The other thing we can do is raise kids with respect and good boundaries from the start. Although my son attracted bullies, he did not suffer unduly. He knew how to cope effectively. I was molested and raped as a child. As a parent, I enforced a strong policy of respecting boundaries. That empowered him to take action early with bullies and not tolerate small offenses and the inevitable escalation. Bullying and molesting work much the same way: The predator starts small and escalates. The most effective measures stop it early. Most approaches fail because they do not identify the problem or try to address it until it has already gone too far.

I have previously written about the policy I had at home which empowered him to deal effectively with bullies: http://www.kidslikemine.com/2012/06/13/an-invisible-shield-h...

Hope you don't mind me copying some of your advice here:

"They know if someone is disrespecting them, that is a huge red flag and the person should not be trusted because they are likely some form of social predator, whether sexual or otherwise. [b]They do not go along to get along.[/b] They do not get led merrily down some slippery slope.

...The vast majority of the time, child molesters are someone the child knows and trusts, someone who has made an effort to get close and push the boundaries of what the child would accept. My sons have basically a zero tolerance policy for boundary violation, thus they were virtually immune to that type of predation."

I'm trying to communicate to her she is definitely not powerless. I used the example of a cat: Not very big or as powerful as a dog, but you still wouldn't pick it up and mess with it. She doesn't have to be as strong as the bullies, as long as they know she won't tolerate any (physical) abuse.

Teach your daughter she does not need your approval. Teach her to make her own decisions, even if sometimes other people don't like it. Help her figure out how to make good judgement calls in the face of difficult circumstances. Give her opportunities to make real choices and back them even if you do not like them. Let her know you don't like all of her choices but you accept them and respect her right to make them. Do not make her dependent on being liked and approved for everything she does.

I agree. Part of the problem is that adults tend to hold kids to a much different standard than they hold themselves. For instance, as an adult, if I'm working in a company where verbal bullying and harassment is a problem, and HR does nothing to address the situation, then I'll just give my two-week notice and move on to another company. Kids on the other hand don't have the option of giving their two-week notice and moving on to another school because of a 'hostile work environment'.

How many adults do you think would stick around at a company if they had to put up with the level of violence and harassment we subject our kids to in schools? And if the only response they got back from management and HR was a "sticks and stones" speech? Forget about it! Which highlights another difference- it's also in a company's own self interest to address these issues seriously, because if they don't, it's gonna effect their bottom line when good employees start leaving. But, what motivation do schools really have- it's not as if their "employees" (students) get to quit if they don't like the way they are being treated.

What does this teach kids? That there is no justice in the world except that which you take by violence?

My son is only two and a half right now. When he gets older my advice to him will be to first go through all of the proper channels in case bullying comes up. Give the system a chance to work, and get some documentation that you did so. And if it does work great. And if it doesn't, a right-cross to the bully's nose is what worked for me when I was a kid. Will this stop the bully from picking on people? Probably not - but it will likely make him stop picking on you. He'll move on to the next victim - one who won't fight back.

You are forgetting the schoolyard code. You never go to the appropriate channels. Ever. That is one of the worst things a kid can do to themselves.

The right response to physical bullying is to stand up for yourself. It's one of the most important lessons a person can learn - how and when to stand up for themselves.

I was bullied a lot in primary school, but I dealt with it and as much as bullies liked picking on me, they also knew going too far would hurt. A lot.

A few weeks later, a guy I knew had his stolen in English class, but he got it back by standing by the door at the end of class and asking people individually who had taken it as the other students left.

And I remember how in the months and years after that, if tricks were played on me in class, the kids would laugh at me and the teachers would stand at the front looking lost and doing nothing. Going through the proper channels doesn't do shit.

... but even then, they will stick to the code and you're both best palls in the principal's office and nothing happened. Any witness they ask will also support the two of you just playing and something silly happening by accident.

The only people in school who never get any respect, in my experience at least, are the ones who snitch, or generally side with the adults.

And you better do it as soon as possible, before he does too much psychological damage on you.

It seems like a good basic skill to have in life...

And also, running - in most fight situations, running is probably the best option.

On systematic physical abuse, this is what happens when you get away with it. See also comment #2 (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5284818); it stopped the moment the bullied stood up for himself and showed the bully, via a serving of physical violence, that his behavior is unacceptable and not without consequence.

