Posted on 12/13/2017 4:50:06 AM PST by Kaslin
“homeschool, which is no guarantee against encountering bullies, but greatly reduces the likelihood.”
LOL, I have a certain someone in my son’s life, who is so worried about whether he is “socialized” and that home-schooled kids aren’t being “socialized”.
I could tell this person what being “socialized” did for ME in school! Being picked on incessantly and forever steering clear of my “peers”!
What would happen if this behavior happened in the workplace?
Why are **children** expected to cope with an environment that an adult would quickly leave for another job, win millions in a lawsuit, or would bring felony charges against the abusers?
Why do we place **children** into such an environment? It is not only spiritually and emotionally and sometimes physically damaging to the abused children but also to the abuser and the cooperating witnesses?
Self defense is the key.
Growing up as a kid with birth defects (Physically twisted arms and legs) I can tell everyone what bullying looks like, and what it doesn’t look like.
In high school I ran a kid down with my car. I took on the biggest bully and just beat him senseless when he threatened me.
Funny story about the whole “Bully turned bullied thing”. When I was very young, one of my first retaliations, I beat up my bully with a broom. We got taken to the office and about 4 hours spent on teaching me about how to and not to deal with bullies. I was paraded in front of my bully and made to apologize, made to shrink back into a role that I didn’t want to be in. It was humiliating and was actually worse than the originally bullying.
After we were released to class, I followed him back to his class and grabbed a broom and beat him again. Within minutes of being released.
I did that because I wasn’t done. People said that I turned into a bully myself, but I disagreed. I felt I was a warrior. I faced my attacker head-on once and was stopped. Even after being bullied by the adults again and put on display as a pathetic, weak, deformed victim I still had to win that fight.
The other kid got bullied horribly after that. He actually worked out in later years and started to bully other kids (Likely steroids involved there) but he would turn around and change direction if he ever saw me coming.
Bullying is a word that is harming the whole thing. It has a definition that isn’t accurate. A bully is only put down by one thing: Defense. It’s offense/defense.
I am the living example of how important self defense training is. When I was small and getting beat on, I didn’t have what it took to fight back. I used weapons. I seriously hurt my young attackers. My friend was also bullied in high school. He arrived one day with a very thick chain and beat on his bully. The bully was hospitalized and suffered from seizures for the rest of his life.
Kids must be taught to defend themselves or else they’ll escalate. Lemme tell you, once I beat the snot out of my attackers (Not bullies ... attackers) I was a short, skinny, deformed poor kid with a single mom who had friends, popularity, attractive girlfriends and great times in high school.
All because I learned how to fight. And I learned how to fight because I almost killed some kid because I didn’t know how to fight.
Abolish school.
Problem solved.
LOL, love your stories.
I had a black “street” friend in HS (HS was NOT a problem for me; loved it; younger was the torture) along with a mild white middle-class pal in computer class.
Mild girl was picked on by her YOUNGER and SMALL neighbor incessantly, even as a senior. They had to be on the same bus, where she would do things to her constantly. Minor, mostly, but bothersome and hurtful.
We had computer class first, and our black friend had a class nearby and stopped in. White friend said something about her latest experiences and mentioned she saw the little girl in the hall. Crowded with morning traffic, black friend made a bee-line in the hall to little bully and cornered her, speaking down to her (being taller) very closely. She threatened her for bothering white friend. LOL, bully was afraid from then on! Someone overheard her once saying something about “that big black girl” (BTW, she wasn’t that big - just taller than little bully).
I disagree with your characterization. I don’t think sticking up for yourself is a perfect solution, but I know two things:
First, you CANNOT remove bullying. It can’t be punished out or legislated out of kids or people. That is a liberal construct.
Second, running to someone else for help every time something happens is not how you want to go through life.
If you do that, you will be a doormat every single stage you enter in life, personal and professional, and people will have disdain for you. That is a fact. there is great value, even at the risk of physical violence, to teaching someone to stand up for themselves. It teaches self-reliance. Seriously, I am not, and nobody I know would advocate not telling the authorities if you were assaulted physically or verbally as an adult, every serious person knows that isn’t what we are talking about. But as an kid, getting a bloody nose or your tooth knocked out is not, in my opinion, too high a price to be paid for learning how to stand up for a bully, because as you transition to a point where bullying becomes less physical and more mental, the concept is the same: not combating it invites more of it.
Bullying shows up in group situations where there is no escape open to the victim, for example, prison and children in compulsory-attendance schools.
In adult life, people move, find a new job, file felony charges, or win millions in lawsuits.
If you read my posts, you can see you and I very likely are in total agreement on the end result, though perhaps not on the intermediate steps. You and I both feel we could make lemonade out of of the lemons of bullying.
I was never a victim of bullying, although I encountered bullies that would cast their eyes about and see if I would be a victim. In HS a known bully decided to try his hand on me. He walked up to me and said in a nice way, "How ya doing?" and hit me in the shoulder real hard, trying to make it look friendly. It hurt. Without saying a thing, I put him in a headlock, fliped him over my back right into a muddy drainage ditch. He lay there flat on his back in 6 inches of mud and said, "Why'd you do that?". "You know why."
