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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

Surveillance isn’t the answer, justice is.

You know how women often don’t report sexual harassment and assault? It’s because if they do report it, they will suffer further victimization and their chances at any just outcome are too low.

Same thing with bullying in schools. Kids don’t report it because if they do so, they will be opening themselves up to further victimization, and the people they report it to will not take sufficient action to stop it.

All schools need to do is make it safe to report bullying, prioritizing the victim’s safety. Then with a report they don’t need blanket surveillance, they can just do targeted surveillance to verify the reports. Once verified, they should take immediate action to put a permanent stop to it.

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> Surveillance isn’t the answer, justice is.

When it comes to children we usually call it supervision.

Not that I think all children need to be supervised all the time, but large groups of unsupervised children can create mayhem very quickly.

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

I agree with the problem you identify. I was both a bully, and a bullied person at times during my school days. For me the bullying of me brought on the bullying by me, I feel.

I don't see any practical answers in your comment. Recognising schools should "makes it safe to report bullying" is one thing. How though? It seems entirely intractable - you seem to suggest blanket surveillance of all children everywhere?

You don’t need surveillance if you have relationships and trust. Bullying is intractable because traditional schooling is essentially and structurally exactly that: the bullying of kids by adults. It’s only logical that it results in the bullying of kids by kids.

Make teachers (and parents) people of trust, not only of arbitrary authority, and you create options to address bullying between kids as well.

For kids, justice isn't the answer. Parenting is.

Kids understand justice from a very early age. It's one of the things they need out of parenting. But things that go on at school are not entirely within the remit of the parents, because the school is in loco parentis.

>Kids understand justice from a very early age. It's one of the things they need out of parenting.

As I said, parenting is more important so one learns right from wrong and morals for when they are not at home and how to lead proper lives.

Yeah but you’re not going to convince the shit parents of these shit children to change. If you think otherwise, you haven’t met enough.

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