Spoiled kids that misbehave at school often are exemplary students at school, simply because teachers are able to get them to realize their behavior is unacceptable. That 'toggle' should also be done to bullies though, and I for one can't understand why not more is done about it in schools besides the rather static and easily ignored 'awareness' lessons.

End age based classes would be a good start.

We make it mandatory because otherwise the kids of the disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised wouldn't get a decent start in life. It also allows more people to work - someone else is looking after the kids.

There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

How many kids study to pass the test? How many teachers teach to get the kids to pass the test? And thereafter they forget everything. I see grown-ass adults who can't calculate a simple 20% tip on paper, and more who can't do it in their heads, and that's an EASY one. People, working in industry, who don't know that the US has 50 states. I've seen programmers with computer science degrees counting on their fingers to add numbers.

Again, you can't teach something to someone who doesn't want to learn, and you can't prevent someone from learning who does want to. Schools get the credit for education, but they're just present. The mandatory aspect did nothing.

Pretty sure you can, when they're kids. Repeated exposure at the very least.

I'm not going to address the rest of your comment, I disagree utterly with pretty much everything you've said there.

For most of the "disadvantaged, the uneducated or the just-plain-disorganised", as you put it, mandatory school attendance does nothing to solve their problems anyway, as the people you are thinking of have many systemic things running against them in addition any personal issues in their lives.

> There's some argument to be had about what age it should be mandatory until, sure, but mandatory schooling is most definitely a good thing for society.

Mandatory school isn't the same thing as doing something positive for communities. Some communities will find the policy beneficial, others will find it destructive (esp. when some kids are forced into school systems are that literal prisons, complete with metal detectors, cell phone lockers you pay out of pocket for, and frequent searches of all student belongings).

I disagree that it does nothing. Some people still get the opportunity to better themselves through education, even if it doesn't help everyone.

Schools becoming prisons is a weird US phenomenon, I think you have societal issues to tackle that are much bigger than schooling.

And it's still better to have kids given access to education under those circumstances than not at all (and without it being mandatory they would not have access. No, they wouldn't)

"you" in America seem to have some extra problems in this area, which I still don't think overshadows the benefits

Yes, problem?

[citation needed]

...and on the other hand putting smart kids _willing_ to learn in an uninspiring and oppressive environment. (Bad for their learning and devastating for their still developing personality.)

IMHO it's hard to find a worse crime against natural curiosity and willingness than _forcing_ people to do something.

YOU may have been perfect, motivated, willing to learn, and may have been given the opportunity to learn even if it wasn't mandatory. Many others would not, many parents wouldn't bother.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with those kids, they just need a different direction and a little more support.

I don't know the system in the US very well. Kids can go to different sorts of colleges post-16 here in the UK, or could (until recently, this may have changed) opt out at that age and enter the workforce.

For ones wanting to learn, just don't force them to do so. OK, is someone is not much willing to learn - well, then it may be good to force to do so. But don't force everyone because some need it.

(It seems that forcing people to learn is very inefficient. And I think for that reason many times school are places to socialize, bully and drink doing not much work that it is necessary to survive... and not much places actually good for learning anything.)

And how do we get kids who could use it, but from backgrounds that wouldn't bother to educate them at all, into the system?

Mandatory education is a good thing.

As you know, daycare (and, say, crime and accident prevention), training, and cultural/national upbringing are different things, and they work differently, often with contradicting goals and methodologies. Currently we tend to treat "education" as a one thing, but in isn't.

I am all for all kids going to school (unless one can provide a better education), otherwise there would be a disaster of crime and poverty, much alike the one during the industrial revolution. However, what happens inside is extremely far from things which "make sense" both for them, and the society.

I just don't think that abolishing mandatory education/training/socialisation/what-the-hell-ever is a good idea, and it seems you don't either :)

The idea of classifying 5 year old kids based on any kind of factor scares the hell out of me.

Ability based learning within age groups makes perfect sense, but assumes a sample size large enough to make meaningful groupings at the high and low ends.

You might submit conferences as a counterexample, but I would submit them in favor of my argument.

