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Kids with the power to make "hate" sites

Yahweh

Philosopher
Joined
Apr 7, 2003
Messages
9,006
Every year at the school I work at, some kid or another gathers enough HTML knowledge to build his very own website. And every year just wouldnt be the same if some kid didnt make his very own "I hate this other person" website.

The deans at the school occasionally become swamped with complaints about one student and the website he made. To cite a few incidents, last year a kid thought it'd be interesting to make a website with the "25 hottest and 25 ugliest girls in school". It was the standard amateur Geos**tties quality website with a list of name, descriptions of good and bad traits, and a scanned image from a year book. The website got popular within the school, eventually the mothers of those 25 "ugly" girls threatened to sue the school and the kid who made the site for punitive damages and humiliation. Of course, the site was taken down and "threats to sue the school" remained only threats.

Another funny thing kids liked to do on the internet was send people to Firstname.Lastname.isgay.com. Again, another incident where kids were threatened with court action and the occasional "I'm gonna kick the ◊◊◊◊ out of you".

I think anyone can make any website about any person or subject they want (provided its completely legal). Its a form of self expression and free speech.

I dont know what to think. I got to thinking about this when I saw the JamesRandi.org parody site (which is illegal by the way... and its not that funny...).

Is there anything wrong or damaging about a kid who makes a "25 girls who are ugly" website.

Comments (because I honestly have no idea what to think)?
 
It's not just kids. ANYONE can do any crap they want, and make any crap sites they want. Kids are just learning that earlier and earlier.

I don't like the idea of the 25 ugliest girls. What if your kid made that list and they got so down on themselves that they got depression? That negative self talk that the list would spawn in a kid would be difficult to dispel. How does a kid deal with that crap? Most don't know how, and even more don't have the supports they need to prevent that kind of stuff from getting to them.

I don't like the idea of the list of 25 best looking girls either. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Girls have enough crap coming at them about their looks, so they don't need their peers telling them that they are valued the most for their looks on a web site. The girls would become even more conscious of trying to be skinny or pretty, and when this happens the girls often stop caring as much about school and what they are going to be doing as an adult. Not everyone can make a living by modelling.

I wouldn't want my kid on either list.


How about the 25 smartest girls...and don't think about listing the 25 'dumbest' . I bet there would be girls from both of the former lists on that list.

:p
 
The internet is the closest most people can get to true freedom of expression.

It cannot be denied that many kids already have a "25 ugliest/prettiest" list in their heads; publishing such a list on the internet doesn't seem particularly harmful to me. Sure, there's a chance that feelings could be hurt - and I probably wouldn't want any of my theoretical kids to be listed - but as long as it's not done using a school computer or connection, I see nothing really and truly evil about it. Aesthetic quality is completely subjective, and one's opinion on it is not legally actionable.
 
Kids ought to have this power and they can't be denied that. It's the internet after all, and it only provides more elaborate ways of doing what kids have always done.

What amazes me is not that these lists exist - adults do that too, don't they? The Worst Dressed List is an example. The difference here is that the "25 ugliest" has the potential, and even purpose, to humiliate.

I wouldn't want my kid to behave like that. If I were the parent of a child who built such a list, I'd try my best to put it down. But maybe, if this were my child, s/he wouldn't be so inconsiderate in the first place.

It's up to the parents to show that beauty is not everything - even if that's not the message the media is showing - and that humiliating someone is a shame and not amusing in the least. That being popular at the expense of someone's unhappiness is a very sad business.

I don't think that parents nowadays are teaching enough compassion and consideration to their kids, and that's what worries me.
 
Good points:

I don't think that parents nowadays are teaching enough compassion and consideration to their kids, and that's what worries me.

I guess that's why kids 'abuse' their power when it comes to the internet. If they were compassionate and less focussed on their idea of 'beauty', then we wouldn't see these lists posted where all the kids can see it.

