"This comment will be controversial, especially for North Americans and Western Europeans."
No not really. It will perhaps offend the bizarre establishment that has invaded school administration. However, this is bully repulsion 101.
If the system doesn't protect you, you must find a technique that does. Would we avoid school shootings,etc, if we taught our kids to stand up for themselves, don't let yourself get bullied? Real self respect vs the artificial "everyone's special" of today's thinking?
Sidenote: Why is this behavior (bullying) tolerated in school? What other part of our culture accepts bullying as "part of growing up" or "just the way it is?"
Verbally, yes - though it never escalated to actual violence. To be fair, they weren't "career" bullies (for the lack of a better word), but simply a clique of kids (that were otherwise decent in school) that like to make fun of other people - turns out that actually not being afraid and confronting them is all it took to 1) stop the bullying and 2) completely change the dynamics of the relationship where they saw me as one of theirs and from that on we had decent interactions. The only violent incident I was involved in had nothing to do with bullying and was about stealing my phone.
> The only place where violence is tolerated is school
Violence still costs significantly more than verbal bullying, so most bullies would generally not want to resort to it if they can avoid it. If your option is 1) pick on the weak kid or 2) pick on the weak kid that shows a willingness to fight, you will pick option 1 because option 2 will still attract significant more attention from authority even if you easily win the physical fight.
I'm sure there are gangs of violent bullies, but for each one of those there's probably hundreds of verbal bullies that just pick on people verbally for fun and have no desire for violence or even significant confrontation because it's too much risk & effort. Standing your ground would at least protect you against those as they'd rather move onto an easier target. Will it protect you against 100% of bullying? No. Will it protect you against 90% of it? Very likely.
> if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally
I never said that. Please don't make up strawmans.
> And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever.
I never said that.
> I was bullied once. Eventually I fought back and gave the kid a bloody nose. Guess what - he was nicer to me and to other kids too. Prior to that he had no empathy. That experience changed him. I know others with similar experiences too.
Funny how I only hear the "stood up to bullies succesfully" story and never the other ones. See my other comment.
> Have we considered ways to make bullies not want to bully? That seems way more productive to me.
At over 40 years of age I've had to deal with people attempting to bully me, most of them are completely shocked when they realize they can't.
My point here is that if you think bullying is something that stops at graduation then sure, that sounds like a reasonable position, but the premise itself is wrong.
One of my favorite lines:
> Bullies don't stop being bullies when they graduate, they just get lawyers.
> I see people bully others in offices for every company I have ever worked with and at
IME bullying -- actual bullying, not power contests or nasty office politics -- isn't even remotely normal in office settings.
> The true solution to getting bullied is to...
...ignore it if isn't serious or tell an adult if it is serious.
> fight back ferociously
Anything physical is de facto serious and should be dealt with via adults and not between children; at least in my bubble, physical violence between school-aged children is rare and taken very seriously. A bully physically harming other children would receive a serious punishment, the parents would be in the loop, and the school counselor would be heavily involved with that child for the remainder of the school year.
Anything systemic and sustained, or targeting immutable attributes, is also de facto serious.
It's possible that things are different in your social environments, but "bullying" as I understood it as a kid is no longer even remotely socially acceptable.
> I think school bullying may be a product of Anglo-Saxxon culture, which is very individualistic, success oriented (i.e. if you're a "loser" you're barely a human being) and also kind of heartless.
That is rather refuted by the rather notorious bullying in Japan, which is about as far away from individualistic culture as you can get.
> Looking in from a European perspective
> Bullying!? Are you kidding me?
American public school perspective, here, but death threats were a normal part of the bullying equation growing up. Sure, it was mostly "we're going to kick your ass after school", but there was the occasional "we're going to put you in the hospital or the morgue" and just enough follow-through to make the threats credible.
Calling this bullying isn't inaccurate, the severity of bullying has been downplayed. It isn't just stealing your lunch money and calling you ugly.
Bullying is exactly the correct term for this. You just don't appreciate how evil bullies actually are.
> Also, the problem with bullying isn't bullying itself but that people are receptive to it and don't defend themselves
> If bullying is guaranteed to result in a punch in the face, it will change the risk/reward calculation dramatically and make 99% of it not worth it.
