Treating bullying as everyone's problem reduces incidence in primary schools

When I got the paperwork saying I was out, my parents sent back all the correspondence with the school, the dates the bully bothered me, and the responses (or lack thereof) from the school. I was reinstated and the bully went to another district.

Bullying in my day was at least bearable because it was confined to times when I was physically near the bully. Kids today have it so much worse with social media. It's genuinely terrifying. I don't wonder why many teens are anxious. Everything they do is documented.

This perpetuates the myth that "real" bullying is physical and that psychological abuse is not bullying. Most of the bullying i've seen was psychological and partially material (usually taking things from the target or damaging them).

The only instances where i've seen physical bullying were in low grades where the children had not yet developed the mental capacity for creative verbal abuse or in higher grades where bullying was left unchecked for so long that the aggressors felt confident they could get away with it.

Some tolerance and considering circumstances is actually the sensible way to handle most anything. But that sounds like being "soft on crime", and the PR side is usually more important than the actual problem.

I said, to punish a nonviolent intervention would only incentivize future reactions would be violent, they had to think about their policy, because as I put it, “if grabbing their wrist for self defence was going to be punished the same as me punching them in the face” I’d settle for brutal violence in the hopes to persuade others not to hit me.

Children vs principals with masters degrees in a logic debate and the kids win. Sad

I told my daughter's teacher that we fully intend to support her if she needs to fight back physically and the teacher seemed really surprised (mind you, she's a star student and not someone they think of as "trouble"). Of course, if people hurt her, it means the school failed in the first place.

I know when i was a kid we would get suspended for a few days if we had a fight. Banning a kid from that school for life seem pretty harsh.

Maybe it’s a feature of industrial education - enable creation of compliant adults where bullying is disproportionately allowed by tolerating it, and also build bullies to manage future compliant adults.

Bullying is everywhere including in the ranks of teachers and leadership in a school. Those who play the game of bureaucracy (bureaucracy must survive at any costs) must concede to enabling a system of too often failing upwards while standing on the capable folks.

Too many schools abdicate their responsibility and hide behind doing their job and turn it into a daycare of expecting children to figure it out on their own.

Bullying too often is toxic parenting coming to school.

Standing up for one’s self in the right circumstance, especially when the leaders, institutions and experts in our lives, especially as children intentionally traumatizes children that the world is like this, and because it doesn’t bother teachers or affect them it will only get so much attention.

I believe in the “talk shit, get hit” sentiment. It’s easy to spot people who have never been hit in their entire life.

How did you stand your ground?

This is an excuse. Not a reason.

Based only on people's status and the way they look, certain affordances are made.

The bullies are effectively permitted to bully.

The bullied prevented from fighting back.

The zero tolerance is the excuse (not reason) used to implement that.

This is trivially tested by reversing the roles.

If the bullied becomes the bully, the punishment is not reversed.

In fifth grade, however, one teacher confronting the bullying did change the entire tenor of things for that year and the next (then I moved and graduated).

Which is to say, all the posters here hot to recommend fighting back as some kind of solution. Stop, just don't. Schools need systems for stopping bullying and those system are social changes. "What about the fight-backers" is someone's cowboy trip.

School mismanagement of bullying (and of course first and foremost bad parenting) breeds narcissists and psychopaths. Who then work their way into positions of control and power to continue to implement the same literally insane principles of punishment and force them onto others to make others suffer the same hell they suffer, out of a deep seated and misdirected desire for revenge.

Restorative justice would be key to break this cycle, but of course narcissists know to prevent this from happening.

No, it is done that way by purposeful intent, though you wouldn't recognize it as such without having studied and having a certain level of exposure to how torture works in reality (really dark stuff).

Bullying is a combination of physical and mental coercion. During Mao, the Chinese government discovered a number of ways to torture people to the point where they adopt false ideologies (effectively breaking them) for thought reform purposes.

These techniques are often embedded today in the structures used by teachers and they have predictable results. If the exposure is ongoing, people break, either through disassociation (helplessness/suicide), or psychosis seeking annihilation externally (albeit a semi-lucid psychosis capable of planning).

This is torture for thought reform, and Active shooters seem to fall into the latter bucket quite prominently. Unfortunately, Technology has made the ephemeral steps needed to do this (previously physically), possible (remotely).