In schools around here they are teaching the kids well in some schools. The most popular kids aren't the 'most beautiful', they are friendly and full of confidence. Kids aren't shunned for being 'fat', or wearing the wrong clothes. This isn't the case in all the schools, but at least we see some improvements.
 
Is this behaviour intrinsically different from kids of past generations publishing their own "newsletters"?

It might take a lot less time and effort to produce a website, and a lot more people might view a website than a newsletter, but many websites produced by kids are very transient in nature - their content often being changed daily.

Kids were nasty to each other long before computers came along - half of the notes which used to get passed around my high school classrooms when the teacher wasn't looking were putting crap on a fellow student.

I think that we maintain a fantasy about children - and people in general - being essentially "nice" and we don't like it very much when we're confronted with evidence to the contrary. We tell our children how important it is to consider the feelings of others, while operating in an adult world where we rationalise those decisions we make which affect others as "just business" or "nothing personal".
 
I really don't think I would get away with making such a list about my co-workers, and then posting it on the net for them all to see. We do have to teach our kids 'appropriate' behavior, and about compassion.

Just saying 'kids are mean' is taking the easy way out. Some kids will be mean still, and just see how they turn out as adults. If they are still making those lists at 30 years old and then publishing them, well I don't think their employer would ever promote them past the janitor position.
 
EotE, it is the values of adults and society which these kids are mirroring. Babies don't come into this world with a list of values related to fat/thin, pretty/ugly, dumb/smart. They learn these values from those around them.

Sure we can control to some extent whether or not children openly express opinions based on these values, but that isn't the same as changing the opinion itself or the benchmark on which it is based.
 
I don't judge people for what they look like. Some people do though. I was taught not to judge people on appearances. I was taught to judge people on actions.

Kids can be taught that. They do show that babies prefer to look at 'attractive' pictures of humans over another picture that is not as attractive. But we can also teach children that other qualities count as well.

Like you said, babies don't come into the world full of ideas. They learn them. So why not teach them compassion rather than shallow behaviour? You can talk to kids about how people are portrayed in the media, and how that's not 'real life'.

I've seen parents teach their kids shallow behaviour. One dad looked at my car when I was 19 and said "I wouldn't drive that ugly car" in front of his kids. I glared at him once I was closer, and he wouldn't look at me.
 
Website

Well, posting such a website using young teenagers I don't think is such a good idea.

Many, that are not the most attractive physically, already have low self esteem, and make statements sometimes about killing themselves, etc. anyway.

I think that being posted on a website, might be the last straw for some, and might even lead to suicide.

If the subjects are past a certain age and emotionallly mature, I think they could handle being on such a website. But the young and sensitive no.

This practice of posting hate websites is probably be a lot more harmful, than some things that go on, that we have laws against.
 
Any laws against it would create a mess of lawsuits and arbitrary decisions. Trial lawyers' dream come true: everyone suing somebody else simply because they DON'T LIKE each other.

Slander is still slander if it happens. No need to go making new laws about it.
 
American said:
Any laws against it would create a mess of lawsuits and arbitrary decisions. Trial lawyers' dream come true: everyone suing somebody else simply because they DON'T LIKE each other.
Wrong. People dont sue others "because they dont like each other". In the case of making a "kill yourself you ugly loser" website, it is all about punitive damages (which are but not are not limited to emotional distress, public humiliation, and harassment).
 
Kids being mean to one another is not knew. As has already been pointed out, the website is simply a news letter or bathroom grafitti in a new form. Unless the content constitutes slander which is already illegal there really aren't any legal remedies to be had. Publishing oppinions is not against the law.

This does not mean, however, that nothing should be done about it. Parents and teachers need to take these kids to task. I, personally, am sick of adults who ignore this kind of behaviour. Kids are endlessly creative in coming up with new and interesting ways to torture other kids. Most parents seem to be oblivious to it because they can't imagine that their precious little angel could do something like that. Well, wake up folks. If you don't teach kids a moral code they will make up their own and it will be cutthroat. If you don't give them a tangible reason to follow said code, they will default to their own in its stead.

