Author Topic: Bullying  (Read 5832 times)

Offline souxi

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Bullying
« on: September 13, 2006, 08:20:19 am »
I,d like to ask you lot a question re bullying if I may. I,ve posted this topic on another message board I use and stired up quite a hornets nest. My daughter has just started senior school.she,s 12. A new kid, from her old school, was having a maths lesson. Now apparantly, the kids were told to line up afterwards in alphabetical order. Now whether or not the poor kid was so nervous he didnt understand or maybe he just got it wrong, I dont know, BUT, as "punishment" she MADE the poor kid do 10 pressups!! in front of the entire class, who of course laughed at him. He meanwhile was in floods of tears. :'( AND she had the gall to say it was a joke!! FFS. Now IMO, I think thats bullying. It was all about power..she did it because she could, and the kid couldnt answer her back. It was his first day for crying out loud! Discipline in school yes of course..teaching kids to respect their teachers, yes of course, BUT making the kids terrified of them NO. I,m appalled I really am. Some people think I,m being too soft and some people agree with me. What do you lot think?

Offline Aussie Chris

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2006, 09:06:10 am »
Hmmm, this is an interesting question souxi.  First of all I can understand why you feel strongly about this.  It certainly seems excessive to use a military-styled punishment on a 12 year old on the first day of senior school.  As it turns out, the punishment was embarrassing and humiliating and it is this fact that is controversial, but you'd have to know that humiliation was the objective before it could be assumed to be bullying.  Of course it is also fair to question whether push-ups are a reasonable punishment in the first place.  Personally, if I were this child's parent (or a classmate's parent for that matter) I would want my child to learn from this experience and not to be emotionally or socially damaged from it, so I would want to ensure that any humiliation was an accident and that punishments were consistent for all students.  If either of these is not true then I would expect an apology from the teacher and school. Just MHO.
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Offline Lynne

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2006, 11:53:45 am »
I,d like to ask you lot a question re bullying if I may. I,ve posted this topic on another message board I use and stired up quite a hornets nest. My daughter has just started senior school.she,s 12. A new kid, from her old school, was having a maths lesson. Now apparantly, the kids were told to line up afterwards in alphabetical order. Now whether or not the poor kid was so nervous he didnt understand or maybe he just got it wrong, I dont know, BUT, as "punishment" she MADE the poor kid do 10 pressups!! in front of the entire class, who of course laughed at him. He meanwhile was in floods of tears. :'( AND she had the gall to say it was a joke!! FFS. Now IMO, I think thats bullying. It was all about power..she did it because she could, and the kid couldnt answer her back. It was his first day for crying out loud! Discipline in school yes of course..teaching kids to respect their teachers, yes of course, BUT making the kids terrified of them NO. I,m appalled I really am. Some people think I,m being too soft and some people agree with me. What do you lot think?

Souxi,

I have some very strong opinions about this one.  It's only my opinion, BUT I think that physical punishment and humiliation have absolutely no place whatsoever in a school environment (or any environment for that matter - again just my opinion and a whole different can of worms).  There are plenty of other options for punishment that do not damage a child's self-esteem...time outs and writing essays and doing extra homework come to mind just off the top of my head.

Furthermore, the incident sounds like an honest mistake on your child's part, not even willful disobedience.  WTF was this teacher thinking?  If it were my child, I would file a complaint with the principal/admin/whomever that teacher reports to and demand my child be placed in a different class with a teacher who respects the students, which is just as important as the children respecting the teacher.

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Offline Fran

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #3 on: September 13, 2006, 12:35:14 pm »
Souxi,

It sort of makes me wonder how that teacher might react if a child presented a real discipline problem.  My heart goes out to the boy who had to endure the humilation of his classmates on the first day of the new school year.  (And then we wonder why some kids just don't like school.)  Even though your child wasn't the victim here, next time she could be.  I think a brief note to the school principal (headmaster) expressing your concerns is in order.

Offline Lynne

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #4 on: September 13, 2006, 12:37:06 pm »
Souxi - I misread that it was your child's classmate, not your own child.  I still stand by my ideas, tho.  It could be your child next time.
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Offline ednbarby

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #5 on: September 13, 2006, 12:56:10 pm »
I agree.  I think it's way too much for an honest mistake.  Now, if the kid was purposely acting up and taunting her, then it would be more appropriate.

