'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality.
My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11).
This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out.
When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering.
I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches.
When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies.
We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way.
At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that.
I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted.
My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself.
I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).
Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least some level of pain on an aggressor.
It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is ever really done about it.
Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly, and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd flip out completely.
But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace. Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores while pretending to be at work.
But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.
Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure.
Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues.
Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority).
However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.
It is not an uncommon (again, I don't endorse this viewpoint) for people to say that bullying is a normal part of growing up, and that it helps strengthen people's character, etc. I don't think people who say this are being 100% honest. I think if they were honest they would say that bullying is a way to identify the weakest or least socially capable 10% of people, and that if you don't fall into this category, then it's a great part of the growing process to find out you belong to the 90%.
Of course it's part of the social fabric of wherever it happens and goes unpunished. This seems like saying "this is a thing that happens", which feels like a truism.
Like you're saying, it isn't something that should be encouraged or that should go unpunished. If there is something beneficial about it, then that is probably just a symptom of something else that is wrong with society, which forces/enables the bullying.
But to be more precise about the benefit that conservatives see in bullying: bullying can be thought of as a social pressure not to be (1) weak and (2) different. I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself. Many of my friends were the same. Anyway, many people see discouraging (1) and (2) to be good things. (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies, and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
Even conservatives have to give convincing arguments as to why the status qou is good.
> I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself.
Having been a former victim does not preclude one from blaming current victims. In fact, it can be a badge of honour; that the fact that they are not a victim any more is because of their own volition.
> (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies
That's what conscription is for. Or, if society can't be sold on slavery, encouraging activities that foster strength.
The concept of bullying is the direct opposite of something like a military organization. Bullying is, at least in the school yard, more like a disorganized and "wild habitat"; people who are "strong", either by social status or physical strength, pray on the weaker. A military organization is highly hierarchical and rank is based (ideally) on merit within the organization. It is also based on submission to your superiors orders, not seizing every opportunity you can to take them down a peg by putting them in a headlock and assuming their former status (rank).
What kind of person is more likely to be sent to a disciplinary institution; a bullying rebel, or a meek and weak individual? Probably the former.
(And I could tell you some things about bullying in the military. But let's just say that it isn't terribly good for morale, nor for anyone's safety when there is a lot of ill emotions and everyone has weapons at their disposal.)
> , and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
When people that violate social norms in a way that upsets others are taught a lesson or shamed into correcting their behaviour, that is called reprimanding, not bullying. It is, if successful, a one time affair. Bullying is more of a regular thing, sustained over a time period, in the same general location.
If people get reprimanded for silly things that does not hurt anyone, but is just part of who they are... then yes, that's bullying. But then we're back in the silly domain of conformity-for-conformities sake. An argument that you have presented, but supposedly does not agree with, because you're doing that whole devil's advocates thing I guess. Nonetheless, I don't agree with it, nor do I find anything much to be agreeable with it, even if I were to be a so-called conservative.
This requires putting oneself in the shoes of the people responsible for this situation, including people who minimize the importance or harm of bullying, people who justify it outright, and people who silently ignore the issue.
In doing so I am going to argue that given certain assumptions (both positive and normative), bullying should be permitted or justified. That is the inevitable outcome of being intellectually honest.
You claim there is a difference between upholding social value through reprimand, and bullying. I couldn't tell if being "taught a lesson" referred to violence so I won't assume either way. If it didn't refer to violence, then in an individualistic society like ours, people could just ignore it. Maybe in Scandinavia a verbal reprimand is enough, but not in the rest of Europe or the English speaking world.
And yet a free for all of violence would not work either (which seems to be the straw man of bullying you are using in your argument). Bullying is not only violence and the establishment of a pecking order, and also not only punishing violators of the social code. Rather it is doing these things together in a complementary way. The social code is respected because it comes from the most dominant people, and the violence is justified because it also helps cement the social code.
This explains why schools and prisons punish people who defend themselves against bullies more than the bullies themselves. To defend yourself is anti-social violence. Furthermore, as students get older, this social order morphs into the actual social order of the adult world. It is not only a pecking order that teachers tolerate because it makes the school easier to manage. It also gains the gloss of society's actual moral code.