Joost Meerloo, and Robert Lifton wrote about these structures and observations professionally covering the developments of the subject matter from WW2 through the Korean Conflict (1944-1960). They are well established experts.

Academia has a long problematic history of supporting things related to marxism. The most common telltale sign is that of circular structures (hegelian dialectic, or the abuse of the contrast principle). These are used to create convincing lies/deceits, critical theory (cultural-marxism/ i.e. the woke), originated from Marxists/Communists/Socialists (whose structure is almost objectively identical).

There are people in these systems who in action promote communism, while claiming otherwise. Whether they are lying, or are just delusional its hard to say but as I mentioned the telltale sign is circular structures. The first thing you need for rationalism is a common shared definition (what is called identity in philosophy). Then you can hold accountability following a system of logic. Without it, there is no accountability, and you can just as easily claim the exact opposite of the situation (Falsely), with no way to prove otherwise.

If you want an introduction to this not mired in a quagmire of deceit, I'd suggest Mises on Socialism (circa 1930s), it provides a rational introduction to the objective structure of such, without needing a lot of discernment to combat deceitful circular narratives inevitably found in other material.

Getting back to bullying, and torture, the gist is, all that is needed to coerce is components of isolation, lack of agency (on the part of the subject), and increasing cognitive dissonance. Its only then a matter of time and exposure, and certain structures allow meeting this criteria simultaneously for multiple different groups at once.

One such structure is called the hot potato, where a student is called out in front of class to answer a question. Usually fact questions are mixed in with thought reform opinions, and the student is not informed to mount a reliable defense. The subject when called is anxious or nervous, disapproval of their peers may result in bullying, lack of opportunity, or social stigma. This is determined and reflected by the approval or disapproval of the teacher in answering the question or correcting the question. Any disagreement is a reflection of disapproval. The more disagreement, the more disapproval.

There are always those seeking approval in the peer group, where disapproval results in those members bullying and harassment, or shunning, to seek approval, albeit arbitrarily with no explicit direction. This almost always happens outside class.

This structure induces both subject and peer group to participate in the dynamics, and in truth both are victims, since the harassment/needs of the peer group require them to act in ways that are consistent with the teachers approval (consistency principle). It doesn't matter if the teacher condemns such behavior verbally.

The idea of a struggle session (Maoist), is that you make life intolerable arbitrarily until you meet some unstated arbitrary measure. The subject is gaslit to believe its their fault, if only you would confess or agree (which invokes consistency). Sometimes there is no measure and its unending.

The route of effect is the same way we develop our identity and culture through communication within a community. Reflected Appraisal. As you are isolated, those you see most you begin to trust, they inadvertently affect you more until full conformity and adoption.

You generally must be in a vulnerable state either naturally (developmentally), or induced (through torture), to adopt behaviors in this way. The latter is effectively involuntary hypnotic suggestion which is induced.

These structures distort reflected appraisal, and use other sophisticated psychological biases to indoctrinate for purpose (avoiding critical thought/perception).

Unless you know what to look for, you don't even notice it being used against you to manipulate you. It is not of the flesh but over flesh. The seen and unseen. Tolkien often took inspiration from the bible, and Amazon's Rings of power are masterfully done in the way it depicts this subject matter.

If you've ever seen the movie Focus, what is described with choosing the player and number for the gambling con is truthful, and you can do far more than just that narrow example. Much of the foundational subject matter for these things was originally taught in a classical education (pre-prussian model of education), under Rhetoric. Science has allowed us to further probe what was known back then, effectively breaking perception, which reminds me of the Tower of Babel story.

If you would like a crash course in the blind spots, Robert Cialdini wrote a book, though he refers to them as levers of influence, unfortunately he doesn't touch on reflected appraisal in depth. The book is called Influence. Its been recognized in the US by members of the state department.

Many of these structural elements have been repackaged so as to obscure the fact that these originated from torture.

The Octalysis framework for game development for example hits most of these indirectly (albeit perfectly), but this is not an isolated example. Variations of the same structures are everywhere from business process, to CSR doom loops, basically anywhere you want to impose cost to coerce people against a specific behavior; these are used.

These situations and outcomes are by design, they are subtle and malign evil people often pretend, or rather believe that they are good. Know an evil person by the willful blindness they show to the consequences of their action, know an evil act by the destructive outcome that follows.

