Slashdot Mirror
UK Schools Will Fight Cyberbullying
Plutonite writes "The BBC is running a story on UK schools being told by the education minister to fight cyberbullying, by which they mean bullying with the aid of (network-based) technology. Schools have been told to confiscate mobile phones, and, more controversially, to investigate and get material removed from personal social-networking sites. Are schools supposed to be doing this as an extension of their duty to prevent physical bullying in school, or is this is yet another example of governmental intervention where it is not due? Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents?"
I was bullied extensively in the early part of my school life. My parents reported it to the teacher and when that didn't work, we went to the Headmaster at the school. The abuse did not stop.
So I changed schools - and I got yet more abuse. We went through the same procedures again and again and again and it was no use. The teachers didn't want to know.
I finally made it to High School and then I decided this time, it wasn't going to happen again. Some kid tried it on and I opted to belt him one in the nose. His nose was thoroughly broken and he was out of school for a week.
After that, I was set for the rest of school. Nobody really tried anything on after that. You see the athaphy that I ran in to in my earlier episodes worked to my advantage now. Precisely nothing was done to me and my schooling carried on as normal.
It seems that these days we attach an "e-" or a "cyber-" on to a pre-existing social problem and suddenly everyone treats the issue as urgent . The problem with such initiatives is there fail to realise that this is a human problem first and a technological problem a distant second.
The way to deal with bulling in schools is in my view is very simple. The punishment should be swift, harsh and feared. They should be charged with assault or harassment in a full criminal court and ordered to do a suitable amount of community service. Failure to comply should immediately mean jail-time which should be served in school holidays.
It's a pity that the type of people who bully are the sorts who have violence all around them at home. As such, the only thing they understand is violence. A short, sharp shock may be enough to put them back on the straight and narrow coupled with some kind of therapy. I do not believe such people are beyond help but if left to there own devices, they will become the criminals of tomorrow.
Simon
Yes, they should know it's being documented.. Because it is. Whether it be by schools, peers, google, marketers, Homeland Security, etc., it will be monitored, and it's best they know that.
I'm not going to tell UK people how to raise their children and they're not going to tell me how to raise mine. You can go ahead and prepare your kid for what your government is going to force onto them anyways. I personally am going to teach my kids to question everything. Question me, question the government and question any institutions. I'm going to teach them how to do it objectively and how to improve themselves as well as the said institution. And you know what? Maybe my kids will be able to reverse what my generation has let slip out of control. Maybe not. Depends on how you raise your kids. So the question I'm really interested in is how are you going to raise your kids so I know whether I have to prepare mine to be monitored their entire life or prepare them for something we all used to enjoy.
My work here is dung.
Kids should know that the Internet is not a playground with safety bumpers on every sharp corner. It is for adults, and there are people out there that will monitor everything they can, people will take advantage of every opportunity. The sad fact is that not enough adults know this yet, so teaching kids about it is a good start at the education that should come with the purchase of Internet services.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
When there's insults to be dished out, you will only insult each other using the approved insults!
And when there's abuse to be documented, who'll be documenting the abuse? Who'll be watching the watchers? Not you, Citizen!
When we point the camera at you, it's for your safety. When you point the camera at us, it's an offensive weapon.
Don't bully. Your government hates the competition.
No matter what the intentions behind this decree, I don't think anything will change. If J. Random Memorial School sends Facebook a message demanding that they remove a person's comment about a student of theirs, and it does not violate Facebook's TOS, then why would they do it? Most social networking sites aren't based in the UK; frankly, its unenforcible.
Also, even if social networking sites were affected, wouldn't the "cyberbullies" just find another medium, i.e. AIM/YIM/MSN/IRC/Insert your own acronym? Or independent blogging? There's really no way to enforce this reliably.
Who gets to make the call on whether or not behavior is "cyber bullying", or just plain old fashioned, zero harm trolling? I mean, regardless of whether or not it's the school's responsibility, or even within their legitimate power, to police the actions of students after they leave the building or associated events (it's not), this is essentially enabling content censors not just of violence, but of speech. Say kid A calls kid B a "cunt nigger bitch" on a forum somewhere, and Headmaster Brothinbersonshire sees that. Now, it's clearly mean, and offensive to some, but does it cross the line of cyber bullying? Well, that's up to the whims of Headmaster Brothinbersonshire, and if he's a prick, a very real, very chilling, and very arbitrary limitation on the speech of anyone who goes to school, regardless of whether it's related in any way.
