The comments coming from FReepers blaming her and her parents makes me just sick. I don't hear ONE WORD about the savages who did the bullying. It's the old condemn the victim and remain silent about the bullies. The blame is being placed on the wrong person.
And then people wonder why bullying takes place.
Certainly another reason to homeschool.
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Victims of bullying have to decide not to be a victim. This doesn’t release the bully from being held accountable for their actions, but it is important teach children at a young age not to be pacifists toward any form of tyrant.
When it comes down to it you can only be bullied if you allow it. This either comes down to fight or flight. Those four chose to flee from this world because they felt helpless and had no one to turn to for help.
What about all of those people who knew but sat back and didn’t do anything to stop it? If any of those others had a heart and mind they would have stepped in to help some one who couldn’t help them self.
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I agree with everything Persevero said. Teaching kids to fight back is not the only way to deal with this. Of course we should teach our children to stand up for themselves, but one kid against a gang of bullies who repeatedly torment others is expecting too much from kids who might be much smaller, weaker or vulnerable. We should also teach kids to stand up for others - aren't we taught to be each others' keepers? To help and care about others? Which brings me to my other point.
Every religion in the world teaches some version of "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You." Children must be taught basic moral values - they do not come up with them on their own. This is the result of children not taught moral principles, and most likely their parents are rotten examples themselves.
Rejecting God and the basic human decency and moral codes founded on religious principles and teachings is destroying our country. Absolutely destroying it. God must be allowed back in to our country or the level of crime, hatefulness, cruelty, dishonesty, slutdom and feral children will get worse and worse.
Liberaltarians love to say "You can't legislate morality". Yes, no law will turn a bad man into a good man. But laws can take the bad man out of circulation through shame, punishment, held up as a bad example and make wannabees think twice.
Teachers cannot even disciple students, parents get their kids taken away for a spanking, and yet child abuse is common. When people reject God and moral absolutes, they can't even think straight or rationally, they have no reasonable judgement, and they cannot discriminate properly.
I agree with you. Maybe back in the 1950s, it was enough to punch a bully in the nose. These days, you are likely to get a gang of kids after you with guns and knives. At best, YOUR child, the victim, will be the one getting the suspension or even expulsion in this touchy-feely climate of "zero tolerance" for violence.
This "zero tolerance" policy for violence is a joke by the way. It is far more damaging for a child to be verbally taunted and shunned by his/her classmates day after day than to be involved in a schoolyard fistfight. Yet under the "no tolerance for violence" policy, this sort of psychological bullying is running rampant and there is absolutely nothing the victim can do about it because as a resort of this bullying, the victim is all alone and isolated.
Further, in this age of technology, the victims of this type of bullying cannot get away from it once they leave the school property. They must contend with it online as well and must deal with the fact that no matter where they go online, their tormentors will be sure to follow them, unless they find a way to be totally anonymous or take on a fake identity.
That said, let me tell you a personal story that goes back to 1978. At that time, I was still in high school and I became the target of a gang of bullies. One kid in particular was especially vicious and in chemistry class, he spend the entire period shooting spitballs into the back of my head and calling me names, getting lots of giggles from the kids around him. He was just having a grand old time while the teacher totally ignored what was happening. Well after class, I stood outside the door and when he came out, I smashed him in the face with my fist as hard as I could.
You can predict the results. The chemistry teacher marched me to the principal's office and told him he did not want "my type" in his class anymore. I was suspended from school for a week and had to spend the rest of the school year in study hall and retake chemistry in summer school with a different teacher.
But that's not the worst of it. A few nights later, the kid who I punched brought some of his friends by my house (when we weren't home) and tossed bricks through my front windows. They spray-painted obscene graffiti (using my name doing obscene sexual acts) across my front door and did other vandalism about the property.
I knew it was them because the next few days at school, that particular gang get smiling at me in the hallways and asked me how I liked the "redecorating" of my house.
Now my parents were hard-working people who didn't have much money. SO I had to watch them spend what little money they had to fix up the house as they didn't have insurance for that sort of thing. That was the worst punishment of all. So for the remainder of my school years, I learned to suck it up and tolerate the bullying because I didn't have a "gang" to back me up. Needless to say, my "public education" was pretty much a hell on earth as the bullies basically ran the school. The teachers did nothing - they just wanted to collect their paychecks and go home at night.
SO for all those who sit in their easy chairs and post here how victims should just "punch the bullies in the nose", they can go back to watching their movies like "Christmas Story" and "Back to the Future." In the real world, getting rid of bullies is not that easy.
What we need to do is toss bullies out of school, period. Society does not owe bullies an education. Let them spend their adult lives pumping gas and picking up garbage.
I don’t know about that. I’ve read these opinions, and I don’t see it at all. Of course we all blame the bullies for their foul actions.
But if the school and the judicial aurhorities won’t help, you should do it yourself. You have to do it yourself.