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Im curious why you draw that conclusion, and also what things were like when you were in school. Did you get in any fights? Were fights frequent in your school.

The reason I ask is that I think I'm a bit older than the average HN reader (pushing 40). When I went to school, fights were certainly not encouraged, but the occasional lunchtime or after-school fight was not at all unusual. And there was definitely bullying.

It wasn't any kind of indoctrination that kept their victims from fighting back. It was pure and simple fear! Most of the bullies were either physically larger than their victims, or just had a way of projecting an aggressive, intimidating presence that had most of the other kids reluctant to throw down with them.

Now I agree that a good punch was (and probably still is) a good individual tactic for getting a bully to leave you alone. What I disagree with is what I believe is your assertion that it's some kind of recent policy change that makes bullying possible or causes it to flourish in some way.

A policy of allowing or even encouraging physical violence isn't going to end or discourage bullying. Human behavior isn't that simple, real world solutions aren't that black and white.

Bullying didn't suddenly "spring" into existence when schools started earnestly preventing violence. Bullying has existed longer than human history. You see it in all human societies, and all even in animals.

Bullying is, according to the media, "on the rise". You only need to a simple Google search to find an army of articles dated 2010 that make this claim.

Is it true? It's my outsider's perception that there is some truth to it. It's my perception as the husband of a schoolteacher that it is. But my eyes cannot gaze upon all the schools in the country. However, the combination of the anecdotal evidence of my wife's school combined with the national media suggests to me that I am not far off. (Even though I recognize the media's fondness of latching onto a story that is guaranteed to draw attention)

Nowhere did I state that this trend has caused bullying. I am only saying that it has affected bullying.

I am also not necessarily putting a timeline on when things changed. I simply don't have the data for that. But I am looking at schools as they look in 2010 and I am seeing a lot of examples/stories of bullies operating with impunity. And it seems at least to be much more so than in my school days.

The one thing I can state as an absolute fact is that bullying is an extremely hot topic among teachers and school boards. I have to think that there is more than just bully status quo behind that.

I'm not sure that it's on the rise. I haven't studied hard data on the issue enough to really make a statement like this, but personally I suspect that other changes in society have left kids less able to deal with bullying, and that's why it's prominence in the media is on the rise. There are so many diagnoses of mental and emotional illnesses, medications to fix them, etc... I think the prominence of things like this just teaches kids that it's not their problem, it's just a "syndrome" they suffer from. While some of it may be true, we've lost a sense of how to "deal with it". I think that spills over into how people deal with bullying. They can't handle the fact that they're being bullied, and that ends up pushing them in the direction of suicide, which I think is horrible. (I mean no disrespect to the families of those who have recently been through this). I don't think bullying has gone up, but I think children are now being raised in an environment where they haven't learned to deal with their problems head on.

I was bullied a ton as a kid, and I was always told to "tell and adult", or just ignore it, but this guy is right - there are some bullies who want to hurt you, and you ignoring it or telling and adult just makes them want to hurt you even more. I learned to change the way I did some things so as not to attract the attention of bullies, etc... and solve some problems non-violently, but there absolutely was a time when I had to have enough of a back-bone to make a solid decision about when enough was enough. That fixed the remaining problems - but I still look back at that as an experience I could have solved much sooner if I had just been smarter about it. The bullies shouldn't have done what they did, but it was my problem and I needed to deal with it.

> Bullying didn't suddenly "spring" into existence when schools started earnestly preventing violence.

He's not claiming otherwise. He's explaining how he's going to keep his kid from being bullied.

> schools started earnestly preventing violence

Assumes facts not in evidence..... (A policy isn't a result.)

> What I disagree with is what I believe is your assertion that it's some kind of recent policy change that makes bullying possible or causes it to flourish in some way.

The policy change is that bully's victims will be punished if they resist? It lets bullies say "go along or the school will come down on you". Why do you think that such a change doesn't encourage bullies? (The policy change doesn't affect the bully's punishment.)

Yes, there were fights before, but since there are still fights.... (Under the old scheme, one party might not have been punished for a fight. Under the new scheme, both parties are, but since the instigator wasn't deterred by the threat of being punished in the past, it's unclear why you think that the changed policy, which mandates punishment for someone else, would deter the instigator.)