Schools have been told to confiscate mobile phones, and, more controversially, to investigate and get material removed from personal social-networking sites. And then what will they do? Bully the student to remove the offensive material... "If you don't remove that post about Timmy RIGHT THIS INSTANCE YOUNG MAN!!!" That's teaching them how not to bully others by bullying them.... Seriously, what about education for a change. Personally I don't think anyone carrying a phone in any school should be allowed to do so unless they're on the University level. When I was in school I never needed a phone for anything. Had I had a phone then, I'd likely be using using it to update my blog/Myspace/Facebook/Hi5/etcSpace... instead of focusing on whats more important (learning)..
Infiltrated dot Net
Well, actually, their every e-move IS being documented, by Google, and people other than their parents DO control their lives, such as teachers, government officials, etc. I don't know how it is in the UK but in the US you don't really have much in the way of rights until you hit 18. But, that aside, how far do you take this? What about bullying outside of school? What about bullying when the kid's 20? IMO you do kids a great disservice by insulating them from the hard parts of life, such as the fact that some people are pricks. It's better to learn how to deal with that yourself at a young age than to learn to rely on your parents or the government to come to your rescue.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
Yes, they should, because it's true. Why lie to the poor tykes?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents?"
No, let's lie to them and tell them that only the tooth fairy and Santa Claus knows anything about their public online info...
~S
I was bullied in elementary school. By High school I was friends with the kid who bullied me, and yes we had fun with that one. We were talking about bullying in my humanities class, my friend (the ex-bully) raised his hand and said, "I used to bully people," the teacher asked how he thought that made the other kid feel. The bully said, "I dunno," he looked at me and asked, "how did you make it feel?" I said something about not remembering but that he owed me back for all the lunch money he took after he beat me up. The look on the teachers face was priceless. In a real response, it's the schools job (since parents don't seem to know) to help build some character into students. The school should help students to learn what the Internet is and what the future consequences are of action on the net. The school shouldn't play big punisher and use it's hand to punish kids for mean statement written at home. Maybe the school could help parents moniter online life if there are issues or warn parents of potential issues. They shoudl also let paretns know of problems that may be occuring. If a kid is being picked on at school he or she is probably seing the same issues online and hiding them all from parents.
Teachers realm the comments for signs of cyberbullying:
Teacher: "Now young Sebastian, while I admire your interest in communist era Russia, I'm not sure that image you linked to is really relevant to technology."
Student: "You must be new here, mod parent down, imagine a Beowulf cluster of those..."
My little Linux and tech blog
Unless it is initiated on school property, or during school hours, or is otherwise set up specifically to harass during school hours or on school property, I don't see how the school has either the right or the responsibility to intervene.
I was bullied almost from my first day of kindergarten clean through until my last day of high school. It ranged from simple verbal abuse, to threats, violence, theft and on more then one occasion I was at risk of sexual assault. The teachers were told of course (even the near sexual assault) but, nothing was done. Despite naming the offenders the teachers told me their "hands were tied" as they had not personally witnessed anything wrong. I can tell you there is precious little in this world as heartbreaking and infuriating as finding out just what someone can get away with simply because there was no documentation.
I welcome ANY measure that will allow victims to document their attacks and get worms like those what they deserve. Cyber-bullying is simply a new evolution to an old problem, maybe, just MAYBE if this facet of bullying is addressed then it may help draw light to how horribly badly "old fashioned" bullying has been handled.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
I dunno about an article that quotes a "Mr Balls" about "happy slapping".
It's not that easy. You can't just log off.
They're filling your inbox with spam.
They're spamming your blog.
They're making up websites with your picture and filling it with false "confessions."
They're making up IM accounts and messaging your friends with the same "confessions."
There's a dozen more ways kids can be cruel online. It doesn't have to be directed at you while you're logged in to harm you.
My sister (at school then in the UK) had a bunch of kids create a Bebo account for her, post a bunch of comments about other people at her school and totally ruined her social life. Emails, phone calls and a vist to their office in Ca by a family member later Bebo had singularly REFUSED to do anything about the issue.
