Topic: Bullies are protected

[scottws]

I'm here at Qdoba and a story just came on MSNBC about a gay highschool kid in AZ who is suing his school for failing to protect him from bullying related to his sexual orientation.

I don't really have a comment about this story in particular but it reminded me of things that have been bugging me lately and I wanted to talk about bullying in general.

It is my firm belief that schools protect bullies and almost encourage bullying to occur, though I don't believe they deliberately do so.

When I was young, I was a skinny, short, quiet nerd who dealt with a pretty healthy dose of bullying but nothing too major.  I was too afraid of getting in trouble so rarely stood up for myself and I just managed the best I could.

This brings me to Jennie's son.  He's eight now and just graduated 3rd grade.  He has an August birthday and was pushed up a grade due to his intelligence and complete boredom in school due to the lack of challenge.  He's small for his age in both height and weight.  Heck, he's smaller than a fair number of kids a grade below him.  This combined with the fact that he is younger than everyone in his class makes him REALLY small for his class.  He does have a big personality though, so he doesn't get picked on as bad as he might if he were quiet and dorky. 

But this year he started to have to deal with quite a bit of bullying.  However, instead of being like I was, he usually stands up for himself.  He got in a lot of fights this year.

You know what though?  Even though all of these fights were related to him getting bullied and defending his honor, he bore the brunt of the school punishments.  He was suspended once, almost suspended a second time, and had a handful of detentions.  He got the brunt of the punishment because "he started the fight".

That is the bullshit attitude that protects bullies.  They can poke and prod (emotionally and physically), but that isn't the true start of the fight.  It is whoever threw the first punch that gets in trouble.

I was so mad at the administration when he got a detention a few weeks ago for fighting someone who was bullying him that I spoke to the vice principal.  I told her that my stepson was a victim of bullying and that I fully support him defending himself even if it means fighting.  The crazy thing was that she told me that she tells her own kids the same thing, but in the next breath said the school has a responsibility to proctect the other kid.

This is where schools get it all wrong.  The victim gets punished while the bully gets a slap on the wrist at best.  It is complete bullshit.

[Pugnate]

I was bullied a lot in school as well. It was quite terrible.

Regarding what you say about unfair school rules on bullying, it is a similar case with so many things in life. Sometimes you have to make broad rules, because you just don't have the resources to leave things open to interpretation.

In the end, if a person being bullied lashes out, and punches the abuser, the person doing the bullying will have a bruise to show for it, while the kid being bullied will have nothing as evidence. What can you do?

[Cobra951]

This brings me to Jennie's son.  He's eight now and just graduated 3rd grade.  He has an August birthday and was pushed up a grade due to his intelligence and complete boredom in school due to the lack of challenge.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

That's me, to a tee, skipping 2nd grade.  As a result I was always the youngest and most socially inept member of the class through like 10th grade.  I was often among the smallest too.  My experience with school was a nightmare from 5th-8th grades, perhaps 9th too.  I liked to stay away from it as much as I could.  The experience certainly retarded my social development.

I need to go back and read the rest of your post now.  I just had to jump in there with both feet.

Edit:  I agree with you completely about bullying.  It's a tough problem for the school, and it's often not dealt with properly.  It's easier to blame whoever starts the fight physically.  You're doing the right thing by making your presence felt with the administrators.  That will have some effect on how they deal with your stepson.  Maybe not enough, but some.

[Pugnate]

That's me, to a tee, skipping 2nd grade.  As a result I was always the youngest and most socially inept member of the class through like 10th grade.  I was often among the smallest too.  My experience with school was a nightmare from 5th-8th grades, perhaps 9th too.  I liked to stay away from it as much as I could.  The experience certainly retarded my social development.

I had to respond to this when I saw Cobra post.

Cobra's comments hits so close to home.

I was bumped up two grades and was a social outcast. I was basically bullied all from fourth to tenth grade.

I was pretty tall for my age... the problem was I was two years younger. It was one of several things that made me a target.

My dad regrets that decision to this day. I remember him admitted it to me when I was in college. He noted that I was so happy in university, and he basically told me how he regretted letting the school push me from 3rd to 4th grade, after I had already been up a level.

[scottws]

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

That's me, to a tee, skipping 2nd grade.  As a result I was always the youngest and most socially inept member of the class through like 10th grade.  I was often among the smallest too.  My experience with school was a nightmare from 5th-8th grades, perhaps 9th too.  I liked to stay away from it as much as I could.  The experience certainly retarded my social development.

I need to go back and read the rest of your post now.  I just had to jump in there with both feet.

Edit:  I agree with you completely about bullying.  It's a tough problem for the school, and it's often not dealt with properly.  It's easier to blame whoever starts the fight physically.  You're doing the right thing by making your presence felt with the administrators.  That will have some effect on how they deal with your stepson.  Maybe not enough, but some.

