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In a lot of way, bullying today is different from bullying in 60s, and in a lot of ways it's more difficult to combat.
But the answer is still, basically, the same: You must stand and resist.
I can't tell a 16-year-old facing 2017 bullies what "stand and resist" looks like today, but "stand and resist" is still the answer.
The biggest difference today is the social media component.
I can't tell you how many fights I broke up, or we had, the last several years I taught that started on one or another social media platform that got physical when the kids got off the bus.
The biggest difference today is the social media component.
I can't tell you how many fights I broke up, or we had, the last several years I taught that started on one or another social media platform that got physical when the kids got off the bus.
Why did you break them up? Let them fight till one can't get up
Were there campaigns to end bullying? Were kids told to just deal with it and "man up?" I'm asking in light the whole Keaton controversy, but that's another topic.
Suck it up and take it like a girl. Also carefully planned acts of retribution after school. If the bully was a couple of grades older (and bigger) than me, I'd pull out all the stops and tell my Dad about it. I was an army brat and my Dad was was with the US Army Inspector General's Office. He'd tell me to wrap an alligator skin around my heart and then he'd go have a word with the bully's father's Commanding Officer. I seldom got bullied after a couple of incidents like that.
Exactly. These goofballs who think that beating the crap out of somebody ended it either had unique experiences in life or just romanticizing the past to some sad version of a bad Western. I had plenty of bullies to deal with, and I beat the crap out of most them... and they just kept coming back for more, often with more buddies. That's just the way it was, and it only ended when the thugs got old enough to potentially face legal action and/or became distracted chasing women in high school. Beating the crap out of them didn't end anything because they'd just be right back there a week later, making trouble and picking fights again.
It is utterly pathetic listening to people trying to excuse this crap. I don't know if they are just anarchistic nuts who want to live in a "might makes right!" society, where violence is everywhere and anyone can shoot anyone at any time on a whim, or if they just are honestly completely blind to what really goes on in schools when it comes to bullies and lack the ability to understand how living in an environment of constant fear and potential violence is not healthy or just at all.
Yup.
A lot of times fighting escalated the whole situation.
And people who say fight till one is down don't realize this isn't the movies. I see fight injuries with life-long repercussions all the time.
Maybe we talk about it and try to deal with it as a society more now bc we are moving away from this knuckle-dragging attitude.
However, the zero tolerance towards those who defend themselves in asinine.
That being said, bullying is verbal. Being hit/shoved/touched inappropriately is ASSAULT and is illegal. Call the cops. press charges.
Last day of jr high school this 5 ft 110 lbs girl ( me) sucker punched that boy into oblivion - few years earlier older girl, well I had most of her hair on the ground. You earn your respect the hard way if you have to. I am still non violent - but don’t push your luck. Now always been bullies . But they stopped the victims from standing firm and fighting back by punishing them too, I think that is very wrong. They even call the cops on you in grade school.
I'm not one prone to violence myself I've had more then enough of it in my life. I don't believing in getting in a fight over something petty. As A kid I got picked on until I learned to fight back or at least give as good as I got. And those who picked on me remember me hitting them back as hard or harder as they hit me. The bulling stopped. At some point one has to take a stand or it won't stop.
Were there campaigns to end bullying? Were kids told to just deal with it and "man up?" I'm asking in light the whole Keaton controversy, but that's another topic.
I met both of these lovely people when I was 14. As far as fighting back, it was not an option in either case. In the case of Charlie the school authorities were neutral in his favor. In Ken's case he did his bullying by phone, or when in person verbally and in front of a lot of people. Not a good place for a fight.
Charlie
I went to high school in one of the toniest, most affluent communities in the U.S. During 9th grade, a kid named Charlie chased me down two flights of stairs and through much of the school, whirling a bicycle chain. I wound up being able to hold a set of doors against him. When authorities finally arrived, Charlie told them that I had just bitten a dog outside the school's front door. My parents were "recommended" to find a private school for me. My mother favored this approach, my father not as much. Needless to say, Charlie was not disciplined.
During the summer I indicated that I would not cooperate in the process of relocating to a private school given the obvious injustice. Literally during the first week of school, now 10th grade, Charlie yanked a high stool out from under me in the school's weather center. It was lucky I wasn't badly hurt. Given my near-expulsion from school the previous June, I wasn't about to take this one up with the school. Fighting back was just not an option.
My father came home early from work that day, feeling the early stages of the cancer recurrence that would kill him almost four months later to the day. My father got on the phone with Charlie's father. I didn't get to hear the conversation but I heard not a word from Charlie from that September day in 1972 until his unlamented (by me) death 40 years later. I visited one of his friends in rehab from an accident. I learned he died of drug abuse.
Kenneth
Also during my Freshman year of high school, I had the delight of the acquaintance of Kenneth. For a while he just generally teased me by imitating my stuttering. The one night in February 1972 he called my mother at 1:00 a.m. or so and said "your son is palsied." He made a similar call about a month later.
