white, four-eyed little geek.

My mother told me to tell a teacher or the principal and let them handle it. Don’t every hit back when bullied. I took her advice, and nothing was ever done about it, not even when I presented the bruises I got from being beat up by bullies.

At the end of fifth grade, things changed. I was still scrawny and pasty white and a geek, but I didn’t have glasses anymore. The biggest change though was that Mom was no longer giving the advice on how to handle bullies. Pacifism was out.

Dad stepped in and told me that if I ever wanted the bullies to be left alone, I needed to let one come after me and then wallop the ringleader. I thought he was crazy, and that I was gonna get killed. But a few days later, there I was getting bullied again when the ‘ringleader bully’ told me to meet her after school in the park in my town. This time, I actually showed up. So did about 20 other kids - most just to watch. Nobody had ever gone head to head with this girl, and the geek was gonna.

I did what Dad told me, I fought like he said to, and I beat the snot out of her. For the rest of my years, they may have snickered behind my back about the ‘weirdo pagan’ or whispered about how geeky I was, but very rare were instances where they actually screwed with me. In the next six years it came to fists only 3 times. I didn’t win them all, but I damn well fought. I was not popular, I was not liked by the in-crowd, but I was scary enough to be respected.

And where were the teachers/principal during all of this? Ignoring it or encouraging the in crowd to beat the weirdos into conformity.

23

catsix your experience is exactly why the suggestion has been made to stop the taunts etc. to not tolerate it (at the school level) kids teasing/taunting/bullying each other.

24

Can’t go along with that. There may be unempathic children aplenty, but there are also children with full developed empathic responses a lot sooner than their teenage years. Likewise a commitment to a sense of fairness.

25

I was teased almost every day until 9th grade when I beat the shit out of some popular kids.

I was walking down the halls one morning before school with my rather obese friend. He’s not the normal fat kid though… he is totally punk, and now is one of the most popular kids I know. Everyone in our town seems to know who he is now, and everyone likes him. But two years ago it was different. I was walking with him and some kids came up and started making fun of him. That pissed me off, but I didn’t do anything.

Then they started making fun of me for being friends with him. That was about the point I snapped. I can handle people making fun of me, but when they make fun of me because of who my friends are… grrr.

A long story made shorter, one of the three took off. I went after the main person talking, and my friend ended up taking a swing at the other kid… I didn’t see it happen, but it must’ve been good because he was sitting on the floor holding his head when I looked back around. The guy I was going after gave up about the same time that I used his head to break the glass of a display case. Yeah, I got suspended and stuff, but people never tormented me the same again.

Oh, to stay on topic, I think zero tolerance policies are bad.

26

Zero tolerace relative to assault has been declared constitutional. The kids are getting bigger and bigger, and more damage is being done by bullies, some from which the victims may never recover. Also, some kids who are victims of severe bullying cannot fight back physically, so they instead they hatch plans that makes Columbine look like a quiet lunch period. What if some kid manage to detonate a suicide bomb in the cafeteria during lunch hour in response to the bullying, and the parents learn all too late that the schools did nothing about the teasing, the assaults and the harrassment that led up to the tragedy? Unfortunatlely, while in school I once had such thoughts.

In the old system, it is the hitting back that generates the suspensions, not the original assault. Now the blame is where it belongs, that’s all.

27

But the complaint that most people have with zero tolerance isn’t that “something’s being done”. The complaint is that something’s being done that allows for absolutely no gray areas.

Students who are suspended for leaving their hunting knife in their car and forgetting it’s there are victims of zero tolerance for weapons. Students who haven’t had much exposure to other races, cultures or religions who ask a Jewish student an innocent question about something they’ve heard their parents say about Jews and are suspended are victims of zero tolerance for harrassment.

Zero tolerance is a thermonuclear explosion being used to fumigate my house for roaches. It’s an excuse for school administrations not to have to think about what an individual student has done nor listen to what really happened. It’s sloppy reasoning and scattershot discipline. It’s a substitute for what school administrators should be doing to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, harrassment and physical threats.

jayjay

28

Sorry, while I cannot abide bullying, I also can’t agree with zero-tolerance either. As an example, I was once knocked out (for a second or two) by an ice ball which was thrown at me while I was sitting on the steps of a private residence waiting for a school bus (IIRC, it knocked my head against the wall). There were no adult witnesses, and it was not on school grounds, so it wouldn’t have been caught under zero tolerance. Getting ice balls thrown at me was also a common enough occurence that I didn’t even mention it until over a decade later. My best friend got teased and picked on in church!

MGibson, in this thread, you accused me of bragging about intimidating children in response to a comment I made which was somewhat exaggerated. Despite the cruelty I saw and experienced at the hands of those who call themselves Christians, I remain one myself and, to place things in more serious language, I have made it clear that I will not stand for cruelty. IMHO, zero tolerance, like morality, like courtesy, must start from within the individual, not imposed by an institution.

CJ

29

If that qualifies as assault, my school has this policy:

I think that would cover where you were at. A while ago they decided that waiting for the bus is considered a school activity, and suspended a few kids for a fight at a bus stop.
Of course, without the adult witness, unless you’re an athlete, they won’t believe you. At least, that’s my experience in the same situation.