I'm 35, and was frequently bullied at school. The one thing they took notice of was when I fought back. In one case I went to the hospital to get checked out with a black eye and several other marks, and severely bruised lips after going up against an older boy that was a head taller than me. But he got bruised badly too, and had the humiliation of being made by his parents to come and apologize, and he stayed clear of me for months afterwards. It was worth it to me.

I was never small, but I was overweight. Not the fattest kid in school, but bullies are rather indiscriminate morons.

The 3rd or 4th day of high school, I got into a fight. It was a proper fist fight, we went to the ground and a teacher separated us. We got pardoned because ours was the first fight of the school year - I'm not sure why they pardoned us, maybe it was because we were friends and covered each others asses or maybe it was naivety but the fight happened in front of like 50 kids.

What happened? We both got a 'reputation' because everybody knew about our fight, no bullies targeted us - but we were both complete and utter nerds.

It took another couple of years before anyone targeted me for bullying, but by this time I was in a strong group of friends. We had a lot of camaraderie when it came to anyone insulting our group. We fought with each other, got into actual fist fights, but there was hell would anyone outside our group start a fight. The guy was a jockish type bully, utterly moronic (he'd failed everything for basically 3 years) and more importantly had cronies. He targeted me, but him and 2 others weren't a match for 12 kids, 4 of which (myself included) were the base of our winning tug-of-war team (5 years in a row total domination) even though we were the lightest team in the school. To put it simply, we kicked the crap out of them - no one went too far we just put them to the ground and kept them there.

What happened? I didn't get bullied again in highschool. We did, however, all get dragged into the headmasters's office with all the deputy-heads of the school because they thought we were a gang. Interestingly, none of us got a suspension, or even a detention for that. We silenced the bullies, I don't think one of them got in a fight for the rest of the year.

I was never a bully, I never called anyone names. The few times I had been in a fight outside of bullying, I never threw a punch. I got 1 kid suspended for a week and given an expulsion warning, because I didn't throw a punch back.

I would personally be okay if my kid responded to a bully with his fist. But I agree, hell-hath-no-fury like a pissed off dad if I found out my kid was a bully.

I've had essentially this conversation with my son. Mine breaks down to:

  - Attempt to walk away from verbal abuse.
  - If it gets physical, fight like hell until the threat stops, then walk away.

Your goal is not to "win" or injure, your goal is to walk away.

"Until the threat stops". Perfect words. That will work its way into my new and improved speech.

I agree strongly with this.

I was hardly picked on in school because I'd just ignore any teasing... and the first time I let it get to me I stabbed the bully (in class, in front of the teacher) with a pencil and sent him to the doctor.

I got off with just a chat to the headmaster... not even a very stern chat, because the staff all liked me as a good student and disliked the bully because he was a known bully. Doing the same thing now would probably lead to expulsion and charges of aggravated assault. If I had a child today I'd be telling them to make sure they drop the pencil first; using fists would probably work nearly as well, and a suspension for fighting on your school records means nothing in the real world.

It's a bit sinister, though, don't you think? If you're dealing with a vengeful bully, the threat never really stops until you've injured him enough that he will be unwilling or unable to hurt you back later.

The trick is to damage one of them badly enough (albeit non-permanently) that nobody else wants to try. I generally found that picking somebody clean off the floor by the throat and holding them in midair until the look came into their eyes where I knew they thought they were going to die was a good option. Doesn't give them much except a day or two of a sore throat in terms of physical damage but you only have to do it once every two or three years to be marked "not an easy target".

Coming from a larger geek here. In many cases the threat stops immediately but it doesn't change the nature of the abuse. I had other kids hit me in the face and run away. If I pursued them I was the bully. So I was left with two options; pursue and be the monster, or get used to being hit unexpectedly.

With all the highlighting of bullying recently, it's reminds me that there could easily be a different dynamic here. Kids are smart and adapt to rules. If they can control someone with accusations of bullying, they will do so. Remember that being a bully isn't about size it's about abusive intent.

You can apply the same surprise-attack and bully-accusation strategies on them, can you not?