Later that same day, he snapped me with a towel in the locker room. It hurt. I guess he wasn't sure how we stood. I turned around threw a right hook, caught him under the chin and knocked him out cold. He left me alone after that. Word got around, too.
“I do not think that enough is being done about bullying. Too many schools, unfortunately, turn a blind eye to it.”
I consider that often the school itself is a bully.
Small transgressions are often dealt with harshly beyond reason; prime example is “zero tolerance” for normal harmless activity, like bringing a small kitchen knife to eat lunch, or playing “finger guns” on the playground, or taking a sealed bottle of medicine from home to the school nurse as needed, etc. Religious references are often suppressed even if expressed no more than interest in a football team. “Excessive” absences are investigated with no consideration of school performance, yet can result in the state abducting the kids. Actually standing up to a bully, which may involve brief violence on the victim’s behalf, is severely punished.
Couple that with the “professional courtesy” of a bullying school failing to crack down on actual bullies, and instead cracking down on the docile who don’t perfectly remain so, and bullying culture is perpetuated.
Agreed. At that point, the "pecking order" is establishing itself. This is a natural occurrence.
Prisons are self inflicted and thus no sympathy is warranted for those interred there.
Schools are not prisons, and there are options open to the parents which you have listed already. People move.
Until my junior year in HS I was the smallest male and usually the smallest person in my classes. I also knew and used a lot of big words. In Jr Hi in Norfolk it got the worst and I went home with torn clothes and bruises almost daily. Until one day when I started around a corner at a neighborhood shopping center and saw my chief tormenter coming toward me from a block away. There was a 1x board on the ground right there about three feet long. I waited for Greg who was twice my weight and half a foot taller than me behind the corner of the wall until he reached it and clocked him with the board. I made sure he could see who it was who bloodied his face and turned and went home. Nobody bothered me again at that school and Greg never told anyone who marked his face.
For a variety of reasons, I got picked on.
At least till I locked the starting quarterback in his locker. Then the work got out that Red is just not the guy you really want to make mad.
Found a path, but that is life. You need to deal with people that will hate you for no reason.
Had that happen at work (not me, but others).
It happens. You learn to adjust. As an adult, you have more options to avoid.
Or, like me, you move next to a bunch of red neck goofballs like yourself and realize that while I may be an engineer, I still love to hunt, fish, garden, and drink. Finding your own place helps.
Stalin’s Yellow School Bus
Public School is child abuse.
Teachers are the bullies.
You took the words right out of my mouth. It’s ridiculous what kids are expected to “try to ignore “
Zero tolerance has only made things worse. Mouthy little weasels used to be stopped with a physical response-teaching a jerky kid a one time lesson is not bullying. Now the slimy kids get away with constant verbal jabs and subtle pushing, poking and tripping with it. Any kid defending himself gets caught up in zero tolerance punishment.
FWIW, parents can stand up to administrators when that’s happens. Military friend of ours told the middle school principal and counselor (both female) that they were “worthless in this situation” , his son did exactly what he taught him to do when physically attacked, the teacher failed to prevent it despite being aware of the constant provocation from other kid, and as far as he was concerned it’s over with no further punishment at home or from the school. That was that, the school dropped his son’s suspension.
The schools are on the absolute wrong track about bullying, and fighting at school. When I was in school, there was such a thing as self defense and if you had witnesses or could otherwise convince the Principal you were not the aggressor you were off the hook.
Now schools have a “zero tolerance” for bullying and fighting, so what happens is even if you try to physically defend yourself or another you are in just as much trouble as the aggressor. The bully often does not care if he is suspended or otherwise punished so they get away with bullying.
Students have been raised with this “zero tolerance” BS and they are convinced they cannot, must not stand up for themselves or another student. I think this builds to a frustration level that causes school threats, shootings, and suicide.
People say fist fighting doesn’t solve anything but I have seen it solve bullying and aggressive behavior. That is how it used to work, the kid being bullied or an older sibling or friend would beat up the bully and it worked. Might have been crude but it was effective. In my mind a fist fight is bad actually, but not as bad as shootings and suicide- or a kid putting up with years of bullying.
Children are not meant to live in kid packs or herds like at school.
Add that the adults do not care at Govt School.
Parents subject their children to abusive places and without training.
Parents are abusive. Period.
Our life edges on the ability and luck to survive our ignorant Parents.
Teachers say that now; and they have counselors that come into the classroom and take all the classroom time to discuss bullying. Anti-bullying education is a huge thing in the schools.
The problem is when there is bullying the teachers won’t do anything. The teachers are afraid to get a hold of a bully and take them to the principal which is what used to happen. Now teachers are afraid to get involved, afraid they will be fired or sued. It is easier for them to pretend they don’t see it happening.
The bullies know nothing is going to actually be done so they feel free to bully. So I think bullying is far more common now and worse than it used to be.
“First, you CANNOT remove bullying. It can’t be punished out or legislated out of kids or people. That is a liberal construct.”
So, laws against physical attacks/killing are liberal constructs?
If they violate your natural rights to life and limb, their rights can indeed be taken away. That’s natural law. It’s not liberal.
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