About Bullying--My Thoughts

Guys, this post is in response to the thread down below where bullying is being discussed, and this is intended to respond to a really excellent post in that thread by Eeyore. I respond to a few of his points down below. Since I myself was a bullied kid in school, I have a few things I would like to say about this subject, and a few thoughts to share. I wanted to put this post at the top of the board to encourage more people to read it, because for those of you who have young friends, or even those of you who may be parents yourself, a young person you love very much may one day become a target for bullies at school. I am also considering modifying this post into another one of my essays for submission to Newgon in the future. I think this is a subject that is very relevant for our community, because the kids we care about so much are so often subjected to bullying in the present day totalitarian eductional institutions that they are forced to endure for so many days and hours per week, and this can be a nightmare for kids who are on the regular receiving end of bullying. I do want to respond to a few of your points:

Kids who do that need to be dealt with by an adult. If that doesn't work, they need to be made to see a professional.

When I was in elementary school and middle school, when a kid got bullied terribly (which was me all too often, so I know this firsthand) instead of taking the ringleaders of the bullies to get professional help for the cruel and sometimes outright sadistic things they did, they would instead presume that something must be wrong with the kid who was getting bullied to make him/her a target, and he/she would be taken to see the guidance counselor him/herself. I have no idea if things are still like that, but I haven't noticed things getting any better or more enlightened in how teachers and guidance counselors act towards kids these days in comparison to how they did during the days when I was a student, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if nothing has changed in all in that regards.

And as you know, these days it's a 24-hour cycle. At school, online, after school activities, and by text messages.

When I was in elementary school and middle school, we didn't have technology like the Internet or cell phones that enabled texting, but the bullying and tormenting would continue after school once we were at home if the bullies happened to get a hold of your phone number. They would sometimes give your house harrassing phone calls, and in those days, we didn't have the luxury of caller ID to know who where or who the call was coming from before we picked up the receiver. And they would usually hang up before you could do a trace on them.

And if that doesn't work, they need to be removed fom the school entirely so the other kids can be left in peace.

I agree with the above. The problem in my case, however, is that the bullies are not always typical punks who do not want to be at school in the first place, and thus easily removable from the school. Some of them are good students from an academic standpoint, and do not give any of the teachers problems. They are sometimes popular students not only with their peers but also with the teachers, and even buddy around with the teachers sometimes before and after their classes. These bullies are often considered "normal," as opposed to the disliked little nerdy kid who sometimes acts out in certain ways to get the type of positive social attention that he/she is not receiving from his/her peers and teachers. The teachers are sometimes as annoyed by the bullied kid as any of their students who routinely ignore and/or torment them. Not all the kids who are bullied are particularly good students, either. I think this is why many schools would hesitate to censure or get rid of any of the bullies if they weren't the typical type of punk who hates school. After all, the schools don't want to get rid of kids who get good grades and are popular with the teachers as well as their peers, and this is why their bullying tends to be tolerated or overlooked so much, and the unpopular, sometimes annoying kid who is not an honor student is more often seen as being a "problem" and sent to the guidance counselor for "help."

Also, there is another very important thing to consider here. The teachers sometimes end up bullying these less popular kids who are not model students nearly as badly as the latter's peers do, and when the kids see a teacher subjecting a certain student to frequent emotional abuse, they feel more encouraged and justified in doing it themselves. Teachers deserve a lot of credit for the work they do, of course, but many of them are bullies themselves, especially if they bring personal problems they have at home to their job. And they don't usually take their problems out on the popular students with good grades.

Now, just imagine if all the schools were democratized along the lines of the Sudbury model. No punks who hated any form of schooling in order to receive their education would be there in the first place, and popular students who attempted bullying would be far less accepted and much less likely to get away with their bullying at such a school for long, as the students who felt they were being bullied could bring up the grievance at the regular monthly meetings when the rules were discussed and drafted. And teachers who were unable to keep their personal problems to themselves and who were extremely moody, nasty, and overly authoritarian individuals wouldn't be working at these schools in the first place. Students would vote to get rid of any teacher who was a bully or just plain inadequate in their teaching methodology.

Now imagine another thing. Just imagine if kids in all age groups were allowed to have adult friends outside of their parents, including adults whom they loved--and who loved them--as more than just friends. Imagine how quickly we would intervene for any youth who was a friend of ours--or more than that--if they were getting bullied. Look, for example, at how Trillion recently intervened when a girl he is close to and really cares about was being badly bullied at her school. She felt more comfortable telling him than she did her own parents, and he ended up convincing her to tell her parents, and he went with her to provide moral support to make it easier for her. That was the condition she gave him in order to tell her parents what they needed to be told...that he be present at the time to offer his support. They all talked it over, and they agreed to remove the girl from the school where she was being so badly mistreated by her peers and enrolled her in another school that she liked much better. Trillion never asked for anything in return, and he didn't give a damn how popular the bullies who were hurting his young friend may have been with the students or teachers there. And he didn't once tell his young friend that she was the one who had something wrong with her. Are the antis really sure we are bad for kids? Are they really sure that we don't respect them as people? If we can treat them so well even when we can't legally engage in physical intimacy with them for the entirety of our lives, or even tell them that we love them in a more than platonic way (because that would be considered "inappropriate" if it's not actually illegal), then that sort of puts a dent in their pet theory that we are only interested in having sexual activity with them and nothing more.

Once again, it's a product of a shitty, greedy culture where kids are ignored by parents and not getting their personal problems tended to, so they lash out at other kids or take sick pleasure in abusing them day in and day out.

Agreed. And imagine how much better off all of these kids would be if they had more control over their personal lives as soon as they were cognitively developed enough to exercise it. And imagine if they had a large array of choices in regards to how they received their education, including democratic schools, Internet classes, homeschooling (with a tutor instead of parents, if they preferred), and various apprenticeships of choice to go along with their "regular" education. In other worse, what if all of these kids weren't mostly rounded up as glorified cattle and forced into such places, and where learning actually had to be fun, interesting, and relevant to their lives in order to get the kids to stay. And what if the respect between students and teachers was mutual, rather than all one-sided. Imagine if all the students actually respected all of their teachers rather than fearing them. Imagine if it would be bad for the teachers to bully kids, and imagine if no student who hated this particular method of education was forced to endure it for five days a week and eight hours a day. Imagine how much less bullying there would be in a youth liberated society.