If a kid that weighs 130lbs complains about the kid that weighs 200lbs, he is taken seriously. It's not the same in reverse.

There was a size disparity there of a similar nature (although it was more like 130 vs 90 at that age most likely) with two different guys I dealt with in middle school who were just constant with the random hitting/slapping (their favorite)/other annoying/embarrassing things.

Once I got a warning (I literally dented a gym locker with his head, to the coaches amusement), the other time an in school suspension (picked up kid, threw into chalkboard), but both stopped the harassment. The other kid may have been punished too, but don't honestly care: As they were then leery of me, I was then no longer constantly harassed by them. The point isn't to "win" by getting them punished by the administration and reforming them from their bullying ways; it's to assert "I am not the lowest status guy, go find someone else to screw with"

No, your goal is to instill fear in your enemy, not the kind of fear that makes them fight back like a wounded animal, but rather the kind of traumatic fear which makes them unlikely to treat you, or anybody else the same broken way again.

I disagree with this. This creates a situation of; throw a punch, does he give up yet, throw another, ok, surely he wants to stop now. That's how you really get hurts. You've hit the other person so the fight so it's on, and now you're stopping.

Personally I would advice that you do whatever you can to avoid a fight, but if you must fight you go until the other person is incapacitated or you get separated (in school this happens really quick anyway). Once you start a fight all further reluctance has to go out the window or you're going to get hurt.

I especially like this:

"THIS IS OK. Your well-being is more important than their rules. If you get suspended for three days, then I'll take three days off work and we'll keep up with your studies. I will be on your side."

That said, I would outline this with a child subject to ongoing torment. I would not recommend brawling any time someone starts just anything as a possible once-off.

That once-off might really demand physical defense, though. It doesn't always come as a gradual build-up.

But I definitely agree that counseling proper discretion is critical. I think most "good kids" understand where the lines are. The metaphorical kid in my head is reluctant to use force even with the "green light". For a kid who might be more inclined to "brawl", a different tact may well be warranted.

I guess I'm thinking that if you react physically each time, you'll get a reputation. If you react to on-going torment after 2-5 incidents, you may do enough to dispel the physical harassment without getting a reputation as a thug.

I was bullied in the early years of high school (age 13-14 mostly). I didn't really think of it at the time, but the worst of it probably stopped around about the same time that I grabbed a guy around the neck and dragged him to the ground.

I agree fully. I was bullied as a kid. When I stood up and fought back, I may have gotten in trouble, but the bullying stopped (at least from the people I fought back against). When I tried to ignore it or brush it off, it only got worse.

And when I did get in trouble at school for fighting back, I didn't get in trouble at home because my parents knew I wasn't the instigator.

How do you protect against an arms race scenario? He hit me, I'll hit him harder; and repeat. I would agree a mostly anonymous attack can be rebuked without much consequence (unless he pulls a knife), but what about for the occasions where animosity can fester: schools, villages, etc?

For most of high school, I had the misfortune of living in the South. (I got the hell back to civilization as soon as I could.) The little town (population 6,000) didn't see too many people move in or out, and there were grudges festering left and right, and there were fights all the time.

This is purely anecdotal and based on what I saw and did, but in an environment like that, it seems to me that escalation is only a problem if you don't escalate quickly enough. If I ended up in a fight (and I probably could have resolved a lot of conflicts without fighting, but I had that perfect combination of arrogance and insecurity that plagues the teenage mind), the problems continued only if I lost easily. Some of the best advice my mother gave me was "You can at least get a sandwich if they got a meal." (Other hits from mom: "The secret ingredient is always more butter." A stout lady, most of her advice was either directly about food or used a food analogy.) If I won, or if I managed to hit hard enough in the process of losing, I'd get no more trouble, except in one pathological case. Being unskilled but kind of big, I was often able to hit hard enough; if I have anything to say about it, my kids are going to log plenty of hours in a boxing gym.