I can't conclude that there is something wrong with kids who are sh*tty to other kids because it is so common. They can't all be bad kids. I can't, however, understand exactly what makes them do these things either. This is primarily because I was a victim of the cruelty as a kid, rather than a perpetrator. So, I am asking you all. What makes kids enjoy tortmenting other kids and what would make them stop? One thing is clear. Kids do need to be taught how to treat others. People seem to think that kids will naturally want to be nice and that they don't have to tell them not to go out of their way to hummilliate the kid with glasses or the one who is bad at soccer. This is obviously not the case. It appears that, just as we have to tell them not to steal or lie, we must also tell them not to degrade and hummilliate others jsut because they can.

I think if I catch my daughter being cruel to another kid I will react very badly. I am not really balanced about this subject. No matter how much it hurts, though, I won't ignore it.

Glory
 
Yahweh said:

Wrong. People dont sue others "because they dont like each other". In the case of making a "kill yourself you ugly loser" website, it is all about punitive damages (which are but not are not limited to emotional distress, public humiliation, and harassment).

I have often pointed out to people who don't understand what kids have to be depressed about that no adult is expected to put up with the stuff kids do nor would they. An adult can file suit for a hostile work environment. If a Jr. High School is not a hostile environment to at least 50% of the kids that go there than I don't know what is. Kids are physically threatened, robbed, verbally harrassed, sexually harrassed, and beaten b y other students. Try that at the office and see what happens.

Maybe there is a legal remedy.

Glory
 
Yahweh said:

Wrong. People dont sue others "because they dont like each other". In the case of making a "kill yourself you ugly loser" website, it is all about punitive damages (which are but not are not limited to emotional distress, public humiliation, and harassment).


I can say any mean thing I want to make you feel bad. I can't lie and make stuff up, that's slander, but it's your problem if I make a website saying you're an ugly loser.

I don't know if any laws apply to saying "go kill yourself", but that's in a slightly different league than hating you for something, or even hating you for no good reason at all.
 
My prediction: this trend will pass reasonably soon. As the internet becomes more ingrained and kids keep learning HTML earlier in life, I think the so-and-so-is-a-dork.com website will become increasingly more of a "kiddie prank"; kids in fifth grade will find the idea funny for a couple weeks, and by the time they get to seventh grade it will seem as embarrassingly lame as calling someone "doody face."

I'm curious to know what the schools are entitled to do about these sites from a legal standpoint, because to me it doesn't really seem like their problem. I don't see where they have the authority to punish a student for a web site he created from home, no matter how hateful it may be, unless its content is harmful or compromising to the school itself (i.e. slandering the faculty, giving out test answers, etc.). Likewise, I don't see how a school could be held accountable for such a site just because the creator happened to be a student there. Is it a case of the offended parents trying to sue the school because it has more money than little Timmy Codemonger's parents? Or is the lawsuit threat simply a way for the parents to get the school to handle the situation for them, because they don't feel like going through the hassle of personally contacting Mr. and Mrs. Codemonger and asking them to control their rugrat?

Quinn
 
Quinn said:
My prediction: this trend will pass reasonably soon. As the internet becomes more ingrained and kids keep learning HTML earlier in life, I think the so-and-so-is-a-dork.com website will become increasingly more of a "kiddie prank"; kids in fifth grade will find the idea funny for a couple weeks, and by the time they get to seventh grade it will seem as embarrassingly lame as calling someone "doody face."


Kids have been engaging in this behaviour in one form or another for litterally hundreds if not thousands of year. Why do you think it will fade away now? The website is a medium unique to this point in time which has unique properties. It can spread quickly, much faster than hand written notes or news letters, and can be spread to far more people than any other type of communication usualy available to teens. Why should they abandon something that has been so successful?

This attitude troubles me because it easily becomes yet another excuse for adults to do nothing about the problem. "It's a phase! They will outgrow it. There is no real need to address this issue." This reasoning has resulted in the behaviour continuing for generations.

