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You have to remember the goal of the school: To avoid a lawsuit.

If they tell a kid to fight back, they are opening themselves up for trouble. Their best option is to tell everyone to stop fighting, and hope the problem goes away.

Then they should be held liable for allowing violence to occur. That would fix the problem pretty quickly.

often times it can be a he-said she-said situation though

If my child regularly sustained serious injuries at home, Child Protective Services would eventually stop accepting my failure to supervise her as an excuse. Schools should not be allowed to get away with it.

This problem can be solved. The trouble is that it probably requires money, which taxpayers really hate to provide.

Surveillance cameras are pretty cheap these days.

That's going to change the very second a wearable emergency 360 deg camera starts to be marketed to parents of bullied kids, and is adopted widely.

As Mikeash said, it's a he-said she-said situation when there was no supervision. If it is frequently (or even usually) a he-said she-said that means there is not enough supervision.

We have that double standard because physical assaults in schools are normal, and physical assaults in workplaces are unusual. Same kind of reason tobacco is legal and MDMA isn't.

Schools are Prisons. Face it. If you need to request permission from someone higher up in the chain to take a shit in the toilet, it's a Prison. The cliques/gangs, the chain of command, violence, bullying and bravado are all the same. The crew does not care about you, the only thing that they fear are lawsuits and regulation.

The GP is partly commenting on the absurdity of physical assaults being normal in schools. The question is why is that?

There's that saying... Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is.

Fights happen at school all the time...so it seems normal.

It's normal cuz kids are assholes. I taught my child self defense. If you don't teach your children yourself, they're easily bullied.

Kids are dumb.

Normal masculine teasing is a two player game and if the players aren't experienced enough to play, dumb stuff gets out of hand. Happens in adult settings too where practical joke wars get out of hand, for example. So adult-ish male jokes around with adult-ish male, "yer mom" jokes are exchanged, its all cool.

Inexperienced jock kid calls inexperienced nerd kid a nerd, jock kid stands there waiting "he's supposed to "yer mom" me back" meanwhile nerd kid panics and starts looking for a safe space. And sometimes it escalates.

And that's why adult teachers, especially male teachers, used to ignore bullying. So as a grown adult I'm supposed to tell the nerd kid how to "yer mom" the jock kid? Can't you kids figure this stuff out on your own like 99% of the population? Clearly not...

I dunno, when I turned around and shoved my bully (he was a loser-stoner, not a jock) into the wall after he was shoving me while I was taking a piss, he didn't say "Oh hey cool, it's a two player game, I like this guy", he punched me in the head 5 times.

But sure, it's just kids being dumb and silly.

The nerd kid thinks this behavior is what makes someone an unreliable asshole in the first place. He's got a different way of thinking about these kinds of insults and you're saying he should just mimick ass hattery in order to diffuse the situation, which is an explanation that doesn't make sense to him.

I would argue that it's the other way around: the difference is there because of the double standard.

No, the difference is there because kids are different from adults. Their brains are different, their level of responsibility is different, they are different kinds of people.

Humans are naturally physical animals. Get some toddlers together, and (in addition to lots of other nice behavior like sharing and talking), they will push, grab, hit, etc. each other. We're primates and we do primate-y things.

As we get older, we learn the mores of our culture and learn to not physically interact with people in this way, but that process takes a lot of time. Kids haven't completed it yet (some adults never do). In the meantime, we have to provide an environment that handles the fact that they are behaviorally different from respectable, trustworthy adults.

Above, you say "We create these Lord of the Flies type situations for children", but the whole point of Lord of the Flies is that savagery is how children naturally act when taken outside of the strictures of society.

A Lord of Flies situation doesn't have to be manufactured by adults—it's what you get if you don't work hard to prevent it.

I would argue that the point of Lord of the Flies is that savagery is how people naturally act when taken outside society.

The fact that it's natural means nothing. It's natural for small groups of humans to make war on their neighbors, to kill their men, rape their women, and enslave their children. But we don't put up with that kind of thing now, for the most part.

