08-19-2006, 05:55 PM
It used to be, you hit the bully back, and he generally quit bullying.
Now, you hit the bully back, and you land in jail.
That's a pretty simplistic view of the matter. How does that "hit back" thing work when a testosterone-poisoned jock bullies someone who is physically in no position to fight back? What about verbal harassment and constant psychological abuse?
The parents of bullies need to be told what their kids are doing. Kids who continue to bully should be expelled, whether they are hot sports prospects or not. Some parents excuse it by saying something moronic like "I was bullied, so what, it's a rite of passage". I don't know how you break that cycle of abuse, but there have to be ways.
BTW, someone was just complaining here recently about "baby boomers" being bullies in the work place, as if it were generation-specific. Bad workplace behavior of that sort is just a subtler form of the hazing and bullying that occur in schools or in the military or in fraternities/sororities.
We need to make a serious, concerted effort to teach our kids (and outselves) to interact with civility. But we won't.
Now, you hit the bully back, and you land in jail.
That's a pretty simplistic view of the matter. How does that "hit back" thing work when a testosterone-poisoned jock bullies someone who is physically in no position to fight back? What about verbal harassment and constant psychological abuse?
The parents of bullies need to be told what their kids are doing. Kids who continue to bully should be expelled, whether they are hot sports prospects or not. Some parents excuse it by saying something moronic like "I was bullied, so what, it's a rite of passage". I don't know how you break that cycle of abuse, but there have to be ways.
BTW, someone was just complaining here recently about "baby boomers" being bullies in the work place, as if it were generation-specific. Bad workplace behavior of that sort is just a subtler form of the hazing and bullying that occur in schools or in the military or in fraternities/sororities.
We need to make a serious, concerted effort to teach our kids (and outselves) to interact with civility. But we won't.