Know sloth by its more modern name, complacency (also the banality of evil), which turns towards radical evil.

If you would understand how these things happen, a thorough study of corruption, systems (and failures of such), history, and ruin are needed. Few get this education with modern curricula. Classical Curricula follow the greeks, (Trivium/Quadrivium). The rise and fall of the Roman Republic to Imperial Rome is also quite illustrative, and Social Contract Theory is a must (to understand what changes have caused civilized society to fail). The latter include Locke, Kant, Rosseau, Thomas Paine, and a few others.

https://www.kivaprogram.net/

Also from there: "What does the research show? The most highly revered and intensive anti-bullying programs rarely produce more than a minor reduction in bullying and often lead to an increase. A large-scale study conducted by the University of Texas at Arlington found that kids who attend schools with anti-bullying programs are more likely to be bullied than kids who attend schools without such programs. Why? And how can schools determine what is more likely to be effective? ..."

And: "Bullies to Buddies teaches how to understand the Golden Rule as a scientific, psychological formula and how to apply it in real life. It provides materials and training to students, school staff, mental health professionals, and parents. Because the lessons are simple yet counterintuitive and taught largely via entertaining role-plays, they enable people to quickly understand their mistakes and how to rectify them. Rather than teaching students that they need to rely on others to protect them from each other, Bullies to Buddies teaches them how to solve their social problems on their own.

What students learn:

* The “optical illusion” that causes bullying

* How to use the Golden Rule to stop being bullied without anyone’s help, including dealing with:

* Verbal attacks

* Rumors

* Physical aggression and threats

* Social exclusion

* Cyberbullying

As a result, kids grow in happiness, resilience, independence, and emotional maturity. These techniques will unleash their sense of humor and make them more popular with their peers. And they will get along better with their parents, teachers, and siblings."

To be clear, Izzy Kalman also outlines situations where the approach works (e.g. teasing, name calling, rumors, shoving) and where it doesn't (e.g. serious physical violence). And he also points out that while the approach may greatly reduce issues it may not resolve all issues. There is a certain low-level of social negativity people have to learn to live with (as contrasted with "zero tolerance" policies where people can learn to game the system to use it to bully others).

There is a videos section on the site with a a couple dozen of videos. Example showing in general the distinction between most programs (modify the entire social environment) and what Izzy Kalman suggests (train the person suffering in skills of resilience and social interaction): "The Golden Rule System - Simple Solution to Bullying" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVVAx_kGM7w

Example showing to learn to deal with (mild) physical aggression: "Magic Response for Physical Aggression" - Bullying Prevention for Educators" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRPusaSSqqE

Example of Izzy Kalman applying ideas to recent violent events: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/resilience-to-bull...

All without addressing the underlying problem that made people afraid of Tom in the first place?

> with excellent outcomes.

Apparently excellent short term outcomes. The real question is does this actually solve the long term problem and is it possible that the strategies used to create this outcome actually aggravate long term outcomes?

"Assert" implies O'Brien has already chosen the punitive route. In other words, O'Brien is not revealing some deep secret of human power dynamics. Instead, O'Brien is giving a self congratulatory self justifying explanation for his wrong doing.

Nietzsche had written extensively about this way before.

Nowadays we know that humans (and other animals) bully because they derive immense health benefits from being the aggressor.

Those benefits are trivial to detect many decades after the fact.

Until those benefits are offset by a hefty price to pay, nothing will change.

One of my favourite stories is that my wife went to watch a court case and it was one of my childhood bullies. He was up for forcible confinement. She thought she recognized the name.

I also read in the news (with great satisfaction) that his brother, who was part of the group, had been tasered and beat for resisting arrest.

Sometimes you get what is coming to you. They’re all trash and I think I turned out alright. In a weird way, I think it does build character and resilience.

What do you mean by that?

2. People here like to act like it didn’t happen to them. If you didn’t see it, it still happened. Nerds are hated in America because life imitates the shitty art of John Hughes et al.

Hopefully i’m misunderstanding because that would be quite something.