I myself was bullied extensively when I started in High School - and while perhaps I shrug off comments made by others perfectly willingly these days it was by no means the "toughening up" experience that most of the comments on here seem to view it as. It wasn't an experience I would wish on anyone and I certainly would rather it hadn't happened to me. Making comments along the lines of "its a normal part of growing up" are simply ignoring the issues rather than confronting them.
There's two primary issues that I feel the educational system isn't dealing with very well:
1. Disciplinary reactions that are felt appropriate in many cases and according to child-friendly literature (at least many places in Europe) simply completely fails to faze a number of extreme bullies. Especially people used to a gang culture or violence in their daily lives. If someone headbutts the teacher (happened in my country) - what can you do about it? Send them to a social worker? What if they simply enjoy being abusive, and enjoy dominating others and causing pain to those that bore and seek to constrain them? What if they regularly bring knives to school? Traditional remedies like 'lowering their behaviour grade' are completely unsuited.
2. There are pupils who, in the extreme case of situation 1, are simply excessively violent and disturbing to other pupils. It is both hysterically funny and tragically sad (and wonderfully weird) that if any of us had someone at our workplace that we knew could at any moment grab a stapler and hurl it against our head, or punch us, it would reach the news, yet things like this would hardly get noticed in school "because it's just children" and they are somehow supposed to be violent. At one European school it was rather common for gangs of boys to print out pictures of women's genitalia and shove them in the faces of girls. I would rather say that someone who actively fears physical harm from several people at their school, beyond just a general sense of paranoia (reputation of the 'bad bully') but have actually several times seen people get kicked in the face and threatened, and feel a deep panic and fear at the very sight of other pupils, will get permanently scarred, that their daily lives should be compared to a torture chamber (how would you consider it if your workplace had knife carriers in it?), and that it's going to both hurt their confidence and trust in right and good to prevail and lead to behavioural problems later in their life.
How to fix this? Generally two approaches;
- Because children have different levels of sensitivity, use disciplinary measures that are likely to be felt quite strongly by that individual student. This places a lot of trust in teachers - but in e.g. the case of bullying, a teacher should literally have a long chat with and interview whoever does it, and if they persist, punish them in a way that feels negatively for the individual. I would estimate that in 95% of cases the 'punishment' for someone breaking a rule only needs to be (and even SHOULD be) as light as a feather (e.g. apologise to the principal, a person of authority, or help clean up the cantina after school), because for most children even such a symbolic act is felt very strongly.
- For children that display violent behaviour that would be considered torture if adults were subject to it, use a progressive system of separate classes or schools. As a last-instance resort, send them to a medium-disciplinary school that take into account that many of its student will be rather "expressive". If they even in this school are violent towards other students, send them to a high-disciplinary school that has guards in the classroom. It is utterly and completely unacceptable that children should have a real fear for their physical safety just because a small number of violent 'problem' children should be included together with them while they work their mental issues out. Anything that would be a breach of human rights if it was done to an adult should similarly be so for children.
This is written after seeing plenty of examples of students attacking teachers, bringing guns to schools, bringing knives, throwing chairs in the classrooms, forming gangs that demand "submission" and tribute from other students, habitually pin down and grope female students (no, not in the 'playful slap' way but in the 'hold while others touch' way) etc.
People make it seem like life and all these problems suddenly sprung into action. People grew up and dealt with these problem before. They should be able to do so still.. or are people devolving?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
"Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents"
or even their parents?
all the government wants to do is to tell you what you can say and what you can do. They'll use any tactic to stop you from thinking yourself, and any questioning of the current administration will get you put into some kind of trouble.
Fscking George Bush.. leave us alone!
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
when he has iDisabled your iLifeline to the iAuthorities?
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apple-sends-customers-isicilian-message/story.aspx?guid=%7B5B49C36A-8B2B-4055-8CD9-32D227F11887%7D&dist=TNMostRead
All 4 of your examples are illegal and carry both civil and criminal penalties. Why does that have anything to do with school?
soon you iHackers will have an iBrick.. permanently disabled iPhone.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/apple-warns-customers-about-unlocking/story.aspx?guid=%7BF8A6288E-9315-41B9-AD64-1B9CC8E95658%7D
Yeah! Now THAT'S what I call a "Youtube moment!" Post the torrent when you get a chance...
(yes, I'm kidding.)
I have a problem with the modern vernacular using a single word, "bullying", to encompass everything from name calling to practical jokes to mild or even violent physical abuse. Doing so robs descriptions of the latter of the weight they deserve.
