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New York, 4:36 PM
Tue Nov 10
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/29/08
Advice to administrators: learn how to give a shit, and stop hiring teachers who hate kids. Bullying won't stop until your students feel safe and protected enough to report their problems to you.
12/29/08
First, mechanisms of punishment within schools don't have the same kind of oversight and due process that the judicial system mandates. Increasingly, school administrators are implementing zero-tolerance policies, which deny accused rule breakers grounds to argue their case or provide defenses. This is fine in the context of school rules, wherein the in loco parentis policy grants schools wide leniency in order to ensure a functioning educational environment. Attaching punishment for infractions which occur outside the school system extends beyond the reach of this and merely functions to circumvent due process for minors.
Further, there's the somewhat more ambiguous concern that, if schools become the primary means of law-enforcement for minors, then their purpose, at least perceptively if not actually, shifts away from education, a shift which is likely to cause students, and to a lesser degree their parents, to view school administrators with greater hostility and combativeness than they otherwise would. This could, for obvious reasons, cause a substantial damper on the ability of said administrators to educate effectively.
In short. Stopping cyberbullying is great, but it should be done through the court system, not the education system.
12/29/08
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12/29/08
To be fair, though, to a certain extent isn't high school about learning how to deal with social pressures? Kids need to learn that they will be judged by how they present themselves both on and offline - not only by their fellow students, but also by future employers and the like. Bullying should absolutely be cracked down upon, but the idea of completely removing it strikes me as doing kids a disservice. Better to learn how to fight back before any real damage can be done (extreme cases like Megan Meier aside).
I apologize if this sounds harsh or offensive. I grew up in a small town, and it was so tough to watch some of the overly sheltered kids around me get into sad, difficult, or dangerous situations because their parents were too busy protecting them to prepare them for the real world.
12/29/08
12/29/08
I'm curious about something, and I want you to know I ask this with a tone of respectful curiosity rather than accusation: if we have schools crack down completely on bullying (as you suggest), how does that allow kids to learn to fight back (as you also suggest)? I think one of schools' biggest problems might be finding a happy medium between those two.
12/29/08
Defending yourself is an instinct. Very few of us will allow ourselves to become a punching bag unless other forces are brought to bear (such as psychological manipulation). Bullies wear down other kids psychologically in order to be able to use the threat of physical violence to intimidate. Take away that psychological component, and a child's natural tendency to fight back will not be dulled by abuse. Plus, the easiest way to "fight back" is to not fight back. I learned that lesson in school after being bullied constantly. If the bullies cannot get a rise out of you, if you ignore them, they will find something else to do with their time.
12/29/08
However, I just posted below about how the administrators in my high school were not up to the challenge of protecting kids - not even the kids who were brave enough to report problems. Cracking down on bullying is a wonderful idea, but if administrators can't hold up their end of the bargain, the whole system seems doomed to fail.
12/29/08
In adult life, we'd be outraged if the police refused to do anything about a crime because they like the victim better than you, or if they gently suggest that you need to "toughen up" instead of running to them to say that so-and-so tried to rape you.
12/29/08
I'm not calling for anything less than a crackdown on bullying. When teachers physically and sexually abused kids in my high school, despite these kids reporting it, nothing was done. We had Freshman Friday, we had gang wars, we had arson, we had bomb threats. I never felt safe in that school. The administrators failed in their responsibility and duty to protect their students. I have seen a world where bullying is permitted and safety is not a priority, and it's not pretty.
However, my great fear is that the backlash, the response to all this, will bring us into an opposite but equally dangerous extreme. I've seen too many kids from my town become fucked up young adults because they were extremely sheltered. One of my closest high school friends was very nearly raped by a stranger at 16 or 17 years old because she simply didn't know that his invitation for her to find him in the streets after dark was a bad idea. Had she been raped, I would never have thought of it as a way to "toughen her up." And you're right, I would have been outraged had she been raped and had the police not stepped in to help her. But am I not also allowed to be outraged at the parents who never taught her how to keep herself safe?
Yes, let's crack down on bullying. High school is a pressure cooker, and not at all like real life. But it does provide an opportunity to learn some essential lessons about how to deal with emotional problems, how to report your problems to people who can help, and how to avoid some difficult situations. I guess my main point was this: let us crack down on bullying, but let us not overcompensate. Let us protect kids from harm, but let us also allow them to learn while the mistakes are less permanent and they don't have so far to fall.
12/29/08
12/29/08
The issue isn't about sheltering; it's about the message we are sending to all the kids, including the bullies. Focusing on sheltering kids vs. protecting them treats bullying as a natural and inescapable problem, like the rain.
12/29/08
The two can relate. They're about learning how to stick up for yourself, how to minimize your exposure to bad situations, and how to accept and deal with the unavoidable problems. Teaching your kids how to stick up for themselves, how to love themselves for who they are, and how to protect themselves will both help them avoid being bullied and help prevent them turning into bullies themselves, I suspect.
"By pairing them, you're suggesting (perhaps without meaning to) that we need to allow some bullying in order to let kids toughen up."
You're right about this, as I see now. Thank you for pointing this out. I do apologize for the implications and I see why your response was as strong as it was.
"...treats bullying as a natural and inescapable problem, like the rain."
Isn't it, though? There will always be people who try to gain power over you or otherwise take advantage of you, be they coworkers, fellow students, or strangers.
"The issue isn't about sheltering; it's about the message we are sending to all the kids, including the bullies."
This is an excellent point. You're right, it's important for schools to send the message that such behavior is unacceptable.
12/29/08
The issue is not new. And although students in school do not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" the way that adults do, I can imagine this law possibly impinging on personal freedoms, as others have noted.
What frightens me is that there are so many laws on the books and so few of them have actually been tested in prosecution. I don't believe that we need more laws, we need effective interpretations of what we have, first - so few school boards, police, judges, prosecutors truly understand technology - they're only beginning to address the laws that exist.
12/29/08
I'm seeing how terrified it is for her and how stressful, and how little the website itself is doing to stop it. So frustrating, the cyber bullying. I have half a mind to find that punk's house and actual-bully him.
12/29/08
12/29/08
I've certainly never done this to asshole ex-roomates, or private-picture leaking ex-boyfriends or anything.
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12/29/08
And how early can something like this start? I remember the worst years, bully-wise, being second and third grade. Are they going to expel little 9 year old brats for cyber-bullying? Are 9 year olds even online? So many questions.
12/29/08
My worst years were 6-9th grade, personally. I got bullied before that, but those were the most harrowing years.
12/29/08
I do have to say, while I came of age in a time sans MySpace or Facebook, I haved watched my little sister (9 years younger) grow up with it and it SUCKS. If you had a difficult time keeping up with the pressures of the school social scene when I was a kid, you could at least escape it when you went home. With social networking sites, the schoolday lasts ALL DAY. There's no break from it, which includes bullying, keeping up with "The Debbies" and all that jazz...
12/29/08
And it's really bizarre, but we have all become totally entrenched in it. We've only had these things for 2 years but already can't imagine life without it?
12/29/08
I think the cell phone is going to make her out grow some of her friends faster than she would have otherwise. Constant contact doesn't always improve relationships.
12/29/08
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12/29/08
Okay, so maybe I wouldn't be able to put those limits on myself, but I'm a long way off from having kids... they'll never know.
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12/29/08
Having (usually incorrect) rumours and horrible things said about you on the internet would upset most people's egos at any age!
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