A preferable alternative in my mind would be a classroom where ALL work is done independently. The teacher then calls each student to their desk individually to see what they have learned and what they need help with. They can then spend 10-15 minutes individually with each student per day. Fast students can get pushed ahead and slow students can get the help they need instead of being forced along with the rest of the class.

So for one it takes 6 months to learn something, for another - 3 years. And in such systems it's fine - you got promoted because you have learnt something, not just because you got one year older (and haven't failed utterly).

And again, for the same "level" of subject there can be two speeds - so no risk of smart 8 yo kids in the same class with slow 11 yo.

This system works out very well for bright, academically inclined students, sure. But it sets a structure of expectations that don't motivate what could possibly be great talent, but we wouldn't know because they didn't bubble in the right answer.

The fascist premise of "let's separate the most able from the riff-raff".

As if society should be a hierarchical pyramid of top dogs and underdogs.

This doesn't mean that ability as a differentiator is bad--I think that it's a great idea. What it does mean is that consistency is absolutely crucial when such an idea is implemented; I was in an environment where excellence was encouraged, and that led to a lot of self-motivation. Not all children are going to be in the same situation, and that could be disasterous.

"The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin tackles the concept of the environment which best facilitates learning and personal growth, and touches on the idea of ability-based classes as well. It's a great read for anyone interested in such.

I doubt anyone could argue against things like AP classes, etc. in high school, but 5-year-olds?

Don't just think about slightly tweaking the system we have today. Think about the system after it finally embraces computers as a transformative force, instead of a very silly expensive way to issue multiple choice tests. We're going to free up teachers to spend their time on the stuff that actually requires a human, instead of bogging them down with so much automateable work that they end up hardly any more effective than a machine, what a surprise.

Which is why so many "proteges" tend to burn out, I think, or have emotional problems as they age - simply for lacking that time to develop with their peers.

Alongside the "sticks and stones rhyme" this sentence makes me tear my hair our every time I hear it. Kids who bully are thugs, not kids. My brother, he's 13, he's a kid, not a thug. He skateboards and hurts himself, plays computer games and does his homework. That is a kid.

I feel or you too buddy. That whole sentence gets me really irate.

Even then, if I accept "kids will be kids", it should be (and certainly is not) the purpose of a school to teach children to grow from kids to well-behaved adults. You do not teach them this by ignoring the behavior when they bully, and then punishing the bullied when they inevitably decide to strike back.

The Lord of the Flies atmosphere that exists in public schools is appalling, and we should not try to wave it off. It is clearly not "working as intended".

Making it your goal to be the lord in a lord of the flies environment is like that. Good families that produce healthy kids are generally solidly middle class: They work hard enough to provide basic essentials, not so hard as to value work or money over family. Current trends make it increasingly difficult for anyone to arrange that. We increasingly make people choose between family and money. We didn't always do that.

Your argument often ends up implicitly turning into "Therefore, we shouldn't punish the bully, it's not his fault. Therefore, I guess, well, we'll do nothing." You've cognitively narrowed your focus to just the bully and forgotten everyone else who is getting bullied.

That's not goodness or justice, that's terrible. A very common form of terribleness that some people seem very inclined to, but I don't think it's ever just to get so caught up in the hard life of a bully or criminal that you forget entirely about the victims of the bully or criminal. I don't know what's so cognitively tempting about this point of view, but resist it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to secretly advocate for or justify any particular solution either. But there must be some way to contain the bullying; there's no value to anyone in letting one bad seed's poison spread.

Eliminate the social problems that make said person's life hard in the first place. Reduce poverty, end racist laws and law enforcement, and make it possible for individuals and communities to have self determination rather than being undermined by private and public institutions.

Welcome to the twenty-fourth century. My name is Jean-Luc Picard and I'm captain of the starship ``Enterprise''...

If we (as a human kind) want to get there, we'd better get to fixing those problems; there's still a lot of work to do.

What are you going to propose now?

Oh, some kids get bullied at at school. Oh, the humanity.

Really, first world problems of the highest caliber...

We don't have cliques, proms, or BS high school drama where I come from. We just get along. No mass shootings either.

But since you don't the best we can do is downvote you.

This bulling thing is cultural. It doesn't happen everywhere, the same way mass shooting doesn't happen everywhere (and no, it's not because of no guns available).

And part of it is giving it too much attention. A lot of times it's not even bulling is merely normal behaviour in any team of people.

