Create vouchers and let parents decide where their kids attend. Schools will have an incentive to get rid of trouble makers since they will chase away prospective customers. As it is now, school administrators are taught to make no decisions that might force them to make a court appearance.
I doubt that the bullying happens when teachers or adults are around. What should the schools do?
What the article does NOT mention, is the question “Did the 7 yr old provoke the 12 yr old?”.
I’ve seen young kids(4-8 yrs old), walk up to much older (10-12 yr olds) and kick them in the shins, and hit them - then when they get their ‘reward’ - the little kid runs to the adult and claims to be picked on. They then laugh, that not only did the “bully” get abused by them, he got in trouble from the teacher too.
Wish I could say this is an isolated case - but when you have schools with zero tolerance (and zero brains) - this is the type of behavior you create and reward.
That said - a Bully typically doesn’t change his striped. He learns to hide and wait until he thinks no one is watching. But, a ‘Bully’ is a mentality of superiority, that one can abuse others for entertainment and self-gratification without remorse or retribution - this is not isolated to the older kids. Younger kids are learning to manipulate the system.
Sadly, this is completely believable.
By chance, does Wayne Brady have a child at this school....?
20 years ago, when my son started high school, he was bullied unmercifully from almost day one. His locker was taped shut, his book bag stolen and thrown somewhere near the gym, he was ambushed by the bullies after school and tried to beat him up, but he did a number on them instead. We went to the school principal and were asked if our son was doing something to egg this on! We were dumbfounded. The principal said they would “talk” to the boys, but it did no good. They did suspend them for a few days, but the tormenting resumed when they returned.
Finally, my husband and I had enough, so my husband called the police and the students were pulled out of class and brought to the principal’s office while they awaited their parents arrival. They were arrested and we pulled our son out of this school and put him in another smaller school, where he was quite happy and made friends without the bullying that he experienced at the other school.
Next time I saw them, one of them asked me to dance at a school function.
I have two kids in public school and this type of behavior has never happened. It sounds like very extreme cases to me. That being said, people wondered why I enrolled my daughter in Krav. Believe me, I got a lot of slack from some family members who thought “ballet” was a better girl activity. I know that she can protect herself better with what she has learned than without.
Survival of the fittest! /s
They have a right to do it.
Reparations and all.
Box cutter, where are the teachers? Box cutters are not bulling they are gang activity. Home school.
This is no surprise to me. My son went through h*ll here before he finally managed to finish high school. He was an outsider from the start, and so was I - couldn’t get a phone call returned for anything, including volunteering. We were made the problem instead of getting any kind of help with little exception. I trusted the school to help for too long,because past experiences had been great. He ended up with an injury that required cosmetic surgery, but before we could sue the school (”nothing” was on video that the school had just installed in the halls), he took things into his own hands and was expelled and charged - in effect solving everything for the school and putting our family in a difficult place. He had never even had a parking ticket before this happened. It all worked for the good, or is now -
He is over it - and in college and doing well and has a good job - is building a good life. He is bigger and had a little more “mass” than then, and is most certainly a champion of the underdogs in life, because he has been one. I need to get as far away as possible so I don’t think about it any more - or start some kind of action group to get it out of my system.
We are on the Front Range not so far from Denver, but I don’t think it makes any difference - it’s all over the country. Administrators in the vast majority do not care about it at all unless there is threat of a lawsuit or embarrassment.
There are some really mean people in this world. And some of them start really young.
That's not quite the point of the story. The schoold did do something: They forced the survivors of the bullying to conform to a new behavior, IOW they punished the victim.
My son has only had one brief issue but he took care of it himself.
I enrolled my son in martial arts when he was 5. He’s now a black belt.
I told him I would back him up 110% if he ever had to defend himself in school.
I instructed him to beat the ever loving hell out of anyone bullying him and to not stop even if it resulted in serious harm or worse.
The one time he did have an issue he confronted the kid in the hallway, saying as loud as he could for the kid to come on and start something with him. The kid backed down and that was that.
This year he’ll start high school. Should be interesting.
I know it is tiresome when old folks start out, “When I was young . . . “, but threats of lawsuits and the wimp culture adopted by teachers has come to the point where the situation is close to hopeless. For young kids, the bullies need to get slapped up along side the head by the teachers. Of course that is “physical abuse” and will not come back, at least in my lifetime. Next best is to expel the bully but that just moves the problem to the streets where it is ignored by the cops until someone is killed and, even then, it is ignored in some neighborhoods. Home school if you can, if not, keep in the face of the school officials and hope your kid is tough enough. I have no hope that the parents of the bullies will admit any problem. Hell, the are likely proud to have an tough kid.
As a teacher, this is a really difficult problem, because kids are smart enough not to do this in front of us. So when it comes to my attention, I have two kids both pointing at the other, saying, “No, Miss, SHE’S the one who...” and both of them have their eyes as wide open as they will go. And I don’t know who started what or who is lying.
1. Are the bullies parents union?
2. The schools seem to be treating the bullies victims the same way lawyers treat rape victims in court, could this be from legal advice?
So why are the parents allowing their seven-year-old child to stay in that school? Mine would be out in five minutes, and I’d be on the phone to a lawyer so fast...
If someone attacks with a box-cutter, it is not “bullying”, it is assault with a deadly weapon.
This is nothing new.
I remember dealing with bullies terrorizing my 7yo brother and that was back in the 1960’s, and we attended a Catholic school.
Is it right? Of course not, but it is nothing new and is not limited to inner city public schools.