For example, students might be bullied because they exhibit middle class speech and behavior, and are unwilling or unable to adopt "cool" working class behavior. A teacher might be sympathetic, but also consider that without this kind of bullying, middle class student could be as snooty as they liked, and that forcing middle class students to respect working class students (even out of fear) would help societal cohesion in the bigger picture.
The values that bullies enforce are arbitrary, but not entirely arbitrary. If they only punished the truly snooty, or the truly degenerate, would progressives or conservatives respectively complain? I see many people encouraging bullying tech workers in SF because they claim those workers really don't respect the values of the communities they live in. And (this was a while ago) I read a Time magazine article about the bullying of the Columbine shooters, which claimed precisely that their bullying was justified because they violated social norms (as the article said quoting a footballer "they were a bunch of fxxxxts", and this was in the 1990's so the implication wasn't that the footballer was in the wrong!).
I am not saying that society will fall apart without bullying, but that people who want to maintain social norms that aren't enforced by law, logically have little choice but to accept that experiencing an environment with bullying is an imperfect but necessary precursor to knowing your place in society.
Conservatives (not all, but many) consider the principal that social convention be backed by actual violence, to be sufficiently important that establishing it at young age is worth some suffering or unfairness.
I grew up in India. My schools had no bullying at all. And we still had a (much weaker) social structure, the popular ones, the slightly-dangerous ones (those I would avoid hanging out with) and the not-so-popular ones (like those who would spend time on a computer instead of meeting up for sports). Bullying is not universal. Neither is it necessary.
Studies have shown bullying to be universal among not only humans, but all primates and many social mammals[2] (such as rats and dolphins). Among human societies, bullying is present across the board, from hunter gatherer groups through post industrial societies.
That isn't to say that it can't or shouldn't be dealt with, but you are dead wrong when you say it isn't universal.
[1] http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
[2] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/12/15/th...
Have you ever been bullied?
I agree with this statement of yours from another comment, but I don't agree with the previous quote that I posted. My reasoning is that an old "friend" of mine, Adam Mohungoo - black, 5'9", born 26/09/1980, attended Sir Thomas Rich's School, Gloucester 1992 - 1999, is a FULLY FLEDGED SOCIOPATH. He would threaten to "kick your fucking head in" for such things as turning up at his house 3 minutes later than expected.
People like him do not facilitate the maintenance of the social structure, but unfortunately they are part of the social fabric.
> ... I'm not endorsing bullying, I'm explaining why many conservatives don't think it's a problem.
The recent tv campaign "This is ABUSE" highlights a shift in attitudes regarding very similar issues.
I see you mentioned that you were bullied, apologies if I sounded harsh.
Here is a slightly fictionalized version of what happened to me:
http://spiritplumber.deviantart.com/art/Zero-Tolerance-42710...
In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if he tried probably would be fired.
The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies.
A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career.
School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it was like being thrown back into school.
Any company that fires a victim of bullying leaves themselves open to compensation claims.
Any company that does nothing likewise leaves themselves open to legal action.
They then go to HR (or whatever the proceedure is -and companies need to have a proceedure) to talk about it. They present a copy of their ongoing log and ask for help. If the person has seen a doctor they can ask that doctor to write a supporting letter.
Being a member of a union is helpful here because they will help.
Taking legal action is an absolute last resort!
If you went to a small digital agency, and said you wished file a grievance you would be laughed at.
Programmers aren't unionised.
An employer can lose an IT for this reason even if the employee has done naughty stuff.
Large companies like this because it streamlines the process rather than dealing with different individual lawsuits, it also gives HR a number of policies to implement which can tick the boxes and give them a strong position in any dispute. If you have 1000+ employees eventually someone is going to claim unfair dismissal.
Smaller companies with 10 employees or less are more to just hope they don't get sued at all.
"Acas don't represent people in employment cases. Their job is to try and help you and your employer settle your case.
This doesn't mean that they will try to get the best deal for you, but one that both you and your employer will accept. So if you can't reach an agreement that both you and your employer are happy with, Acas will stop their involvement, and you can decide whether to go on with your case to the employment tribunal."
Either way, if you are bullied out of work we have a robust system of tribunals and workers rights over here. You don't need to be a union member to have rights and you shouldn't be scared of exercising them.