But since kids are taught that everybody is supposedly a "unique snowflake" and they must be greeted with roses and "ohhhs", they are devastated if they are not the most popular in school or are called a nickname or don't get the girls.

Meanwhile, in the real world, kids are struggling with extreme poverty, war, lack of water and food, etc. Not nicknames and not being invited to the prom.

There are kids who have everything except the love and recognition of their parents. This can have a detrimental effect on a childs life, not feeling loved but having everything. Money is not happiness.

A problem is that physical evidence is extremely hard to collect from children. As the video show, kids do get bruised by accident, and when they fight, it rarely end up in obvious fighting type damage like an bruised eye or broken jaw. If one compare it to a brawl at a bar, school yard bullying do not have a bunch of reliable third-party witnesses (yes, drunk people at the bar is more trusted in this case).

However, what about Justice which one takes by violence? It might work sometimes, but I would warn about gangs. Kids like adults have a tendency to form groups. Groups get group mentality, which can get very ugly very fast. One has to be very fast, quick and lucky to survive going up against a bullying gang leader. Sticks and Stones hurt.

For the people who made this video, thank you. I hope this will remind people, and maybe get some tools invented to start combating bullying. Being a security interested person, I can think of several ideas but I am worried about which ones might actually have an effect and which ones will only make us feel like we are doing something. Cameras and microphones is popular in schools now, and each kid tend to have a smart-phone, and yet I not heard of a reduction in bullying. Small classes is an other solution proposed by people, but I have yet to see a case where that have made a difference. Even when a teacher has time to do something, they seems perplexed on how to deal with it. Maybe if tested tools and procedures is invented, small classes will start to have an effect on bullying.

Not punish the kid hitting back at someone who was bullying him?

Not punish the kid who beat up the bully?

It actually helps to have some idea of what's going on in the school yard, ask witnesses what was going on, and IF KIDS COMPLAIN ABOUT BULLYING DON'T TELL THEM TO GET OVER IT. "You're not making an effort to fit in" is blaming the victim. I'm not making the fucking effort to fit in because the other kids treat me like dirt. Why should I bother to try fitting in?

But yes, the adults could have looked at the situation and realised that the bully was getting their just deserts. Punishing the victim who has been pushed past the end of their tether is not helping anyone.

With the above, a reasonable adult, considering evidence, has no choice but to "arrest" the kid with the chair, since the other has done no wrong other than verbal + possible pushing.

The system needs fixing by making what the bully did prior to the event actionable by the adults so it wouldn't escalate to where it did. Cameras would help.

But then what do we do with the bully? Move him to another school and let the cycle repeat?

(hint: the shy kid probably did not suddenly decide right this moment to pop up and decide to fight for alpha status)

The teacher(s) new exactly what had happened. The administration didn't, though, and it was them that threatened to suspend me.

They did account for the circumstances; they brought in the bullies parents and all of us sat around a table to discuss it. But he squirmed out of it ("so sorry! Only a bit of fun", etc.).

The problem is; it's only when the bullied person does something extreme that the bully gets into that situation. And it didn't happen often, so this particular individual had lots of "last warnings" and final promises to be nicer.

But no one followed up and punished him properly the next time.

Teachers are there to educate, they aren't equipped properly to deal with a point of justice/behaviour.

That looks like it is a significant part of the problem: the adults most likely to exercise good judgement on these matters (teachers) don't have the power to do so.

We have to triage the problem. First, prevent harm from occurring to others. Second, attempt rehabilitation.

Remember that bullies also create problems in other kids which can force them to act out. Force them to drop out and get into drug use. Force them to become bullies themselves, or thieves, etc.

At a school, the adults are the system, so I think my point still stands.

I've long wondered what would have fixed this... in the end the only solution I could come up with would be to segregate the consummate bullies. I'm sure smarter people could think of more adroit solutions.

Problem is though who has the right to decide if it was just or not. This sadly always leads to unjust sentences.

Co-worker makes racist remarks towards you: "sticks and stones" speech

Co-worker sexually harasses you: "sticks and stones" speech

Co-worker physically assaults you: "sticks and stones" speech, with added punishment if the victim defends himself

And in each case, tell the adult victim how they should be more empathetic to the bully's lot in life.