If children were well-educated, they wouldn't engage in cyberbullying, and they would put social networking sites into good use. Their current use of such wonderful tools as social networking clearly shows that their mental state is many orders of magnitude below the threshold required to characterise a living being as an animal, yet alone a human. This is the result of a combination of poor parentage and a broken bankrupt society. If they had good parents *and* were living in a healthy caring society, they wouldn't be like that. Children are the image of their parents and the society they were born in. The schooling systems only make the problem worse. Schools are supposed to educate, but in fact they fail to do so, and they don't help the socialisation of youth either. What we need is an active endeavour run by citizen volunteers (eg an NGO) to educate not only the youth but also their parents and other adults. Approaches such as homeschooling must be promoted more, as well. Education must be perceived as something that makes you wealthier in spirit, not something that enables you to get a job.
All 4 of your examples are illegal and carry both civil and criminal penalties. Why does that have anything to do with school?
Those carry penalties IN LAW. In practice, it takes an informed victim to exercise that legal protection. Does that sound like a middle-schooler to you? I don't expect every parent to understand that, but I think it's reasonable for teachers to be aware of the rules of the game and step in as defenders of kids they see getting attacked online.
What penalties they set is debatable, but the basic charge of the article: 'we're teaching kids that they're being supervised online' misses the point. They're teaching kids that online behavior has consequences, some of them unpleasant, just like the real world. Sounds like a useful lesson to me.
I, being fourteen, and a fem-geek, would know, and i think its a bunch of crap, because bloacking facebook, and 'bebo' and other social networking sites is doing nothing to stop this "cyber-bullying" which happens, not only fairly rarely, but not to any large degrees. I think its stupid that the government should be focusing on this instead of focusing on the NHS or something far more important. just because they make a big deal about it doesn't mean its going to change.
Schools have been told to confiscate mobile phones, and, more controversially, to investigate and get material removed from personal social-networking sites.
I've also heard there's this new fangled thing called paper that can be used to send nasty comments to people anonymously! Poo has also been known to be used in this manner, while sitting on a doorstep. So just remove paper, pens, hands, poo, and doors from the environment and our children can finally be safe!
As much as I applaud any attempt to improve the quality of a child's education, attacking the tools they use for bulling isn't going to do anything to the root causes of it. However, sending the kids to an island and having them fight to the death for our amusement....that could work.
Everything will be taken away from you.
... is this is yet another example of governmental intervention where it is not due?
When considering government interference with free speech and balancing this with libel and other criminal written speech, please remember that the schools and government in question are in the UK.
The UK government does NOT have a constitutional guarantee of a right to free speech and freedom of the press. Its libel laws are quite different from those of the US as well. (It's one of the major differences between the legal systems of the two - in the US truth is an absolute defense aganst claims of defamation, and "public figures" have an extra burden of proving deliberate malace when bringing a charge.)
Now the question was about whether such intervention was PROPER. IMHO that doesn't vary as you cross The Pond - though others may disagree. But what's LEGAL, what's standard governmental practice, and the theoretical underpinnings behind decisions and reasoning about them DO differ drastically. So what the courts will let the government get away with, and how to go about getting them to force the government to back off, will also differ greatly.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Or perhaps they could be evolving? Just because people managed well enough in the past does not mean that it was better then, or that there is nothing that needs fixing. This is similar to saying "I didn't need computers when I grew up - why should people need them now? Are we devolving?".
I personally think that the schools need to do something. However, I agree with the education side of the argument, rather than the punishment - try to teach the bullies a little humanity.
Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents?"
Yes, obviously, because it is.
Exactly. Just think of the horror, they could circumcise your e-peen!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
and Tits :)
Arrest me.
"This is the result of a combination of poor parentage"
So you think it's genetic?
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"I don't expect every parent to understand that, but I think it's reasonable for teachers to be aware of the rules of the game and step in as defenders of kids they see getting attacked online."
As a former teacher, let me say, you are out of your fucking mind.
The practical realities of enforcing discipline from incomplete information gathered from off campus and online sources are horrifying.
"They're teaching kids that online behavior has consequences, some of them unpleasant, just like the real world."
Laws exist to do that already. Why do you think the people who ignore them now will give two fucks about consequences from a a school?
Lastly
"In practice, it takes an informed victim to exercise that legal protection."
