CyberBully

[TheMercenary]

[glatt]

We are all adults here, and I think our perceptions come from the experiences we had as kids decades ago. I think things have changed a lot due almost entirely to Columbine. Schools take this shit very seriously now. At my kids elementary school they have a "peacemaker" program. They spend several hours each month going over core values and practicing conflict resolution. There is also a peer mediation program so kids can take conflicts to trained peers if they are afraid to take it to a teacher. Most importantly, the teachers take it seriously. They don't want bullying going on, so they work it out between students if they hear there is a problem.

It's still kids on a playground, but it isn't Lord of the Flies, like when I was a kid.

I saw a lot of bullying and did nothing about it because I didn't want the bullies to turn on me. That's probably the thing that bothers me most.

[Ibby]

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you... then you win."

[jinx]

My only recompense, if I can call it that, albeit too late, was the fact that the 3 major trangressors did not fare too well. One was killed by her boyfriend. One had four kids, on welfare and no father in sight. The 3rd has been in and out of rehab and institutions since HS.

Didn't we learn from the Breakfast Club that the bullies are just as damaged as those they bully? Isn't there a similarity to abusive relationships?

[Sheldonrs]

Originally Posted by jinx

Didn't we learn from the Breakfast Club that the bullies are just as damaged as those they bully? Isn't there a similarity to abusive relationships?

Yes they are. But we have a choice. I was bullied and beaten up often. But I never did it to anyone else.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by jinx

Didn't we learn from the Breakfast Club . . .

No. We did not learn. As somebody said, if history teaches us anything, it's that we don't learn from history.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

I was ... beaten up often. But I never did it to anyone else.

Unless they asked for it in juuust the right way?

[DanaC]

So...this life altering aberration you described was something you felt compelled to inflict upon another human? Oh... YOU had reason. So that made it ok, i guess.

No. It didn't make it ok. What I should have done was advise my friend to talk to her teacher, or indeed quietly talk to one of the teachers myself. What I did instead was serve up a very adolescent form of rough justice. I fed her the meal she'd been feeding my friend. It was the wrong thing to do. But, I, like her, was very young.

Personally what you all are talking about is way past bullying - its harassment. My definition of bullying would be more akin to what (no name) has been done here to certain posters...relatively harmless poking or mocking. I believe I even mentioned this in my 2nd post.

But that's my point Classic. People aren't setting up websites and engaging in a national debate in order to combat teasing, which I believe is what you thought was being referred to. They're trying to tackle a very real and destructive problem. It's something that affects a lot of people, and can have profound implications for their future happiness. Unfortunately there is a tendency within our culture(s) to look at bullying (of the kind I am talking about) and characterise it as teasing gone too far. It's not teasing gone too far it's a different animal altogether.

This subject winds me up a little. Not because I'm angry at stuff that happened to me as a kid. I'm not. BUt that kid and her family put their pain out there in order to try and empower youngsters coping with a very destructive force and I think they deserved a little more benefit of the doubt. I think that's what pissed me off. Our readiness to dismiss them. To mock them, even, as an instinctive response. With a lack of evidence (the ignorance you posit) our initial and instinctive assumptions are unkind and unsympathetic.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by jinx

Didn't we learn from the Breakfast Club that the bullies are just as damaged as those they bully? Isn't there a similarity to abusive relationships?

Umm...the message I took from that at the time was that being a Basket Case had mileage. It confirmed my own suspicions that the way to stave off bullying was to become a mental. Which I duly did.

[lumberjim]

huh....and to think....i went around taping all the nerds' butt cheeks together that year

[DanaC]

lol jim

[jinx]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Umm...the message I took from that at the time was that being a Basket Case had mileage. It confirmed my own suspicions that the way to stave off bullying was to become a mental. Which I duly did.

So you changed your behavior or self in some way, and the bullying stopped?

[DanaC]

The bullying stopped when I kicked the shit out of Queen Hockey Bitch in the middle of an art class. But I'd already figured out people are less likely to want to fight you if they think you are dangerously unpredictable and suicidally reckless.

[TheMercenary]

It doesn't say it is related to bullying but you have to wonder. Is this what we are coming to?

MILFORD, Conn.
A Connecticut middle school principal has laid down the law: You put your hands on someone -- anyone -- in any way, you're going to pay.

A violent incident that put one student in the hospital has officials at the Milford school implementing a "no touching" policy, according to a letter written by the school's principal.

East Shore Middle School parents said the change came after a student was sent to the hospital after being struck in the groin.

Principal Catherine Williams sent out a letter earlier in the week telling parents recent behavior has seriously impacted the safety and learning at the school.

"Observed behaviors of concern recently exhibited include kicking others in the groin area, grabbing and touching of others in personal areas, hugging and horseplay. Physical contact is prohibited to keep all students safe in the learning environment," Williams wrote.

Students and parents are outraged. They said the new policy means no high-fives and hugs, as well as horseplay of any kind. The consequences could be dire, Williams warned in the letter.

"Potential consequences and disciplinary action may include parent conferences, detention, suspension and/or a request for expulsion from school," Williams wrote.

Many think the school's no tolerance policy goes way too far. Others said it's utterly ridiculous.

"Now it's almost as if it's a sanitized school. Where you have to keep your distance from everybody? And that's not what school is about," one father said.

"What if they are out on the playground at recess, or in gym class?" parent Kathy Casey wondered. "You know, gym class is physical."

http://wcbstv.com/local/school.bans.hugs.2.969949.html

[classicman]

Originally Posted by DanaC

People aren't setting up websites and engaging in a national debate in order to combat teasing, which I believe is what you thought was being referred to.

Thats where I was coming from.