Borrowing what David Schraub said on a post about racism, to tackle bullying will take a great national moral shift in attitude. Are we up to it?

1. It is irrelevent where a problem is claimed where none exists, or is hyped beyond reality.

2. In this case, where there is a problem, we already see solutions, namely individuals choosing to act against bullying. The problem is actually greater than ignoring the practice of bullying; in many cases, parents set poor examples or are neglectful because they’re self-centered. Plenty of us have never found bullying acceptable and even on this thread you have already seen examples of people acting against bullying (and not listed here, but no doubt also acted against other forms of misbehavior).

When grandparents gossripped over the back fence, there were aldo more eyes and ears keeping track of what was happening. Now each bullied child is left to his own devices, and there is little a child can do to put a stop to it by himself.

Borrowing what David Schraub said on a post about racism, to tackle bullying will take a great national moral shift in attitude. Are we up to it?

The sad thing is that it is possible to combat it. It only takes leadership and community willpower.

When my son was bullied, we had the good fortune to have one year with a grad teacher who just wouldn’t tolerate it. In class or on the palyground, punishment for bullying was swift. “Not my Filly” omplaints from parents of bullies were not accepted. Luckily, a number of parents backed the teacher, not just one family, and for that one year
there was no bullying among 4th graders.
Parental involvement spread to other grades, other teachers were pressured to follow suit, and that little (by comparison) school improved throughout.

It can be done. But will we? I don’t know if that kind of concentrated effort is possible these days.

Given that was in suburbia, and years ago, well I can only imagine what its like today. No scratch that, there was a kid in my daughter’s class that was a real problem for her. He is now held back in Kindergarten and may have even left the school system. The good news is the school did more than my old school would have. But, I have my doubts that unless I raised some stink (among others), I am not so sure what would be done.

I’m also usually very suspicious of the “anti-bully” policies that are promised. My high school had one of those, and it would have been funny if it weren’t so insulting. Mostly it was business as usual, teachers endeavoured to ignore bullying as much as they possibly could, and when they no longer had a choice (like in the case of a beating) the bully got suspended for 3 days to a week, got a stern talking to by a counsellor and had to write a letter of apology. I received one such letter from a bully, who was giggling like mad when she gave it to me. My only consolation is that, considering her age and the awe-inspiring spelling and grammar errors in it, she probably would never get a job beyond mopping floors.

Spare me the “psychological counselling” (which apparently the perpetrators got, but the victims never did), some kids are bastards and that’s all there is to it. If these new laws actually help, I’m all for them, but unless we start contemplating actually expelling the really bad offenders (don’t forget that bullies usually are disruptive in general, not just to the bodies and minds of their favourite punch-toy) especially in the high school stage, it will not get better. Considering the sheer numbers of kids who get put through hell by other kids the fact that a few crack, grab a gun and mete out their own justice isn’t all that strange. In fact, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
The statistic says that 160,000 don’t go on any given day out of fear. That’s a lot of kids under a lot of pressure and feeling of isolation. From experience I can tell you that no small part of the pain comes from being told that you should trust teachers and counsellors and then seeing how they are, at best, utterly ineffective at protecting you in any way. Oh and fighting back does not in fact always work, by the way. It can even make it worse, depending on the situation. So over 100,000 kids are under extreme emotional strain on any given day. I’m sure it would be safe to say that at least 10,000 are 15 or older, and at least 1,000 of those has access to a firearm. It’s not out of this world to think that a young man or woman (though more often man) under severe emotional strain, often physical fear, feeling unprotected and angry, will a gun nearby, has a 1 in 1,000 chance of picking that gun up and using it.