That's just bullshit, plain and simple. All it requires is a victim willing to seek out help.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
For those of you folks so ill equipped, I suggest just taking one of the red wires from your computer's power supply and one black one, plug that puppy in and stick the leads on your tongue.
(May void warranty, especially if it's an Apple product. Not suitable for persons under 18 years of age. YMMV.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
My first point is simply that I am glad British school might be doing something about bullying. Although we can debate whether the solution is entirely legal or appropriate. But the problem is very real.
Now to cyberbullying...
My daughter was the very first victim of cyberbullying at her rather elite private school here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Yes a personal detail.) Pretty bad, although could have been worse. Her teachers cared and tried to take action against the students involved. The administration did squat and hung us out to dry. She handled it well, but over the course of that year (because her parents took it very seriously) she was ostracized, and quickly students and administrators alike got into a "blame the victim" pattern. Her grades plummeted. Often talked about killing herself, yadda yadda yadda. Friendships (such as between us and other parents) ended over this because they would not hold their children accountable. (In a new school now, thriving, grades shot up to A's and 100's. Go figure.)
Again - my point is simply "cyberbullying is also a serious and real problem that causes real observable damage".
Whether such policies are legal, enforceable, and so on - that is quite debatable. The website provider (a kind of Facebook for kids) actually took the site down when we complained (we think). Good for them. Violation of policy. The school took the "well, not our network/computers, therefore we can't do anything" line. (Photos of my child were clearly taken at school. Uh...) Technically might be correct. I don't know. My final point is, "Even if schools cannot legally police and enforce every last dang website or IM or whatever... *something* needs to be done by *someone*". The problem is bloody real and so is the damage this kind of filth.
I appreciate and sympathize with concerns about privacy and excessive government intrusion and all that. I really do. But what then shall we do? Unless we want to deny the seriousness of this problem?
I knew someone who was bullied at school. Eventually one day he snapped, and went round to the house the "ringleader" stayed in, and burnt it down. Killed one of the other kid's parents too. Nothing ever happened about it, though I think the guy who was getting bullied spent most of that summer in a mental hospital.
When will you people learn? The internet is serious business!
SQL programmer goes to a bar. Walks up to two tables and says 'Excuse me, may I join you?'.
I understand how you came to that view being a victim yourself. But still we are talking about children and teenagers, I don't see court cases and jail punishment as a viable option.
Besides do you really want legal resources such as judges etc allocated to a case of some kid giving another kid a wedgie?.
We obviously need them for much more important issues, such as teenage girls downloading Justin Timberlake songs with Limewire.
I live in the UK, and our minister in charge of education really is called Mr Balls. I have to remind myself not to snigger every time I hear about him.
"Happy slapping" is the act of assaulting someone while one of your friends films it, usually on a camera phone, the aim being to send the recording to all your other friends to prove how tough you are (or something like that)...
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
The fact is that "life on the web" is controlled and monitored anyway by various government organizations. And while we all may not like that the current trend is toward more control not less. I don't think this is any different than a school punishing a child for any other activity done outside of school time (of which there have been a few instances lately). The only arguable difference is that this could be said to affect the kids in schools as well via mobile devices.
Force camera manufacturers to watermark their videos with a personal camera identifier.
So those yobs with their latest "triumphs" can then be identified and punished.
Of course such a solution leads to privacy problems
eg. filming of an atrocity in a dictorial regime.
Anononymity can hide the bad as well as the good
There is a much more powerful tool than discipline, especially in high school.
Social Acceptance. And that can be a knife and a shield. Kids who are socially accepted, even in difference social circles are significantly less likely to be bullied. And if we can teach our children that bullying is not socially acceptable, the bullies themselves will face losing their social acceptance.
Which do you think is more terrifying to your average teenage; losing their phone, or not having anyone to call?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Kids that are effected from *virtual* bullies should get a grip. Its NOT REAL.
Stop being a baby. Geesh.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Fortunately, there are people in the world who have realized that we shouldn't need brute force anymore - we evolved past that loooong ago. The only reason such a thing still happens in this world is because people let it happen. The people who don't stand up for themselves don't want to, for a variety of reasons, start a fistfight. They'd rather the people in charge, whose JOBS are to keep ORDER, do something about it. It's perfectly reasonable to expect authorities to do their damned jobs.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Tantalus Penal Colony, anyone?