I'm curious to know what the schools are entitled to do about these sites from a legal standpoint, because to me it doesn't really seem like their problem. I don't see where they have the authority to punish a student for a web site he created from home, no matter how hateful it may be, unless its content is harmful or compromising to the school itself (i.e. slandering the faculty, giving out test answers, etc.). Likewise, I don't see how a school could be held accountable for such a site just because the creator happened to be a student there. Is it a case of the offended parents trying to sue the school because it has more money than little Timmy Codemonger's parents? Or is the lawsuit threat simply a way for the parents to get the school to handle the situation for them, because they don't feel like going through the hassle of personally contacting Mr. and Mrs. Codemonger and asking them to control their rugrat?


Of course, you are correct that the school cannot be held responsible for something a student does on his own time, in his own home, on his own computer. They are responsible for bad behaviour that takes place at school about which they have done nothing. They cannot do anything about the website but they can intervene to put a stop to harrassment that stems from the website when such harrassment takes place at school.

I must ask myself, though, what the response of an employer would be if such a site were posted by an employee about a coworker. If find it hard to believe that it would be tolerated. Adults are expected to be civil to one another for the sake of the company for which they work. It is illegal to intentionally make a person's work environment unbearable. Why are children not held to a simmilar standard? Why is one child permitted to make it unbearable for another child to attend school?

Glory
 
First of all, Glory, let me welcome you to the board and say that I've been appreciating your interventions very much. :)

Glory said:
I can't conclude that there is something wrong with kids who are sh*tty to other kids because it is so common. They can't all be bad kids. I can't, however, understand exactly what makes them do these things either.

I think I can understand their behavior, Glory.

Kids are not bad, but they will do many bad things if they're not given limits.

I studied in a private school (this is Brazil we're talking about, and the educational reality here is complete different. We were low-middle-class by then, but still my parents managed to afford a private school, because public school are incredibly substandard). As default, all of the kids of the staff - teachers, principals, and even janitors. So tell me, who was the most picked on girl in the whole school? The shy, small and fragile janitor's daughter. I remember very well how my mother explained to me that she was poor but there was nothing wrong with it; her father was a good man, doing a dignified job. That picking on her would be cruel, unnecessary, and that if she found out I did it, she would be very disappointed. Shy and fragile myself, that girl and I became best friends. I should have been 5.

All my life I knew that making fun of the weaker ones was Wrong, just as wrong as Borrowing and Not Giving Back, Lying to Mom and Being Disrespectful. Make no mistake - if I engaged in some of those activities, if caught, I'd be in Deep Deep Trouble. Basically, if my mother found out I had built a hate site against a school kid, she would have gone ballistic.

This is common decency. It's very easy to blame society for emphasizing beauty and talent for sports. Someone should bring this Society Dude for us to have a very nice talk. :rolleyes: Failing that, what's wrong with accepting responsability??? Blaming the school for a hate site is ridiculous!

Nowadays, parents are aware that they should advise their kids against drugs, sexual harrassment, unsafe sex. Why aren't they aware that they must teach their kids about compasssion, tolerance, respect?
 
Glory said:

I must ask myself, though, what the response of an employer would be if such a site were posted by an employee about a coworker. If find it hard to believe that it would be tolerated. Adults are expected to be civil to one another for the sake of the company for which they work. It is illegal to intentionally make a person's work environment unbearable.

And there are many rules and regulations against it. Offending a coworker can make you lose your job at the spot.

Why are children not held to a simmilar standard? Why is one child permitted to make it unbearable for another child to attend school?
Glory

Imagine the outcry if a school expelled all the bullies. Absurd! Schools should educate, and they should welcome those kids like all others, because it's their duty! A school fails when it expels a student! Come on, they're just kids! :rolleyes:

I don't know in the US, but here, if a kid from a private school is expelled, he'll have no chance in any private school with minimum quality. He will have to go to a public school - where he can not be expelled, unless it's something extreme such as assaulting a teacher. Maybe not even then.