I agree with your last sentence, but my question is: why aren't they working hard to prevent it? Of course children have to learn this stuff, it's clearly not innate, but if they're going through their school years being bullied then clearly they're not learning the lesson.

We tolerate it because its normal, ie how things work out in nature unless we try to intervene, is simply the naturallistic fallacy. While in fact what happens in nature really doesn't imply anything about anything's desirability, which is what is at issue here.

Now, no doubt their responsibility is different, because their brains are different. It'd be appaling to jail a kid on charges of assault for a fight in school ofc.

However, this def does not mean that getting bullied wouldn't have similarly negative effects on the kid, as it would on the adults (easily worse, given the kid's personality is only forming).

Hence, the op was suggesting, rationally, preventing it should be just as high of a priority to the school, as it would be to the judicial apparatus in the case of adult assault.

Instead, it is just normal. And that is appaling.

Looking at the prevalence zero-tolerance policies in schools, I'd argue that its often children who are being punished too harshly and having their freedoms restricted too direly.

For instance, zero tolerance drugs policies have gotten kids suspended or expelled due to having a single tablet of aspirin in their book bag because the rule is that any medicine must be registered and administered by the school nurse, and even OTC drugs count as part of 'zero tolerance' drug policy.

The same such policy would be hard to implement for adults in a workplace.

Physical assaults in schools are (usually) not intended to cause serious physical harm. They're more of a test to see if you're strong enough to be part of the established social order.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed that many bullies stopped bullying you or even became friendly with you after you made a real effort to fight back.

Usually not a fan of "broken window" theories, but in this case I strongly am.

In American schools violence is often institutionalized. Teacher beat children, children get used to violence. The children are often not too reflected. People advocating violence as a tool for education are usually not big fans explanations and calls to reason. So children have no clue weather they are subject to education or sadism. Probably they are often at least partly subject to sadism.

And if they get used to the feeling that they are subject to the teachers sadism, it's no wonder that they see this as usual. Their educators and there for role models do, so why shouldn't they do?

Children probably do not think about what causes serious harm and what does not. Weather it was justified or not. Expically because it's only natural to assume that teachers punishment against oneself is usually not justified.

Tl;dr: if you beat children, to be surprised that said children beat other children.

/edit: disregard this, it's bullshit:

>Most urban public school systems, even in states where it is permitted, have abolished corporal punishment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...

In American schools violence is often institutionalized. Teacher beat children, children get used to violence.

Has this been permitted within the last 50 years? It definitely happened in the 1960s and earlier, but corporal punishment has not been a thing in American schools for a long time.

Yes. Corporal punishment in public schools is legal in 19 states. It's actually carried out in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

According to http://www.corpun.com/counuss.htm

Corporal punishment is widespread in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi schools.

Corporal punishment is routine in some schools in smaller districts of Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

It's only in 2011 that parents had the right to prevent their children being hit at school.

(This is all public schools. Hitting children in private schools is legal in all but 2 states.)

This isn't just children. Some 18 and 19 year olds attend schools and a subjected to physical violence as punishment.

Wow - I stand corrected.

We don't have statistics for private schools in the US.

Over 100,000 students received corporal punishment in 2011/2012. (And some of them will have been hit on more than one occasion)

http://www.corpun.com/counuss.htm

But what if it isn't violence in all cases - what if it only superficially looks like violence? Maybe war, murder, and a playground fight aren't really all on the same spectrum.

> Teacher beat children

Not in the US for a long time. My father was probably one of the last teachers to actually use a paddle, and even he hadn't used it within 15 years.

My generation grew up with "It takes two to fight"

For most victims, it was never a fight, it was an outright assault.

But it's how places of involuntary incarceration work.

> Can you imagine telling a victim of a mugging (or worse) to "just ignore them" the next time it happens?

Isn't this standard advice, to just give them your money and avoid escalating the situation?