I'm not saying that it's easy, but English employees at least have some protections.
(currently on my fifth placement, in London, at a mix of small and international companies)
However, there are many "tech industries" and so I can't tell you if the culture in the Java, C++/C#, Windows or Banking etc. industries is like that, because in the Internet, Startup, Ruby/Python type industries it absolutely 100% is not.
Animosity between permanent and contract staff is something I've never witnessed either. Contractors who aren't worth their money? Sure they're going to get a hard time, but if I'm working with a contractor who has 20 years experience on me, sure, I'm expecting them to earn good money. I always saw them as an inspiration, nothing else. I know my colleagues have too.
So, whatever sector you're in, and whatever employer you're with, get out and look elsewhere: it's not like that in many, many, many other parts of the industry.
I think a number of people have been burned by bad contractors in the city. There are tonnes of them from experience who cruise around with absolutely no reputation.
I'm not sayin your experiences are wrong, but they might be less universal than you think.
A few random anecdotes:
2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking - the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?).
"No tolerance" attitudes are just crap.
3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared "no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for anyone. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But... WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid? Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work.
I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and... there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which quickly evaporated when I left the room.
It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.
I have few recommendations: 1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble. 2.No matter what anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion neurons .... 3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow. 5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help.
6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).
I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me.
The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home.
I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university.
Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.
Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.
So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.
When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain.
The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from freeing himself of the bullying.
Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this from happening to kids in the future.
I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.
I will say that schools can do something about this, and some of them do. My son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes part of the culture that you have a real problem.
One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.
I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it consciously, it just had became a part of how I act.
Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school. The way the school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in.
What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy target. Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father.
Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my original bully, had a very abusive big brother.
I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual from my childhood, as it usually is.
I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.
I really like your last thought of 'that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you'. I think of looking into the abyss.
My parents divorced too, at a shit time in my life - young teens. I have turned that into a positive though, by accepting that parents can still be a gift by showing us what _not_ to do, just as much as what to do.
I have to control my passive-agressive side. It's too easy to think 'f this, I don't need you'.
Edit: I haven't seen anyone mention karate / martial arts yet, but as someone who skipped a grade, I think taking that was a very good decision. Luckily, I've never been in a [physical] fight.
Edit: One of my worst moments, though, was when another kid was being bullied and I didn't do anything, or even report it :-(
* Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow.
^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!
- just donated £10 to the charity at http://www.beatbullying.org .. which is (broken-linked) at the bottom of the op
It's your baggage. Either you own up to it and continually work on it, or you let it fester and run your life. I meet so many people who are terrified of being the type of person that goes to therapy despite significant issues. And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations?
I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically.
> And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.
Self help might be a farce. There might be no viable alternative to therapy. But most don't have any grounds to judge these kinds of things. We think that people know too little about physical health, but holy shit we laymen don't know anything about mental health. The only (false) dichotomy we often see is "talk about it" vs "don't and let it fester".
I don't know much myself. But I've preferred - so far - to keep it a private matter, between me and my diary or various other techniques I use for processing things and self-reflection.
Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading to a negative feedback loop.
I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing.
The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier.
I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better.
As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing.
The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc.
Sorry for the mega-post.
I saw the TED talk that you suggested and it got me thinking. In the theater I was really sitting in a low-power pose. So maybe what I will try is monitoring myself for those poses and then consciously correcting.
The thing is, when I was younger [in college] I used to posture a lot. And everyone disrespected it. :( A particularly scarring incident was when the beautiful girl I was ostensibly "friends" with told me directly, coldly "if I act confident, it's because I am".
Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal usually retreats.
It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank. That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked when bad things happen.
That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?
If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve derision at best.
What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We should be better than this.
Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues rather than punishing them.
Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this abuse.
On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.
There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then you get the chance to really set things right.
Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
> What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life. There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing (contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something else that I can't remember the name of); and much more.
Edit: added word "frequently"
I definitely do not think being bullied is a good way to learn about life.
People don't take any shit these days.
Also communication between parents is now at an all time high. I've seen this change in just the last two years.
I'm incredibly surprised myself by the things I've done over the years, it's a pretty awesome world!
My parents did try to sort things out, nothing happened though, so I stopped telling them about it.