Teacher: (turns dial up to full)
Bully: (panting) My name IS!!!... Geyuh-hooo-hoo-hoo Simon... Van...Gelder.... HIYAM!!!... Geyuh-hooo-hoo-hoo... the resident.... booohhhleeee... Geyuh-hooo-hoo-hoo
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Politicians are old. Tony Blair was considered to be a 'youthful' PM coming to power in his 40s. The technology that shapes our lives is young, and constantly evolving. I'm only 26, grew up nuts about computers, and already I feel as if I'm starting to slip behind the curve, its frightening to me so its probably terrifying to them.
The country is run by technically illiterate near-pensioners who are slapping e- and cyber- prefixes on everything in a fit of desperation. The result is idiotic initiatives such as this, which aside from being a waste of time and money, present an opportunity for the more savvy political players lurking in the shadows to invade peoples privacy and crush their civil liberties.
From a techie point of view, Gordon Brown might as well be Leonid Brezhnev. A relic of a past era making crappy decisions based on the principles of his own time, without regard for the reality of the present. Young people in the UK need to kick out the gerontocracy and start making informed technology policy.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
That's completely unrealistic. You can pretend that most of the world is enlightened and physical violence is unnecessary, but you've got your head in the sand. Kids are cruel to each other, and a lot of them are little bastards that only understand a sock in the nose. Society can be a bitch, but part of it is standing up for yourself against those kinds of people. I've never heard of bullying stopped by any kind of authority figure. Kids who are bullied have a few choices: run to the authorities, which may help them in the short run, but ultimately makes their lives tougher in the long term, or fight back. I'm not saying it's nice, but that's the way it is. But then again, kids don't really understand that the world doesn't revolve around them, so they might think that they can change society for the better by, oh, I dunno, switching schools like this kid did. Even he said that the only thing that worked was a broken nose. Most people on this planet aren't much smarter than your average house pet. Reasoning doesn't work with most people.
I don't respond to AC's.
>Mostly, I made it through HS by not caring what anyone thought of me.
Why post AC?
So kids are picking on robots in U.K. schools now, or something?
-b
myselfmusic
Should kids be brought up knowing that their life on the web is being documented and controlled by people other than their parents?
Is this a serious question? Really?
A serious question is 'How can we stop bullying?'. The above is just crap.
Lots of love,
Ex-bullied.
Don't they allow home-schooling in the US?
I'm a school teacher and my school (in Australia) has recently banned mobile phones for similar reasons to those cited in the article. The people who are making light of the problem saying 'it's only virtual, it's not real' or that the best solution to bullying is a punch in the face have no idea about the real situation on the ground in schools. The internet, mobile phone cameras, and social networking sites when added together add an altogether newly dangerous and damaging element to bullying. Students who haven't yet reached anyone's 'age of reason' are now capable of taking photographs and publishing them for the whole world to see along with defaming information and potentially misleading photomanipulation. There have been cases in Australia of filmed sexual assualts, there have been cases I know about of severe internet libel which makes it easy for bullying to transfer between schools in a local area. Better to be beaten up than to have that beating the most-watched video on youtube. Better to have someone steal your lunch money than to have lies about your sexual conduct sent to every school in your local area so that when the new kid's name gets googled you are prejudged. Schools have a responsibility to form a safe environment for everyone at them (this includes staff by the way who are also vulnerable to these kinds of reputation attacks). This means that staff can't be bullies in the way they deal with bullying. There has to be a firm line and it has to be understood by the whole school community. It has to apply to staff as well as students. Even with that firm line in place incidents are going to crop up relentlessly and have to be dealt with. Violence can never be endorsed as a solution - some of our worst bullies have been kids who think they were acting righteously against bullies. This is a complex and difficult issue and requires support from parents and a great deal of professionalism from teachers to change schools into safer places. Here in Australia we have managed to severely reduce the number of playground fights from even when I was at school 12 years ago. Homophobia still needs to be dealt with (everywhere I suspect) in a major way. This internet bullying is new and dangerous and I applaud the UK for doing what they can to stay ahead of it. This is serious and deserves to be treated as such.
- Just trying to survive until the nanobots make me immortal -
Many US schools have a "zero tolerance" policy to violence. If you punch someone even in self-defense, they call the police and you now have a criminal record. Unfortunately, this trigger point often isn't reached until after a long period of bullying, when the victim finally lashes out. The only conclusion I can reliably reach about schools, at least in the USA, is that the staff approve of bullying. Maybe they admire the bully for being strong, or contemn the victim for being weak. I don't know either way, but bullying is tolerated far too much for me to believe that they actually object to it.
shoots up the school.