It's a slightly different situation. A mugger probably has the advantage of a weapon. Even if you have one as well, their weapon is already prepped for use, so trying to defend yourself against an already brandished weapon is not advisable.

Children in schools likely do not have weapons. It's hand-to-hand fighting with only weapons of opportunity (e.g. heavy books) available, and the provoking child likely isn't ready to use a weapon of opportunity.

Granted I'm not inherently saying that a victim should always deck a bully in the face. If that were the case, however, I'd say that child v bully has the advantage over the mugger v victim.

That's an excellent point. When people tell you that you should comply with a mugger, that's because there's a serious threat of being killed, and compliance offers the best chance of surviving the encounter.

Yes for mugging, but not if you are dealing with a would be rapist. Don't fight back, have your account of the event questioned and doubted...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/2...

Fight back against a rapist, maybe get seriously injured or killed. It's damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

Yeah, there was a news article in the last couple of weeks about that very thing. Apparently the Baltimore PD have been marking rape reports as unsubstantiated because, at least in one case, the woman didn't fight back under verbal threat. There is something funky with the law either in MD or in Baltimore (don't remember which) that requires the rapist to actually do violence (apparently the unwanted penis isn't enough) for the rape to be counted as a certain type of sexual assault. So all the would be rapist has to say "if you fight back, I'll kill you", the victim believes the rapist and doesn't fight back, and bingo-bango under the law, the rape is unsubstantiated.

In at least one case, a serial rapist rapist walked free because he had no prior history of sexual crimes. Because prior reports were unsubstantiated since the prior victims didn't fight back.

Tried to find this article without joy. One of the bajillion I come across via RSS.

My understanding is that this sort of thing is pretty common. Traditionally, "rape" required the victim to resist "to the utmost." Our idea of what constitutes rape has broadened considerably, but the law is sometimes slow to catch up. According to this, five US states still have such requirements in their laws:

http://www.womenslawproject.org/resources/Rape%20and%20Sexua...

Many others make no mention either way, and I suspect many of them would then fall back to the traditional requirement.

> Isn't this standard advice, to just give them your money and avoid escalating the situation?

Yeah, and I think it's the best advice for a one-off incident like a mugger or running into bullies in the park. Just worry about your own safety, get out of there as soon as you possibly can, and don't return. A mugger isn't the best comparison.

But what if the mugger is there every day at 6pm when you're getting out of the office? Do you just keep buying a new wallet and giving it to them every day? What if the mugger works for the same company as you, and sits 50 feet from you, and every time you walk by them to go to the bathroom they make that exaggerated knuckle-cracking gesture while staring your down and mouthing "six o'clock".

Getting bullied in the playground is one thing. It sucks. You can't go back to that park without being beaten up. But if the bully is in your school then your parents, teachers, government all mandate that you see that bully 5 days out of the week.

Yes, but they'll also make efforts to find and imprison the mugger, suggest being prepared for physical violence in case it ends up being necessary next time, and other such things beyond that.

In some social groups. Rural Texan society would probably advocate shooting a mugger. I suspect the Texan approach is better for society as a whole.

Do you mean that it is better for society that Texans get shot, or that we should all be shooting muggers?

It would be better if all muggers were afraid of the possibility of being shot by their chosen victims.

While some fraction would then escalate to rendering their victims unable to shoot prior to approaching, I think a greater fraction would simply choose a less confrontational way to acquire spending money. Those who did not change tactics would eventually get shot.

If the prey people change tactics, so will the predator people. Shooting the muggers tends to produce a wilier, more dangerous, harder-to-shoot breed of mugger. There will be fewer of them, but instead of waving their knife in your face, they will bash the back of your head with a rock. While you are out, they will photograph everything in your wallet before putting it right back in your pocket, and take just your phone and gun. Then if you don't report all your cards as stolen, someone buys your details from a darkweb site, does a little social engineering, and cleans out your accounts.

Mugging isn't a profitable enough business to inspire the kind of organization you're imagining.