20y ago I did a high school semester in the UK (Worthing) and it was a very good environment with no bullying whatsoever. 3 factors contributed to this:

1) low stress environment as a whole (beautiful campus, calm teachers and staff, etc)

2) the students had a high degree of liberty in choosing what classes they would attend, so they were presumably interested and not rebellious

3) the student divided themselves into strict groups, and these groups barely interacted with each other.. so after class the 'goths' would hang with the goths, the 'sports-people' with the sports-people, etc. I didn't quite like this at the time because I'm very sociable so it struck me as weird. However, it did work in the sense that there were hardly any social problems among the students.

I'd guess that the racial and economic demographics of the particular schools in question are much more relevant.

Your concept of what a "good kid" is seems a bit off?

If they're being a bully, then aren't they by definition not real good, regardless of how they're pretending towards others?

I disagree. I think that the person who is bullied is primarily selected by the bully, and the only influence that others have is that the bullied person doesn't have enough (or large enough) others around them in order to defend them. Others may then pile in once the target has been selected, but it's not in any way a collective decision.

You could just as well say that society chooses the people who get mugged, or the people whose houses are burglarized, or the people who are raped or murdered. I'm sure you could come up with some neo-Freudian way to convince somebody that makes sense, but it doesn't make sense. It's generalization to the point of uselessness if not complete absurdity.

I was bullied as a child. I was picked because I was an easy, bookish target without many friends, and definitely without tough friends. The bullying ended when I hurt a bully in a way that everyone found out about, and that state was maintained when I made a group of friends who would have defended me if a bully had approached me. The cause of all of this was obvious, not subtle or mysterious.

Students all want the same thing: status, popularity, etc. Not everyone can these things though. Their scarcity is their value. The competition over this finite resource creates conflict and hostility. This pent up hostility has to be channeled to avoid chaos. A scapegoat is informally agreed upon: the oddball, the misfit, the outcast. These people are all the more obvious due to the extreme herding that happens in schools. The bully acts as the "executioner" of this "sacrifice". The boundaries of group unity are enforced, the shared complicity enforcing cohesion, and group identity and control are upheld.

I remember from my school days how much hostility was directed toward people who wouldn't or couldn't "fit in". I even internalized those feelings. "Why won't he/she just act normal?"

I'm not fully sold on Gerard, but his theories are kind of mesmerizing in their pat explanation of group dynamics.

There are internal and external norms and even norms within each category have different levels of importance.

External norms are typically of the nature of "no fighting" and are enforced without looking at the circumstances. Their goal is for somebody perceived as an authority to keep the group pacified and minimize visible conflict. They are typically not interested in invisible conflict because by its nature, the external power can't see it.

The goal is not justice, it's peace.

Internal norms are fuzzy because they're usually not codified and might not even be agreed upon by the members of the group because their goal is maintaining a social hierarchy within the group.

The hierarchy's goal is neither peace nor justice, it doesn't even have a goal, it's just a compromise between people with differing goals - some entirely uninterested in the hierarchy, some obsessed with climbing the social ladder.

Maybe there are many more people who got bullied and got negative effects of their self-worth and confidence which lead to them struggle in one way or another professionally and socially. Maybe there isn't that many too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Again, the other reply about not really knowing how you'd turn out applies to me, but it's hard not to think about it.

I don't want to come off like I'm shilling my blog, but last year I finally opened up about being bullied. The second post on the matter specifically talks about how I feel about it as an adult: https://callmeo.live/blog/childhood-bullying-ii-aftermath/

I personally see my accomplishments as in spite of the bullying, not because of. And I'd wager this is a fair bit more common of a view.

My bullies were not "keeping me focused on computers" when they dragged me, kicking and screaming, into a stall in a restroom against my will, with the stated intent to further assault me further, including dunking my head & face into a shit-clogged toilet.

I could do without having lived through the verbal abuse, the physical assault, the panic attacks decades later, and the mental disorders that I now am trying to conquer through therapy.

It’s good to be satisfied with where your life has taken you, but that’s because you can’t actually change what’s happened and you can’t know how it might have gone otherwise.

I'm also glad I had people around me who pushed me to overcome the bullying rather than telling me I was a victim of it. In my experience people who are taught they are a victim of bullying who most struggle with it. These people believe bullying t be abnormal and expect the world to fix it. But unfortunately bullying is normal and unless you learn to overcome it you'll always be at risk of being a victim of it

> Thanks Fred, I owe you a beer next time we run into each other

Please don't encourage others to be bullies.