In this regard, schools are not like the job market, where it's entirely acceptable to expel an employee for a plethora of reasons. Therefore, any reasonably intelligent adult will realize that s/he must behave appropriately.
 
In my area kids are expelled after a few warnings. Not permanently, just for a few days or weeks. Other actions are taken to teach the child how to get along with others and that bullying won't be tolerated.

My son has tourettes syndrome. He was expelled for temper tantrums in grade one. He also got into fights because he took everything the wrong way. He is now in a special program for kids with behaviour problems. He is smart, and is 2 grades ahead in math, but he has a very very bad temper. The classroom has a time out room for the kids instead of expelling them. These behaviours are not tolerated in a regular class room.

He is bullyish, but only because he is a bit of a control freak and kinda paranoid of people. If you break a rule in a game, he flips. But if HE can 't bend the rules, then again he has a fit. Double standards galore.

I wouldn't tolerate a hate site or any bullying I see. I try to teach him respect and understanding. I go out of my way to show him good examples of interaction.

Other parents can't get away with allowing a child to be a bully or out of control. They have a responsibility to know what their kids are doing. I would know in a second if my son had web space. I would chew out the school if they had allowed him access to web space and then didn't monitor its use.

Expulsion is used as a tool here. It's a good wake up call. It's used within reason though.
 
Luciana Nery said:
First of all, Glory, let me welcome you to the board and say that I've been appreciating your interventions very much. :)


Thank you; You made my day!

I think I can understand their behavior, Glory.

Kids are not bad, but they will do many bad things if they're not given limits.


Basically, if my mother found out I had built a hate site against a school kid, she would have gone ballistic.


That's what I would expect, but it is apparant that your mother is somewhat unsual.

This is common decency. It's very easy to blame society for emphasizing beauty and talent for sports. Someone should bring this Society Dude for us to have a very nice talk. :rolleyes: Failing that, what's wrong with accepting responsability??? Blaming the school for a hate site is ridiculous!


I am not saying that the school should be blamed for the site. I am suggesting that the school be held responsible for allowing a child or children to be abused in myriad ways on a daily basis. Ignoring bad behaviour is approving bad behaviour.

Nowadays, parents are aware that they should advise their kids against drugs, sexual harrassment, unsafe sex. Why aren't they aware that they must teach their kids about compasssion, tolerance, respect?

Parents seem to be dropping their responsibilty. Does that mean that no one else has any? Kids get into trouble at school for smoking, drinking, doing drugs, fighting, and being violent. Are not these all problems that their parents should be addressing? Yet, the school asserts their authority in these cases in addition to or in the absence of parental actions. Why are they allowed to do nothing about the kids who engage campaigns of psychological torture?

Glory
 
Luciana Nery said:


Imagine the outcry if a school expelled all the bullies. Absurd! Schools should educate, and they should welcome those kids like all others, because it's their duty! A school fails when it expels a student! Come on, they're just kids! :rolleyes:


I never said to expell them. I said do something to them rather than nothing. Just kids? What makes them different from kids who commit other wrongs? You are willing to sacrifice the edication and emotional well being of one student for that of another. What sense does that make? Why does the bully's right to an education trump the other kid's right to his own dignity and, by the way, does not the victim also have a right to an education? Is that right not being violated by the bully who, in some cases, makes life so awful for the victim that he cannot tolerate going to school?

I must assume that you do not consider the teasing and harrassing to be all that bad and that is where we part ways. It is easy to assume that a punch in the face is worse than hummilliation but pain is temporary. Hummilliation goes on and on and on.

I don't know in the US, but here, if a kid from a private school is expelled, he'll have no chance in any private school with minimum quality. He will have to go to a public school - where he can not be expelled, unless it's something extreme such as assaulting a teacher. Maybe not even then.


