Warbler said:
DrCrowTStarwars said:
Most bullying that I hear people complaining about is name calling now yes in a class room you can put a stop to that but that is not where kids do it.
that is where kids did it to me, in school on school grounds. The adults didn't do anywhere near enough to stop it. We were not properly supervised on the playground during recess. They had people out there with us that were supposed to be watching us, but they used more as time to gossip instead of keeping a good eye on us. I've lost count of the number of times the bullies were able to do things to me right in the plain veiw of those that were supposed to be watching and failed to do anything about it.
They do it out in public or in their own homes.
the bullies almost never did anything to me in my home, They weren't allowed there. The only thing they did do was crank call me a few times. That can be handled by the law.
You can't stop name calling without attacking free speech so if you ask me that right there is setting up a police state.
funny, parents, teachers other adults regularly tell kids to stop name calling you really want to say that is a violation of the free speech? Kids have a right to an opinion but do not have the right to harass other kids.;
I mean how long before it is decided that anyone who says anything negative about the president is bullying him and then it becomes a crime to not support the president?
more asinine bs.
Don't tell me it couldn't happen because if the president says people are hurting his feelings isn't he being bullied and why shouldn't those mean people be made to stop?
for one thing, the free speech rights of adults are much less limited than that of children.
Not to mention that unless you have the government watching everything everyone thinks says or does how do you catch bullies in anything other then a "he said she said" type of situation where there is no proof one way or the other? Again this crosses the line into a police state and it is a place I never want to go.
well for one thing, if the adults keep a better eye on the kids, then it won't be "he said she said", it will be "bully said, adult saw and heard"
Oh and if you think it was easy for me to learn how to deal with bullies you should talk to me mom about the number of times I came home crying but I learned that they couldn't make me change and they couldn't control my life so they had no real power and were just frittering away their own lives that could be spent doing something better.
I know it wasn't easy for you. Stop acting like it should have been easy for me when you know better.
So again you are talking about locking up kids in some way so they are never out of site of adults and getting rid of free speech rights, how is that not the makings of a police state?
Also if the rights of kids can be taken away because they are not real citizens how long before the right of blacks, or jews, or other groups who don't do enough to count as "real citizens" come under assault? As I said I would rather air on the side of caution when it comes to rights.
The fact is any human interaction can turn violent, or cause you to feel bad about yourself. The only way to be 100% sure that it will never happen is just to avoid all human interactions. Also again you are describing grade school, so it wasn't really the bullies it was the teachers who were the problem and again do you really think it's healthy to let your life be defined by something that happened so long ago? Were you disabled by the fights? Are you in pain today because of them? Was what the other kids said about you true? if the answers to these questions is no then my view has always been why would it bother anyone?
The other issue is I think kids are getting too controlled these days. When I was a kid some of the best days of my life were the ones where the summer days where my friends and I would just take off and explore the town we lived in and not see an adult all day. It was by doing this that we developed our own tastes in books and discovered what we were really interested in doing with our lives and just relaxed in a way we could with our parents hanging around and trying to manage everything. Also we learned how to resolve and deal with conflicts because when one came up most of the time we would have to deal with it ourselves. Every time I have had a job I have ended up getting put in charge of other people because despite some of my other issues my bosses are shocked by how good I am at resolving conflicts and instructing people and I learned those skills because of the freedom all the kids had when I was growing up. I have to wonder how kids are going to learn those skills today when they are told to just play the victim the first time someone says something they don't like and let someone else solve the problem for them.
Sorry but that's the way I see it. I think you have to give kids some freedom if they are going to grow up and that means that yes some times they are going to get hurt because the world isn't perfect and some times kids do stupid things. Does that mean that no effort should be made to protect children, of course not but if you go too far they will be unable to cope with the adult world and they will let little events from their childhood mess up their adult lives and I just don't think that is right. Sorry if this offends you but I have yet to hear how bullying can be stopped without a police state all I have heard is that it can without any details and I don't think you can stop something that has been going on since the dawn of time.
Everything in life can hurt you and while there are cases where the law needs to step in I think in most cases of school yard bullying adults are way over reacting these days and that the far better approach is to make sure kids learn the right lesson and react the right way.
There are only three ways to react to the past. You can run from it. Let it control you. Or learn from it. My personal choice is to go with the last one.