This just isn't how violence happens. Bullies don't select targets they can't win against. In addition to that, they often come in groups. Victim managed to punch one guy? Not only is it likely that he'll overpower the victim, his buddies are there to make sure he doesn't lose.
"Just defend yourself" is what leads to kids bringing weapons to school. Because that actually is how you defend yourself against violent thugs and certainly what a responsible adult would do when faced with unprovoked violence.
> But shouldn't the anger be directed to the people who did the bullying?
Yes, but bear in mind the world does not necessarily pity the bullied. When it happened to me and my friends in school, we were shunned and snickered at by seemingly "everyone" at the time, girls especially. Teachers didn't care either.
> Also, the problem with bullying isn't bullying itself but that people are receptive to it and don't defend themselves (partly because school rules prohibit defense).
Agree. The worst things people do are to themselves. If you're trapped in an abusive situation, it'll fuck you up. But if you're receptive to that kind of abuse and stop seeing it as an inherent wrong, this is where people go from being abused to abusing themselves.
This is the difference between someone getting bullied vs someone becoming an emotionally scarred shell of a person
> It must be hard for the bullying victim but it's something that has to be done.
That's another thing. I sometimes wonder if, with all these rules and regulations and protections in place, we're not taking away some of the development that kids have to do for themselves. Standing up to a bully is extremely hard, but it's something a lot of kids eventually just have to do. I honestly think it builds character to do so.
The quote is fine. I worry about this glorification of violence. The original article and this thread seem to be filled with adolescent fantasies of revenge against bullies past and future.
I hope this is mainly internet posturing and bravado.
I'm not sure every child has the perspective to recognize hyperbole. There are times when violence may be necessary, but that doesn't make it any less horrible, whether justified or not.
> Adults bully, too, so you do need to learn to handle it.
Eh, they do. But not nearly as frequently as children in my experience. I was tormented mercilessly in school, but I'm actually struggling to think of a single instance of bullying I've experienced as an adult. And I don't think that's because I "learnt to deal with it". I think it's partly because most bullies grow out of it, and partly because as an adult you're usually afforded the agency to leave situations where you're being bullied.
> The smart solution to bullying is to make it socially unacceptable.
Sure, the bullied kid — which generally has low sociability, either from the start or following the ostracization coming along with the bullying, and few if any friends — is going to make bullying "socially unacceptable".
That's a very nice feel-good declaration, but it's about as helpful as "smack yourself in the mouth to help them so the beating is shorter"
> High EQ individuals have told me this is wrong and the appropriate reaction would be to take offence and try to make them feel bad, but I've argued this would just result in an objective reduction in happiness in the world so it wouldn't make sense. Plus, most of the time my colleagues have been nice to my face so it's not like it's ever got in the way of me doing my job.
You may be wrong, and these "High EQ individuals" right, in the sense that your acquiescence to this bullying behaviour might encourage the bullies to keep it up with others too. In that sense, your standing up against them would be not just for yourself but for all their potential future victims too, which would increase the future sum total of happiness in the world.
(I'm not saying it is necessarily so, but it may be.)
> "By standing up to bullies you're likely to become one yourself."
I don't subscribe to that point of view. I believe it is those who submit to being victimized by bullies who are most likely to become bullies themselves.
> "Maybe consider trying to have more empathy towards others and realize their opinions and behavior are formed largely by their own life experiences."
Please don't be condescending. My biggest pursuit in life has been learning, understanding and empathizing with others.
What past experience has lead you to believe submitting to bullies makes the world a better place? Do you find yourself bullying others after resisting bullies?
No not really. It will perhaps offend the bizarre establishment that has invaded school administration. However, this is bully repulsion 101.
If the system doesn't protect you, you must find a technique that does. Would we avoid school shootings,etc, if we taught our kids to stand up for themselves, don't let yourself get bullied? Real self respect vs the artificial "everyone's special" of today's thinking?
Sidenote: Why is this behavior (bullying) tolerated in school? What other part of our culture accepts bullying as "part of growing up" or "just the way it is?"
reply