Expulsion is harsh and should not be the first step in addressing the problem. However, might not the possibility of it deter some of this behaviour? Right now, it seems that, these kids continue to harrass and torment without fear of losing even one afternoon to detention. Why should they stop? More over, some kids get expelled because they deserve to be expelled. If a child cannot or will not cease torturing another child after various punishments have been administered and various adults have told him why the behaviour must stop, does this child not deserve expulsion? Why not? Would you hesitate to expell a child who daily flouted other rules?

In this regard, schools are not like the job market, where it's entirely acceptable to expel an employee for a plethora of reasons. Therefore, any reasonably intelligent adult will realize that s/he must behave appropriately.

And any reasonably intelligent child knows that he can go about his bullying with impunity.

Glory
 
Eos of the Eons said:
Just saying 'kids are mean' is taking the easy way out. Some kids will be mean still, and just see how they turn out as adults. If they are still making those lists at 30 years old and then publishing them, well I don't think their employer would ever promote them past the janitor position.

Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy were JANITORS!?

Seriously, saying 'kids are mean' is just the microcosim of saying 'people are animals, animals are amoral and self-centered'. VERY FEW people ever make it out of that category.

Just my .02 cents worth!
 
I'm sorry, Glory, I had completely forgotten about this thread.

Glory said:

I never said to expell them. I said do something to them rather than nothing. Just kids? What makes them different from kids who commit other wrongs? You are willing to sacrifice the edication and emotional well being of one student for that of another. What sense does that make? Why does the bully's right to an education trump the other kid's right to his own dignity and, by the way, does not the victim also have a right to an education? Is that right not being violated by the bully who, in some cases, makes life so awful for the victim that he cannot tolerate going to school?

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear - I was being ironic. If expulsions were slightly more common, they could work as deterrents.

I was a teacher for a while. I taught adults mostly, but had a brief experience with children. And the problem was - I didn't have many tools for punishment. Really. The worst I could do was to send the kid to principal - therefore transferring my authority to her. I could yell, threaten, whatever. But when it come down to it, there wasn't much I could do. And kids knew it. An empty threat would undermine my credibility, so I had to do without. Because it was a private school, and competition was fierce, teachers had pretty much to spoil the children in order to keep them. As customers.

There were actuallyparents who came to me and other teachers asking us to be more punitive in our disciplinary actions! That pretty much said how much they couldn't control their kids themselves.

I must assume that you do not consider the teasing and harrassing to be all that bad and that is where we part ways. It is easy to assume that a punch in the face is worse than hummilliation but pain is temporary. Hummilliation goes on and on and on.


Nope, I wholehearted agree with you. As a teacher, I did everything I could to stop a lovely chubby boy to be humiliated in front of my very eyes. And I'll tell you something - I failed. I avoided the situation from escalating, but I couldn't stop it.

Being under the "protection" of a teacher is a guarantee that you'll be bullied even more. So I had to disguise my interest. When he raised his voice to speak, under my incentive, others would mock him. I yelled at them. Next time, he raised his voice, and the class giggled. I yelled at them. So now they only served him scornful looks. How could I stop that? I couldn't . I had to pretend nothing was happening and congratulate him on his right answer.

Worse: he developed an infatuation for me (he was 9) and was broken-hearted when I left. :(

If I had the opportunity, I'd make a few things differently. I was young and unexperienced, blah blah, and I had no guidance on the matter whatsoever. In teacher training courses we deal with Discipline, but not with Bullying.

Expulsion is harsh and should not be the first step in addressing the problem. However, might not the possibility of it deter some of this behaviour? Right now, it seems that, these kids continue to harrass and torment without fear of losing even one afternoon to detention. Why should they stop? More over, some kids get expelled because they deserve to be expelled. If a child cannot or will not cease torturing another child after various punishments have been administered and various adults have told him why the behaviour must stop, does this child not deserve expulsion? Why not? Would you hesitate to expell a child who daily flouted other rules?