If I ever damaged my prefrontal cortex to the point where I could incorporate muggings into my personal revenue stream, I would definitely... be a fence for the people that I would advise to perform muggings in that way. Maybe I could also write an app for victims to do self-service muggings, or on-demand muggings--partially automate the process, to improve the mugging experience. See, the real problem with robbing people one at a time is the labor factor. One mugger can rob--what?--maybe two or three people a day without getting caught? I don't even know. There just aren't enough career criminals out there to serve the whole market.

If you could somehow automate the process of stealing just a little bit of money from a lot of people, all at once, all the time, that would totally disrupt...

...the banking industry.~ [cue rimshot]

Thank you. I'll be here every open mic night.

Just to be clear, the parent of my comment is absolutely not true. You are told the adult equivalent of "just ignore them" when faced with a mugging (do what they say, give them what they want, your wallet isn't worth your life).

Furthermore, in most states, you do not have a legal "right" to stand your ground when attacked, you are expected to retreat if possible, and there are very frequently countersuits on the behalf of the assailant that are successful in civil courts, not to mention the criminal charges that may stem from "defending yourself" against an assailant, especially depending on how much damage you do.

It's alarming to me the number of people in this comment section who believe violence will solve a problem for children or adults. It's also alarming this "if adults were in situations like children are" analogy is getting so much attention. Kids are not adults, they lack the cognitive capacity to reason as adults, and need safe places to learn how to be humans. We're casually throwing away hundreds of years of experimental results and academic consensus on childhood because our two-minute reasoning is superior.

Come on, HN, we can do better.

Are you implying that locking hundreds or thousands of children in a building all day with periods of minimal supervision is a system built on hundreds of years of experimental results and academic consensus?

You are not simply told to ignore muggers. You are told to comply with muggers because muggers are life-threatening. You are also told to fight back if they go from threatening your wallet to threatening your physical well-being. Many places will actually send out the authorities to search for and imprison muggers after you report them. You are definitely not supposed to "just ignore them," you're supposed to do what it takes to survive, then report them, and have them brought to justice.

I don't see people saying violence is a solution, only that it can sometimes be the best choice out of a bunch of bad ones if you're in a situation where the authorities have failed you and you have to fend for yourself. Me, I'm advocating the exact opposite of violence being a solution: I'm saying, repeatedly, that schools need to do more to prevent violence, precisely so children don't have to take matters into their own hands.

Come on, you can do better than this weird straw-manning.

You are also told to fight back if they go from threatening your wallet to threatening your physical well-being. Many places will actually send out the authorities to search for and imprison muggers after you report them. You are definitely not supposed to "just ignore them," you're supposed to do what it takes to survive, then report them, and have them brought to justice.

Exactly. If a mugging turns into a kidnapping, the recommended practice is for the victim to not go with the criminal, and to fight back or attempt to escape by whatever means available.

For crime victims who are transported by criminals to a so-called "secondary crime scene", the survival statistics are much worse than in the case of a simple mugging.

It makes sense to me that we are no longer talking about a mugging, because if we were, then what I said would have been true. The fact that this argument had to shift to a kidnapping in order to continue should be testament enough to the validity of my original point.

Be careful of heeding this as fact, depending on the laws of the locale you could end up in prison, subject to civil suits, and/or other consequences for practicing violent behavior even if it is in self-defense. For example, an eyewitness may only see you break the assailant's arm and miss that they initiated aggression. Then you go to court and are held liable for damages to your assailant plus a felony charge, because the assailant's lawyer was able to convince a jury you used greater than necessary force or even that there were no witnesses to support your assertion that the assailant initiated the attack, and then you are labeled as the violent felon.

So what's the solution? Not easy to decide, but if these situations are a concern best to think ahead and get appropriately prepared instead of just reacting with unrestrained violence..

I guess I see your point, but I disagree. Part of sticking up for yourself is willing to risk these things. The bully's advantage is that he is willing to break the rules and you aren't. So you have to break the rules and risk some of these things that may happen. Maybe just draw the line at snapping the kids arm and you'll be safe.