The lesson we hear is the dork was imbalanced.
The lesson that Darwin teaches is cause & effect. You keep fucking with someone and create a no holds barred environment, you get a no holds barred response.
Kids shooting up schools is not good nor am I endorsing it, but then again neither am I endorsing the explosion that occurs when you smoke at a petrol station.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Just make enabling technology. You can filter emails and ignore chatters, so why can't the bully victim filter the phone numbers of the bullies? You just need logging (for proof) and a filter. And it should be on the receiver's end; that way he, and not a middleman, can decide what to do with the information. Technology should be in the hands of the people that use it, not with some agency, Live Mail, or whatever.
It's funny, there's been a government report recently that accused parents/adults of sheltering their kids too much; not letting them outside, not letting them make mistakes (to learn from) and generally making them unable to function without a safety net. Now we hear the government is wanting to deal with cyber-bullying for us? Doesn't this fly in the face of the report?
I was bullied at school both physically and mentally, was it un-pleasant - yes. But it toughened me up, looking back I can see why I was picked on. I was weak. Bullying (to an extent)is part of our development process. Psychologically weak individuals don't usually make it far in the real world. If some kid cries and panics when someone sends them an abusive email, calling them a 'cnut' (or whatever constitutes cyber-bullying), how the hell will they cope when they miss a deadline at work and the boss walks in demanding answers, are they going to run off and cry in a corner?
Seems like we are not only dumbing down tomorrows generation, were turning them into cry babies reliant on big brother. Same way were no longer allowed to deal with trouble makers on our own - 20 years ago if someone threw a rock through your window, you could give them a hiding they wouldn't forget (and the police wouldn't bat an eyelid). Nowadays, you get done - they walk.
This isn't about the 'well being of kids', it's all about turning us into a nation of pussies unable to think, or act for ourselves. But hey, Big brother will always be there for us - right?
Well, not caring about what idiots think of you could be the solution to this problem, for one?
Why shouldn't bullying be a criminal offense? You may as well argue that assaulting someone shouldn't be a criminal offense because the intended victim can just use force to defend himself. Ridiculous.
OK if you are a cyber bully, your actions are automatically documented, which is not necessarily the case with traditional bullying. So enforcement should be easier, whether that should be by the school, or if it's out of hours, the police. Of course if its defamatory you can sue them too.
BTW My mum is a school secretary and she says they always gets agro from parents about bullying that happens outside of school.
getting in a fight resulted in getting an F for every class that grading period, for both people, even if you didn't start it. So no, that's not really a viable solution for most people.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The BBC is running a story on UK schools being told by the education minister to fight cyberbullying
What I don't get here is that "Cyberbullying" seems like the sort of thing that can't have too much of an effect on someone. I mean, if someone leaves you a "mean" comment on Myspace, you can just delete it and remove them from your friends list -- then all they can do is send you messages. Except, you can stop that too. There's a button for blocking all incoming messages from a user. It says "ignore user." "Cyberbullying" can be completely ended with a few clicks of a button; it's far less of an issue than "Physicalbullying," because in those situations the victim doesn't have a sense of control (and is sometimes in physical danger).
Of course, if someone were harassing you online, or sending you threats, there would be a record of that and you could report it to the proper authorities -- if you chose to do so. That's how things work already -- I don't think it's the job of the proper authorities to investigate our private lives, in order to determine if there are any crimes occurring. I value my privacy, and I'm willing to take the responsibility of reporting crimes committed against me to keep it.
Besides, deciding whether or not to report an abusive e-mail is exactly the sort of decision people are forced to make in their adult lives; depriving children or teenagers of the responsibility for making these sorts of decisions could give us adults who won't be able to handle getting a nasty e-mail from a co-worker. That would be bad.
Why are you tossing out your contact information to people like that? You can always delete disruptive blog comments or even block posts from specific IP addresses, you can change your email address, and all that stuff, and the last two examples are easily rectified by simply denying you ever said anything.
Do you regularly give your phone number out to strange people? Your email address? This is just more 'because internet' legislation made up so people can feel good about themselves.
Do we really want governments to shelter children to this extent?
I just read Slashdot for the articles.