> unless he pulls a knife I carry a knife nowadays, after being in enough situations that came close enough to turning ugly that I wished I had one. I think, on general principal, that it's good for everyone to carry a weapon. A distant relative of mine who was born in the town we moved to had told me that when he was younger, in the 1940s and '50s, everyone had a gun in their jacket, "and you could tip your hat and be polite, or take turns shooting at each other." There's something to that, I think, in adult society. If there are no easy targets, if anyone you try to mug/terrorize/rape/attack/etc. can potentially end your life, then society is its own deterrent to crime. There are always irrational actors, of course, but if the crazy guy has a weapon, I want a weapon, too.

It's worth noting that in California schools, any fighting (even in self-defense) results in expulsion.

Not at all true.

===

California Education code section 48915:

(a) Except as provided in subdivisions (c) and (e), the principal or the superintendent of schools shall recommend the expulsion of a pupil for any of the following acts committed at school or at a school activity off school grounds, unless the principal or superintendent finds that expulsion is inappropriate, due to the particular circumstance: (1) Causing serious physical injury to another person, except in self-defense.

  (... the rest snipped ....)

===

Note three things:

1) "Recommend for expulsion" is not equivalent to "actual expulsion"

2) The emphasized (by me) self-defense exception.

3) "serious physical injury" does not include fighting that does not result in serious injury.

Fighting most certainly does happen on California school campuses, and they are not all getting expelled.

My kids when I have them will be in the dojo quite early in life... by the time they're in school they'll be well-trained both with the skills to defend themselves, and the ethics: self-defense is the right thing to do and bullying is never acceptable.

I honestly took martial arts for a few years when I was 8 or 9, but it didn't really teach how to deal with bullies: They weren't harming me in a physical way (one punch isn't something going to hurt you, so you don't need/get to punch back), so the self-defense training didn't allow me to actually use the martial arts I knew according to what I was taught.

It likely made me LESS likely to strike back.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765682

"... Thus, bullies get to bully with no fear. There's no consequence. Whereas when a weaker kid fights back, even if the bully is strong enough to "win" the battle, he still gets hit in the mouth and does not like it. Bullies much prefer low-hanging fruit that doesn't fight back. ..."

There are always consequences, failure to prevent bullying, failure to check payback. Failure if you do nothing. The payback pattern is culturally prevalent but flawed. [0] The payback pattern might work but it escalates violence. There are better ways that allow you to hack people and their behaviour to get at the root cause at a higher level than the individual. The approach can be top down or bottom-up, it doesn't matter as long as the level of violence is reduced. This is also the inherent weakness of the solution, but it holds more promise for the greater good than payback.

"However, you will never use force to do anything but protect yourself or your friend. If I find that YOU have been the aggressor, I will smite you."

QED, the cycle repeats.

[0] Chris Bullock, "Payback out of control in Central Australia" http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/12/3064586.htm

"The payback pattern might work but it escalates violence."

Not all violence is payback. Defending against a Bully is one example of this. Defending yourself physically in an altercation is a violent behaviour but it is not retaliation or revenge. And as the personal anecdotes on this page reveal frequently stems the cycle of violence.

Now if you wait for days after and take revenge against the Bully then yes the violence will likely escalate. But self-defense is an entirely different thing.

My kids have been taught basic self-defense and should they ever be forced into a physical altercation have my full blessing to take whatever means are necessary to ensure they come out of the experience the victor.

Bullies thrive on the easy victim not defending yourself won't change this.

"... personal anecdotes on this page reveal frequently stems the cycle of violence. ..."

I'm really trying to look beyond the symptom and look at the root causes. Read the article I cited to see that this is not just a problem for the targeted individual but whole groups as well.

"... Bullies thrive on the easy victim not defending yourself won't change this ..."

Bullies thrive in environments where bulling is tolerated. Change the culture to make it bully-proof ~ http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201011/r671527_4889232.jpg out than just letting having to expect kids to bear the brunt of inaction. Individual action maybe warranted, it's too much of a problem for individuals. Group action is needed as well.

If you think about HN for a moment advising every user to read & re-read http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html and prepare for an eventual verbal stoush. You defend yourself well using combinations of DH0 to DH6. The attacker moves to a less prepared target. Instead of relying on just individual users the HN community (users & code) fight back to enforce civility. The same ideas can be applied to bullies and targets, organisations and groups of people.