30

So did mine. Our only problem was that those involved in special education were given an exception that they could only be suspended for 30 days. Some kid made MULTIPLE threats and otherwise was otherwise harassing others, but got to stay in school given this rule.

Good rule but far from perfect.

31

I only stated what I did and how I have tried to teach my son to handle it. If you were in a situation where you could not defend youself and nobody helped, then I’m very sorry to hear that. Every situation is different. I will certainly admit that at times it is much smarter to run.

As for the STD rumor, everybody has a different breaking point. A person can only take so much.

I don’t want you to think that I was saying how anyone handled their bullies was wrong. I was simply saying what I did, and it worked for me.

Daniel

32

(Yay! My first post!)
Ahem. My two cents, as a high-school seinor graduating this spring.
The first: Rules cannot prevent bullying, therefore zero-tolerance makes no sense. Rules like this would have to be ipso facto, because any teacher worth their depressingly low salary would simply stop any incidents if possible. From empiracal evidence, I can safely say that the best way to stop bullying is to bully back, harder.
Incident one:
In middle school, people through rocks at the overweight geek (me). I threw them back, and hurt one of the bully’s hands. They stopped.
Incident two: One person was making comments about my sexuality. My response: I hugged the person, and announced loudly to the class that I loved him, too. The teacher nearly fell out of his chair, laughing.
Incident three: A friend of mine once had someone who would not get out of his face. He head-butted him. Problem solved.
The bigg problem here is that though overweight, I am still large, and have confidence that I could stalemate a fight by simply tackling my opponent and letting myself fall on them. This approach may not work as well for all the little people reading this. In that case, I suggest you use bully tactics against them: find something that bothers them (if they call you a slut, point out how little their getting, etc.), and use it against them mercilessly: you are under no obligation to be nice.

For my first post, I really overused colons.

33

As phouka mentioned, many bullies get their attitude from their home life. A vast majority of the time, the negative “lessons” kids learn while they’re growing up, whether from example, an actual verbal lesson, or even lack of a positive lesson, take precedence over anything they learn in school. I mean, when you have heard or seen the same thing for 12 years every day growing up, a few minutes of time in school is not going to counteract that.

Thus, I don’t think education about bullying in schools is going to reach any of the kids who are doing the bullying. It’s similar to sexual harassment “training” at work: you learn what is considered sexual harassment, and then the process for complaining about it. You don’t actually teach people why it’s bad and that they shouldn’t be doing it.

34

Listen, “Zero Tolerance” policies are incredibly stupid. What will happen is that the victims of bullying are going to be punished by them. Hey, two kids were fighting, punish both under the zero tolerance policy, case closed. Doesn’t matter why, how, or who started it.

Zero Tolerance policies are LEGAL strategies designed to keep school districts safe from lawsuits. They are not strategies for managing classrooms, or teaching kids to get along with each other.

35

Please forgive me if I don’t buy any of the arguments about how “they’re supposed to learn how to handle them on their own” (and don’t get me started on the “building character” nonsense).

Try to understand my complete, utter, unapoletic lack of smpathy for any of the clowns of violent sociopaths who may be hampered in any way by zero-tolerance policies.

Allow me a bit of unbridled rage at the unbelievably COWARDLY school administrators who would rather see many of their students subjected to lifelong trauma rather than fight a few parents in court.

I was one of the teased, and harrassed, and bullied. And I’m telling you, a lot of people are damn lucky I didn’t have access to a suitable weapon. High school, in particular, was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life…and this was a Catholic school, fer chrissake.

Zero-tolerance policies aren’t a complete solution, I’ll admit, but they’re a helluva lot better than letting those inhuman creatures run wild every day, which is what I had to deal with. More importantly, it shows that the people who are supposed to be running things care and aren’t going to let the worst offenders get by without the tiniest repercussions whatsoever.

“Aww, you’re just too sensitive…” Hey, we exist, and if a very expensive Catholic school cannot see fit to accomodate the needs of all its students, as far as I"m concerned, it has no right to exist.

No sympathy for the worthless cretins. No excuses. No more out-of-control situations which led to violent acts of desperation like Columbine. I say zero tolerance stays until we find something better.

(Needless to say, I’m also an advocate of mandatory sterilization in certain cases, but that’s another thread.)

36

My post was about teasing, not bullying, but I guess that’s what happens to debates.

It seems one way to end bullying is to beat up the bullies. That works fine for people who aren’t little girls without helpful bigger brothers and for people who aren’t insane with access to guns. Zero tolerance could work as long as it just means something will be done when teachers or administration find out about cruel teasing or bullying. My school had zero tolerance for fighting, but if someone was attacked and fought back, they weren’t punished the same as the attacker. The only problem I see is that most teasing and bullying doesn’t happen in front of teachers. I think omnipresent, evil surveillance is the cornerstone of any zero tolerance policy. We could alternatively try convincing kids that bullying is wrong, but when was the last time you successfully convinced a kid of something?

So there are the three options: violence, evil, or impossible. Now what?