I don't disagree with you.  Everyone Jennie and I talked to said that boys should be held back if they are on the borderline while girls should be pushed forward.  Everyone except Jennie's mom.  She made her opinion on the matter strongly known.  She actually wanted him to skip a grade, which he could have done.  What made it really tough though is my stepson's intelligence and success academically.  He was always at the top of his class in reading level and other forms of testing, usually way ahead of everyone else.  He was also badly misbehaving in class and the administrators said he wasn't being challenged enough and was creating a distraction in the classroom because of this, since he would always have more free time than everyone else.  They advised that the behavior would get better with more challenge and against holding him back which would make it much worse.

Anyway, I wanted to hold him back before first grade, but Jennie in the end listened to her mom and pushed him forward.  Jennie pulled out one of the inevitable "he isn't your kid" cards on me on that one.

The issue is starting to become apparent though.  His teacher this year said he was clearly less mature than the rest of the boys and it was getting to the point where some kids just were annoyed by him and some of the immature things he would do.

[idolminds]

I remember one time in school we got this new playground thing. I even helped build the dang thing (several parents volunteered to build it including my own, so I was there helping). Anyway this particular day of school the class bully was on top of it with 2 of his friends keeping everyone else off. So I attempted to force the issue by climbing up there anyway. The bully came up and kicked me in the chest to keep me from getting up there, so I climbed up and spit in his face. It wasn't right, but he kicked me first and was being a dick.

So he and his cronies proceeded to beat on me and spit about 40 times in my hair. I went and told the teacher that was supposed to be watching us and she sent me in to go clean up. That afternoon before we went home the teacher had a statement to make to the whole class: spitting isn't allowed. Nothing ever happened to the bully or his friends for being bullies or for kicking me first. Spitting is bad.

Come to think of it, nothing ever happened to him. One day he tore up a detention slip in the face of the dean. What happened? Nothing. He was the main kid playing basketball and had a game that night.

[gpw11]

I'm not tall at all, and going through school I was easily one of the five shortest kids in any of my grades.  I was fairly stocky, but short.  I was pretty popular through school, but certainly got made fun of for being short when I was in grades 2-5 or so.  Well, I didn't really take shit from anyone, basically because I was always told that you HAVE to stand up for yourself, and got in a fair number of fights when I was younger.  Pretty much the same story, where I'd get in shit, although usually the other kid would too.  My parents went to bat for me every time, but none of these were all that serious, and most of these altercations were with people I'd be on relatively good terms with the rest of my school career.  Kids are going to fight because they fuck around with each other all day and eventually tempers ARE going to flair.  I've been on both sides of the situation you're talking about, and although always very suprised at the time when someone snapped, I'd totally understand it when everything was said and done.

I know what the teachers and administrators are trying to do, but it doesn't really work out. The problem with the principle of trying to teach that physical violence is never the answer is that it actually is the answer a lot of times. If you run your mouth all day you're going to get hit eventually.  I've hit people for doing it and I've been hit for doing it. The problem with indiscriminately punishing kids for throwing a punch is that it creates an attitude like the one that reporter had on the clip posted here, "I can do anything, don't touch me".  No, sometimes you need to punch someone the fuck out. Not just because what they're doing is bothering you -  but because that's the only way to get them to stop doing whatever the fuck it is.   

It probably won't stop and you just have to keep on going to bat.

[shock]

I didn't really get bullied until middle school.  I was pretty much your average build, somewhat above average intelligence kid until then.  By middle school, everyone had figured out how easy going I was and how I'd rather avoid confrontation than deal with it (been working on that one for years - getting better).  So people gradually started doing things to me: jokes, pranks, jokes, etc.  Things escalated with this one asshole who would always come around hit me in the arm.  This went on for a bit until I finally just got angry enough that I let myself lose control.  I ended up throwing this kid to the ground in front of everyone and telling him to fuck off.  He never hit me again after that.

I never got in trouble for it, but I'm sure I would have if anyone saw it.  But problem solved.

My dad told me when I was young that one day, I'd have to fight for something/someone/myself at some point in my life.  I'm going to make sure my kid knows this.  I'm sure that my day is still coming.

[Pugnate]

I didn't really get bullied until middle school.  I was pretty much your average build, somewhat above average intelligence kid until then.  By middle school, everyone had figured out how easy going I was and how I'd rather avoid confrontation than deal with it (been working on that one for years - getting better).  So people gradually started doing things to me: jokes, pranks, jokes, etc.  Things escalated with this one asshole who would always come around hit me in the arm.  This went on for a bit until I finally just got angry enough that I let myself lose control.  I ended up throwing this kid to the ground in front of everyone and telling him to fuck off.  He never hit me again after that.

I never got in trouble for it, but I'm sure I would have if anyone saw it.  But problem solved.

My dad told me when I was young that one day, I'd have to fight for something/someone/myself at some point in my life.  I'm going to make sure my kid knows this.  I'm sure that my day is still coming.

The Peter Parker story.

[nickclone]

I was never picked on for some reason, I was friends with the "jocks" and "nerds", no one really seemed to care.