During 10th grade, in January 1973 he overheard me telling a then-close friend that my father was likely to die of cancer in the next day or two. Ken interjected "served him right for smoking." It wasn't that kind of cancer but I digress. I tried to claw his back. My friend pulled me off him. My father died that night. Then a few months later he approached a Chinese kid and made an accent, saying "aw-so, your father work in rice paddy." He tried to walk into band practice a year or so later, looking for trouble. A member of the band begged me to stop fighting back, saying "he is very stupid."
I was in bankruptcy court (I'm a lawyer) in 1992, when signed judge's orders were but in a box for pickup. I cannot deny some pleasure in seeing an order in his bankruptcy case there.
The biggest difference today is the social media component.
I can't tell you how many fights I broke up, or we had, the last several years I taught that started on one or another social media platform that got physical when the kids got off the bus.
My daughter is a social media shark--companies pay her big money to keep the safe in the social media waters from other sharks.
We've discussed bullying in social media, and she's someone who could be a Paladin, an Equalizer: "If you don't back off Jane, I will get your father fired. I will get your whole family thrown out of town. I will make your mother commit suicide."
She could do that. But it wouldn't improve the world.
I went to an all- girls private school for the majority of high school (late 90s-early 00s), so I'm by no means a baby boomer.
However, to those who seem to view bullying as a just a physical act (such as beating), wherein the victim just needs to learn to punch back, and any other torment as something the snowflakes just have to 'suck up'...
I would be interested to know your albeit belated advice about what you think I should have done back in High School when faced with the following scenarios:
•My regular uniform getting urinated on while I was in P.E
•Multiple people's defecations in my sleeping bag on school camp
•Dead reptiles in my locker and school bag
•Death threats on notes slid into my locker
•Drugs planted in my locker
•Used womens sanitary items put into my locker and school bag
•Calling from payphones at night and on weekends, threatening me and my family
•And another occurrence much worse than any of the above that I won't go into right now
•etc etc etc. For years.
The issue was this - I knew who the group of girls who were responsible were. I genuinely think that even the school knew. But by the time I did report it all, even though it was still an ongoing issue, I kept getting told that there was no proof that these particular girls were the ones doing it.
Unless an eye witness (other than myself) was willing to come forward, nothing would be done. Obviously, nobody was willing to.
Chances are though, that if I had even attempted to replicate any of what they did to me, and did it back to them, I probably would have been in huge trouble. Verbally confronting them (which I did), was met with a lot of giggles, shrugs and denials of any knowledge.
So, I'm genuinely curious... what should I have done?
They sound like sociopaths. There isn't anything you could do.
In most cases girl bullies do it in plain sight and it involves insults not dead animals and feces. Still the school had a responsibility to keep you safe and those acts were so off the charts they should have had a police investigation. That kind of thing would be all over the news now.
I have to wonder why your parents didn't take you out of that private school they were paying for.
They sound like sociopaths. There isn't anything you could do.
In most cases girl bullies do it in plain sight and it involves insults not dead animals and feces. Still the school had a responsibility to keep you safe and those acts were so off the charts they should have had a police investigation. That kind of thing would be all over the news now.
I have to wonder why your parents didn't take you out of that private school they were paying for.
It was one of the best schools in the country (Australia) at the time - it probably still is. My mother had all of the best intentions in sending me there, and even at the time I understood how much she had sacrificed financially (as a single mother) for me to get a premium education.
So I put up with it for years.
Eventually, I pulled out of school right before senior. I finished high school on time, but via an alternative route.
Exactly. These goofballs who think that beating the crap out of somebody ended it either had unique experiences in life or just romanticizing the past to some sad version of a bad Western. I had plenty of bullies to deal with, and I beat the crap out of most them... and they just kept coming back for more, often with more buddies. That's just the way it was, and it only ended when the thugs got old enough to potentially face legal action and/or became distracted chasing women in high school. Beating the crap out of them didn't end anything because they'd just be right back there a week later, making trouble and picking fights again.
It is utterly pathetic listening to people trying to excuse this crap. I don't know if they are just anarchistic nuts who want to live in a "might makes right!" society, where violence is everywhere and anyone can shoot anyone at any time on a whim, or if they just are honestly completely blind to what really goes on in schools when it comes to bullies and lack the ability to understand how living in an environment of constant fear and potential violence is not healthy or just at all.
agreed...
The reality was that the victim typically faced not only the ring leader but several of his cohorts. The ring leader was typically one of the bigger kids in the class and his cohorts slightly smaller. They would encircle the victim, taunting and humiliating said victim. The victim would typically be under sized making it a very lop sided contest. Bullies never attack an opponent who has the means to retaliate.. It is a romanticized notion that the victim can fight back. They can, but they will be slaughtered, not by just the bully but his friends as well. The worst part is when the adult authority figures watch on in complete disinterest as it takes place.
Few other students will try to help the victim as they have no desire to be next.
This is the absolute reality. Yes in rare instances the victim has triumphed over their bully. Very rare. The norm is after an attempt to fight back fails, the bully will intensify their attacks and acts of humiliation.
So I ask those who advocate fighting back. How does the victim fight back against the gang of bullies on 1 victim?
Regardless of the nature of bullying, whether its physical, cyber, or verbal the victim is almost helpless to defend themselves. The bullies make it so. After all bullies at heart are cowards. They will never put themselves in a position where they might face real challenge.
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