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Originally Posted by LoneStarGirl
As a teacher who has quite a few bullies in my class this year, this story hits close to home. I am a 26 year old teacher and at our school we work in teams, which means there is an English, math, history, and science teacher all teaching the exact same kids and have common planning periods to discuss the best way to handle the students. The other three teachers i work with are old and have a 'dont touch' policy. They dont like talking to the kids about anything besides their work, they dont like hugging, they dont like caring for the most part.
Out of the 75 Gifted and Talented 7th graders I teach, 5 of them are hard core bullies. When the kids being bullied complain the other teachers tell them to get tough skin and sit down. I am the only one they can talk to about it, and when I go to administration to complain about the bullies, I'm told to get back to teaching because kids will be kids.
I even had a student die in a car wreck a month ago (hardest thing I have EVER dealt with in my life) and one of the bullies said 'good, i hope she burns in hell' in front of me and the girl' sobbing friends.... and nobody did anything about it... so I have no doubt in my mind that the administration in this story knew something about this poor girl being bullied, they just probably chose not to do anything about it
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Well the other teachers in that situation are morons.
If we are bringing up personal bullying stories, I was the traditional target... nerdy shy kid. But I was an atypically good and vicious fighter.
I would ask teachers to do something because I would have tried all the other 'turn the other cheek' tricks I was aware of, and figured authority intervention was the only 'legal' way to resolve it at that point.
Good teachers, they stepped in, told the morons to cut the shit out, and on average that was it. Bad teachers who would do the 'tough skin' bullshit, were the ones that end up escorting me to the principals office after I shove a kid's head into a wall. Or position them in a doorframe and push on their arm like a lever. Or broke off a pencil in a kid's leg. Etc...
Some teachers, principals and security guards are just fuckin lazy. And then they jump on 'law abiding' students because they do what they are told, and actually react when they get in trouble (whereas the bullies just laugh it off, I'd have to go through a ton of bullshit). Some of the worst are bullies themselves, they get a sadistic pleasure from seeing people get crapped on.
The 'get tough' line is bullshit. I'm tougher than any bully who ever thought to take me on, and lazy school staff are the only reason I ever needed to prove it. After it got too silly I eventually had to grow up and find a way to handle it, but most teenagers wouldn't have been capable of doing what I did because they don't have that level of self control.
Bullying serves zero educational purpose, it doesn't make tough kids, it makes brats into bigger brats, victims into bitter and cynical people, and for some small fraction it creates nervous wrecks.
As for the 'leading versus only' question I bring it up because its a standard weak argument, someone brings up the 'other factors' line, and then that is used to justify that either bullying is not the key problem or that the victim is in some way extremely inferior and that is why they committed suicide. My point is that the 'other factors' do not matter, what happened here on its own is a crime, and in no way should be downplayed. If you get rid of this 'leading factor' is the girl still alive today, is she maybe able to seek help for her other factors, hell maybe she won't even have other factors to worry about (the only thing mentioned so far is an attack on her being a slut for doing what a lot of immature kids do, again attacking the victim to make an idiotic point).
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As for your story Jon, as someone who has gone through my fair share of bullying, and never claim close to contemplating suicide at any point or any reason in my life.... I do not think that makes me qualified to rule it out for all other people that bullying is enough to drive them to suicide. Just because 'you survived' doesn't mean shit. A statistical fallacy if you will.
Without being in her head how can you claim that in her case the abuse was or was not the reason? Or if it turns out she has ADHD or some other mental issue, that it somehow magically becomes the reason she is a suicide (as I've seen happen in other cases of this nature, as soon as anything remotely medical comes into play that instantly is considered the KEY FACTOR and they pat themselves on the back and do nothing to solve the problem).
I'm sure we can agree that bullying is a problem, that is all we need to agree on, maybe I'm just being very specific because I've seen these arguments before fall into trivialities and bullshit lines of thought (like the health care reform thread turning into a calorie counting of fuckin McDonalds).