No, a person may not be safe under the law when doing that. There are ways to minimize legal risk and also fighting back, if one is willing to look into them. Risking going to prison and becoming a felon to prove yourself is foolhardy.

Edit: one example of this back-firing:

http://crimefeed.com/2014/10/bullied-teen-charged-with-assau...

Getting back to the original premise: would the same advise be given to adults that is regularly given to children?

If an adult comes to tell you that they are being regularly harassed and beaten up by a coworker, will they be told to be careful about retaliation, and oh shucks since there's no direct proof of anything we can't separate you from your attacker?

No.

And I think there's a good reason (not that I particularly agree with it). People, the justice system in general, trust adults to be reasonable and act within the law so anyone who goes to a police officer and says X man attacked me is believed. With children, there's always the question in the back of the mind "did they lie to get their enemy in trouble? are they pushing boundaries? Are they just seeking attention? Are they exaggerating?"

For an adult, just your word that you were attacked is often good enough to kick start an investigation for physical evidence. For a child attacked by another child, their word is often not seen as good enough.

I do agree with you on what you're saying about the original premise. That norm of ignoring genuine violence kids are facing needs to be changed.

Yes. The modern school systems are a criminal institution, teaching kids not to fight back against a lifetime of bullying and abuse. I am currently taking a previous landlord to small claims court (The had the temerity to withhold my entire security deposit and ask me for more to pay for expenses that are explicitly the landlord's under California law). When I have talked to my peers, I've gotten two reactions; One is a "hit them for all they've got", and one is "Why would you do that? They have money and power!" The former from my peers who were homeschooled (as was I, in part), the latter from those who'd gone through traditional schooling.

Modern US schooling is more-or-less intentionally training to not fight injustice, to not speak up unless spoken to, to fail to learn. Zero Tolerance policies are just one symptom. Spend some time in a classroom and you'll see the teachers favoritism, trying to be 'cool' and catering to the popular kids (and further alienating the unpopular ones), telling kids that they're wrong when they're ahead of the class and more right than the teacher wants to teach. Modern curriculums have been watered down and focus grouped into meaninglessness.

Scholae delenda est.

I too have had a California landlord have "the temerity to withhold my entire security deposit and ask me for more to pay for expenses that are explicitly the landlord's under California law" and started the process to take him to small claims court.

I started legal proceedings too. I went to a "traditional" school, so I think you are perhaps reading too much into things.

As an aside, I recommend asking for receipts for all of the expenses they are claiming and keeping track of the deadlines for the provision of paperwork. In my case, the landlord had 21 days to provide receipts or they were liable for the FULL deposit. They failed to provide receipts, admitted so in writing and then stopped talking to me entirely for a bit until I pointed out that CA law allows for automatic triple damages for landlords witholding security deposits and that they had already missed their deadline to return the required paperwork to me.

That would be "Scholae delendae sunt". I guess your homeschooling didn't include Latin grammar :-)

I actually learned Latin grammar from public school :)

(But I was aware my latin was incorrect; I was going for the spirit of the common corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est)

People don't respect children as actual humans. I think that's pretty much the answer with most children related problems.

As an adult, it is far easier to avoid your tormentors.

Adults tend to be better at measuring risk as well: picking a fight with me, for example, would mean voluntarily engaging in a physical confrontation with a fully grown, professionally trained combatant who happens to be a member of the most violent species ever known to exist in the universe. If you attack me, one of us will become a murderer. There's little reason to go down that road, and I'll make sure you know it.

However, children don't really think, nor are they permitted to follow through on that kind of threat. And they tend to care more about what they are permitted to do.

Yes, exactly. Everybody saying "but you're not supposed to resist muggers" is missing the point. If you get mugged by the same person 47 times in a row, you're not going to keep getting that advice. A one-off incident at school which goes unpunished is troubling but understandable. It's the repeated long-term bullying that gets nothing but shrugs and "ignore it and it'll go away" that is completely nuts.