Answering your last question - I wouldn't hesitate. But I also would try to avoid this need for expulsion. I've heard that some schools (in Rio) are carrying out seminars - and they are compulsory, otherwise your child can't be registered for the next school year - in which they discuss things such as discipline, imposition of limits, roles of school and family. Bullying is a major theme. I've read in the newspaper how a school made a video showing the daily life of a miserable boy (an actor) and how the audience was in tears by the end of it . Ok, cheap shot, but at least it can dawn on some parents the fact that bullying is a result of their inadequacy at passing along to their children things such as tolerance and compassion.

And any reasonably intelligent child knows that he can go about his bullying with impunity.


Yep, pretty much. :(
 
Luciana,

I love your name, by the way. It fills me with images of a dusky beauty and heady perfume.

I hear what you're saying about basically being powerless. This issue has to be addressed by the entire society or nothing will change. I get angry with school officials who won't take any steps to solve the problem They have done exactly what I, wrongly, accused you of doing. They have chosen the rights of the bully over the rights of the victim. I have even encountered a principle who wanted to know why I didn't make more of an effort to blend in. Blame the victim, anyone?

You are a very compassionate and kind lady. Your students are lucky, I think.

Here too, parents often ask the schools to discipline their children for them and look to the teachers to teach them values. I guess they are too busy to do it themselves. I think that discipline and values must come from both the family and the schools. Unfortunately, the schools have to deal with millions of kids each with his own family values.

Oh well, maybe things will be better in the next world. Oh wait, I don't believe in the next world...:P

Glory
 
Originally posted by Glory
Luciana,
I love your name, by the way. It fills me with images of a dusky beauty and heady perfume.


Why, thanks! I also like your name - it resembles my mother's. :D

[bI hear what you're saying about basically being powerless. This issue has to be addressed by the entire society or nothing will change. I get angry with school officials who won't take any steps to solve the problem They have done exactly what I, wrongly, accused you of doing. They have chosen the rights of the bully over the rights of the victim. I have even encountered a principle who wanted to know why I didn't make more of an effort to blend in. Blame the victim, anyone?[/b]

And I'll go further - the parents of bullies are more vocal about their kid's rights than the parents of the victims. That's because, many times, they are bullies themselves. They arrive at the school threatening the whole world if anyone dares to mess with their kids. And the parents of the victims... many are submissive by nature, others simply blame their own kids. "Be more assertive, fight back!" Easier said than done, of course.

You are a very compassionate and kind lady. Your students are lucky, I think. Thank you, I wish this is true but I'm not so sure. :)

Here too, parents often ask the schools to discipline their children for them and look to the teachers to teach them values. I guess they are too busy to do it themselves. I think that discipline and values must come from both the family and the schools. Unfortunately, the schools have to deal with millions of kids each with his own family values.


Exactly. But I wonder - could bullish behavior be stopped? I'm not so sure. Most bullies, in my observation, are boys. Also, they are more likely to bully if there are other kids around, they won't do it by themselves. It says a lot about building "prestige" within a group. Much of their powers stem on the amount of humiliation they can impose on the weaker ones. Other boys, who don't act on it, approve of this behavior. My point is - bullying can be diminished to a "tolerable" level, but I don't think it's realistic to even think it could go away completely.
 
I don't think the behaviour can be erradicated entirely but I think we can respond to it and do a better job than we have at dealing with it. All I really want is for people to try. Nobody tried to do anything when I was a kid. That was, I now realize, inexcusable. I was surrounded by adults who did nothing about the mistreatment I and countless others suffered. That was wrong and it is still wrong. I will never change my mind about that.

Glory
 
Glory said:
I don't think the behaviour can be erradicated entirely but I think we can respond to it and do a better job than we have at dealing with it. All I really want is for people to try. Nobody tried to do anything when I was a kid. That was, I now realize, inexcusable. I was surrounded by adults who did nothing about the mistreatment I and countless others suffered. That was wrong and it is still wrong. I will never change my mind about that.

Glory

Hear hear!
 
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