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Schools Act to Short-Circuit 'Cyberbullying'
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "So-called cyberbullying is a growing problem for school administrators, the Wall Street Journal reports. What may once have been snickers in the hallway can now be an excruciatingly public humiliation spread via email, text messaging and online teen forums. From the article: '"There's always the legal discussion of 'if it doesn't happen at school, can a district take action?'" says Joe Wehrli, policy-services director for the Oregon School Boards Association. "If a student is harassed for three hours at night on the Web and they come to school and have to sit in the same classroom with the student that's the bully, there is an effect on education, and in that way, there is a direct link to schools," he argues.'"
but words will never hurt me This is the biggest load of bullshit ever. Words hurt, really hurt and the damage done by psychological bullying is far deeper than physical bullying.
Schools here in the UK have as part of their remit to tackle the serious problem of bullying in whatever form it may take. I applaud this initiative.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
In the real world, self-defense is both a right and a duty.
Back when I was in high school, 20+ years ago, I didn't have the worry about cyber-bullying; I was more concerned about the physical, hands-on kind. This lasted precisely until the point where I learned to fight back. And I still have very vivid memories of hurting people, and of the satisfaction I took in it; does that make me a sadist? I don't think so -- I certainly don't go looking for fights these days, or try to hurt people in any way. The satisfaction was equal parts getting my own back and knowing that I was finally putting a stop to the torment that had made my life hell for years.
You know what? It worked. After a year or so of fighting damn near every day with people who had considered me their own personal punching bag, the bullying stopped. And not just for me, but for many of my equally victimized friends. That may have been "two wrongs" -- hell, it may have been a hundred wrongs -- but damned if it didn't make things right.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yeah, usually physical abuse is just one part of it. All my physical wounds have long since healed from my days of being bullied. I've been hurt much worse in boxing matches and it doesn't phase me. But the mental wounds never really heal. It's been probably ten years since anyone bullied me. I lift weights, I'm a boxer and I'm pretty big...so no one looking at me would think I was bullied. But my ego is totally smashed. When you go through years of being a total whipping boy for every sadistic asshole at your school and the "authorities" can't or won't do anything you can't just "snap out of it". Now I'm hopelessly shy, no confidence with women, I always feel like an outsider even with people I've known for years...people want to know what the hell is wrong with me. I was bullied and tormented every day all through the formative years of my life that's what!
Also there's such a stigma attached to being bullied that no one even talks about it. It's like sexual abuse, it's just something you can't casually talk about. It really is serious. Maybe someone should make some kind of anonymous support group for survivors. Is "survivors" to extreme? No. Get tormented every day for ten years and you are going to have mental issues, sorry!
One of those was the teachers encouraging other students to laugh at you whenever you screwed-up.
Since I screwed-up a lot, I soon developped the ability to not give a rat's ass about what other people think of me, an ability that has served me pretty well in the decades since.
But of course, in a politically-correct ages, busybodies have to have something to do, too, no?
...for bullying to occur?
This statement illustrates the problem. Bullying must be tolerated for it to occur. The best person who can deny a bully permission to bully is the bully, himself. That's called self-control and if the bully had it, this issue wouldn't come up. So what's next?
Schools and parents think they can deny a bully permission to be a bully. They can't. They aren't there when the bad guy acts out. They can punish afterward but they can't do a damn thing to stop the bad behavior while it's actually happening. Like training a dog, if the conditioning isn't presented timely, it's useless.
No, there's only one person who can effectively deny a bully permission to bully: the victim. In real life, legal consequences and PC-nonviolent sensibilities be damned, the only effective way to change the behavior of a bully is for his victim-selection process to fail. When he comes across a "victim" who knocks out his teeth instead of cowering in fear, the bully will stop. (For the moment. He may have to be "conditioned" a few times before he truly learns to think before he acts.)
What amazes me about the quote above is that a victim would remain online for hours, getting bullied, while shutting down the bully is a simple matter of turning off IMs (or whatever channel the bully is using to reach the victim) and going on about ones business.
We don't need to protect victims by trying to defend against bullying. We need to teach victims how to short-circuit the whole process. They are the ones with the strongest legitimate interest in seeing the problem solved. They are the *only* ones who are in the right place at the right time to implement solutions. Hit back. Turn off IMs. Whatever, just stop being a victim.