How to tackle bullying?

[MontyVeda]

We seem to be good at putting the world to rights here, so lets have a look at bullying

It's an age old problem which i assume schools are trying their best to tackle these days.

I hated senior school due to almost daily abuse from a certain individual. My parents told me to either keep away from them, or hit them back.

Thing is, being in the same school and sharing the same route to and from school makes 'keeping away from them' somewhat impossible, especially where 'they' are persistent. Hitting them back is a terrible idea... if you can't confidently throw a punch, you're setting yourself up for more abuse... and in the case of my particular bully, it was taunting/verbal abuse designed to make me think less of myself and my family rather than physical abuse.

Telling a teacher made things worse because they'd have a word the bully and I've got the bully into trouble therefore giving him another excuse to be an arse in my direction.

so in a nutshell I put up with it for 5 years and throughout that time felt i had nowhere to turn. In the last two years i hated it so much I began truanting regularly... 81 days as stated in my report for the end of the 4th year.

so what is being done to tackle bullying in schools these days, and most importantly, does it work?

(There is also bullying in the workplace, but that's another story)

 

[Yellow Fang]

Tricky one. Teachers and parents are pretty good at giving useless advice, I found. Take up karate so you do know how to punch. Escalate the problem by doing something violent enough to get the attention of responsible adults, although not violent enough to get yourself expelled or a police record. Maybe hit him with something or smash something of his up. Sure you'd get into hot water, but then they'd be forced to investigate the problem. Until it becomes their problem, it's not a problem.

 

[Moodyman]

Get your dad to kick their heads in.

Seriously, though, it's a tough one. I think that parents of the bullied child can do a lot of develop the child emotionally to increase his/her self-cofidence.

Bullied kids often stand out for their non stand-outness. They're the type that sit quietly in the back of the classroom or are at the edge of the playground.

They're the shy type that don't excel at anything and will do all they can to avoid attention.

 

[XmisterIS]

I think the problem is that nowadays, if a child hits back at the bullies, they get labelled as a "problem" child with ADHD and whatever else, so it's no-win situation.

Back when I was a kid, you learned to fight or you got your head kicked in. I was no good with my fists, but I was pretty handy with a cricket ball in a sock. Simples!

 

[swee'pea99]

Tricky yes, but there are things you can do (unlike the victim, who unfortunately can really do very little).

Go to the head. Approach the parent governors and get them involved. Try to get together with other parents. Basically, you have to get at the powers that be - which at least in theory have an obligation to deal with this - and make it more of a pain for them not to address the problem properly than to do so. Fortunately most heads these days have a very low tolerance for this kind of thing - it gets their school a bad reputation, which they really don't want.

If necessary, escalate: local authority, even your MP if they're any good (and most are). Ultimately the only thing that will work is when you or whoever else gets the head to get the miscreant's parents in and makes it clear to them that this will not be tolerated, and if there's any more of it, sonny boy is going to need to start looking for another school (one that's willing to take on a kid who's been chucked out of his last one on account of being a thug. Good luck with that...)

 

[marinyork]

Schools are very 'natural' places for bullying to occur. Teachers deliberately maintain a very long 'professional' distance to the pupils, who themselves may not get on with normal adults, let alone many teachers. Schools are places obsessed with status and rules, pecking orders where pupils are often isolated from teachers and spend large amounts of time with their bullies. The whole place is divided up into year x is superior to year y. Teacher a is superior to teacher b. Children naturally sniff out the power structures and vacuums and take advantage of leading others when the opportunity arises. Teachers themselves are isolated from other teachers and have a lot of autonomy to do what they want and plausible deniability. For a large secondary school of say 1500 people it is easy to see why bullying occurs especially when you take several factors into account. That's before you even get out of the school gates.

The way to tackle bullying is to move away from these structures, make complaints easier and dealt with by multiple people. If you have a group of people dealing with it in a long more robust process, it's likely to work better than the very simplistic and deeply flawed way it used to work.

 

[Bigsharn]

I had the same problem as you, Monty, though it was a group of folk as opposed to an individual. Eventually I had enough and floored the ringleader (They were taking the mick out of my weight... I used it as an advantage against them). There's no taste sweeter than revenge.


We had a peer support system in school, plenty of year-heads, the deputy head and the headmaster, none of them did anything about the problem (that went on for four of the five years of secondary school) To be honest there's very little they can do thanks to the problem of health and safety and political correctness... Personally I think they should bring capital punishment back in schools, but of course that's a debate for another day.

 

[swee'pea99]

Personally I think they should bring capital punishment back in schools, but of course that's a debate for another day.

Seems a little extreme, but hey - maybe it would work...

 

[marinyork]

[quote name='swee'pea99' timestamp='1311085757' post='1758077']
Seems a little extreme, but hey - maybe it would work...

[/quote]

Perhaps the coalition will like the idea with cuts to budgets.

 

[Chilternrides]

I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to bullying as it takes too many forms and can't possibly account for each bully's personality.

It's often said that bullies are cowards - that's as maybe, but some of them are physically strong cowards without much of a conscience, so administering a feeble whack will only anger them, and make things worse.

The only successful direct action that I've known to work, involved my elder brother, who was being bullied. My mother waited and watched (the lad involved used to have a hiding place from where he would launch his ambush), and to be sure no-one was telling tales, painfully allowed the usual to happen.

The next night "J. the bully" went to his usual ambush spot to find it already occupied - by my Mum!
She meted out some "old fashioned justice" (I should point out that this was during the 1960's) and marched matey back to his parents' place, where further chastisement took place.

I'm not saying that this is the answer, but it worked on this occasion for two reasons:
a) It was a fairly small village community, so it was hard for a bully to remain anonymous.
b) The lad in question's parents were very good freinds with our parents, so they were having none of that, thank you very much.

Strangely, in their later teenage years, our bully and my brother became almost inseperable friends!

 

[fossyant]

We're still getting problems with bullying of my son at school - not as bad as it was, but it always seems to get worse as the summer approaches. We took him out of school two weeks early last year, went to the LA and kicked up a right stink. The school took it seriously.

PS you can't even 'talk' to a kid these days. I pulled up one kid and said if they didn't stop it, the Head would be told. Mum of said kid wasn't very happy about it and had a right ding dong with me. That said, the kid hasn't bothered my son since.

I'd be more than happy to tell my son to go and smack the bully, but you can't do that either !

 

[Banjo]

" Personally I think they should bring capital punishment back in schools, but of course that's a debate for another day. "

[quote name='swee'pea99' timestamp='1311085757' post='1758077']
Seems a little extreme, but hey - maybe it would work...



[/quote]

They sure as hell wouldnt do it again

 

[Melonfish]

i went through an awful lot of abuse in school. so much so i did consider just leaving near the end, i did have some truant days but overall i was just glad when it ended.
college was light years different thankfully.

my eldest is 8 and already he's seeing probs in school, its natrual kids pick on each other, he knows what to do though and is at least holding his own for now, my youngest...well when he gets to school i foresee many trips to the heads office to explain why he delights in kicking other kids heads in, he doesn't take ****!

 

[Fnaar]

I was really short until I was in the 5th form, when i started catching up... however, i was a popular sort of guy, as I made people laugh (not deliberately, because I was short, it was just me). There was one kid in another class who TRIED to bully me for several years, but when I got fed up with it (and I was still shorter than him) I smacked him one. That sorted it out!

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I was just a bit weird at school. Weird is better than hard any day of the week ... everyone leaves you alone.