I remember once when I was in the 6th grade, the teacher had a very strict rule about no talking during lessons.  I hadn't heard something he said and asked the student next to me what it was (in a whisper).  He had me stand up and say what we were talking about.  I told him, and the other student corobberated it.  And he still said that because I broke his rule (I should have raised my hand and asked him to repeat it, he said), the whole class would miss recess that day.  I was already unpopular enough, and that didn't help matters.  They gave me crap about it for weeks afterwards.

On the other hand, I remember this classmate in the 9th grade who was always willfully being a goofball in my Algebra class.  That teacher had a strict rule about cracking gum and blowing bubbles with it during lessons.  She sat in the desk right in front of his and blew this huge bubble right in his face one day.  He asked her if she had forgotten about his rule, and she goes, "No."  So he made her stand up in front of the room with her wadded up bubble gum on the end of her nose for the rest of the class.  A bit much.  But I'll tell you what - she never blew a bubble in his face again.
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Offline Mystic_lonewolf

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #6 on: September 13, 2006, 08:35:34 pm »
I myself felt bullied by the teacher once. It was my first time learning government that day and all of a sudden he tells me with a very stern face, "We'll be doing a test and if you get one answer wrong, you fail this class permentally. i was bewildered and furious and then he goes off, "I'm just kidding." I was so pissed.
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2006, 01:27:18 am »
Assuming the kid made an honest mistake -- or even if he was acting up a little, but not so much your daughter even noticed it -- the teacher was incredibly cruel, I think. Humiliating a new kid to tears on his first day at the school? That's sadistic. My sons started at a new school last year in the middle of the year. If a teacher would have done something like that to them, I'd have been so mad I'd consider switching schools.

I remember in second grade one other girl and I started working ahead on our reading assignments while the teacher was still explaining the lesson. We both were excellent readers and didn't need the explanation. But the teacher spotted us, called us up to the front of the room, cried "You each get an N for the day!" (N was the worst grade at that school) and scrawled a huge N across each of our papers.

I've never forgotten this. I thought that was pretty bad.

But at least she didn't make us cry, and at least she didn't make us do some humiliating physical thing that would have everybody laughing at us, and at least we weren't new, and at least it wasn't the first day.

Offline souxi

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2006, 06:40:36 am »
Thank you for all your replies guys. You should see some of the replies I,ve had on the other message forums I use!! Some people can see my point and others think the poor kid is being mollycoddled and should show some backbone etc. I was trying, allbeit unsuccessfully to point out to them that just because you CAN do something, it doesnt mean you SHOULD. IMO she did that because she COULD. Its kind of a power thing you know? Just because she is in a postition of authority and she COULD do it, she did. She went IMO way too far. Being in authority doesnt give you the right to do these things just because you can, you only do it if it,s the right thing to do, and IMO that wasnt. She abused her position. The punishment she gave out, did not fit the "crime". For crying out loud he was only 12 years old and reduced to tears on his first day at school and some people seem to think thats ok!! Anyway, I,ve given up trying to get them lot to see my point of view because now it,s descended into a row and that wasnt the idea. Thanks again guy,s at least I got sane replies on here lol.  ;D ;D

Offline Phillip Dampier

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Re: Bullying
« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2006, 11:48:04 am »
Depending on the kid involved and his reputation at the school, this can either be a minor or major incident.  We all bloom as individuals at different times in our lives.  I spent my formative school years being a very quiet and shy kind of guy and was made a semi-willing social outcast for it.  Once you develop a reputation in early school years, it can be very hard to shake as you travel with the same group of people into your later years of school.  All it takes is a few loudmouths to tear down efforts at breaking out of an earlier reputation unless you make extremely dramatic personality changes that cannot be ignored.

If this guy already was considered on the unpopular side of the social scale, these kinds of incidents can only reinforce the negative social status he already deals with among his peers.  Having the faculty participating in this can have long term emotional consequences for him.  It is actually amazing how much of our personalities and response mechanisms to stress and bad situations can be formed over the early part of our lives.  Repairing the damage early is a far better prospect than dealing with the long-term consequences of things like depression and anxiety, relationship difficulties, etc.

I am not sure what the answer to this specific situation is other than to be on the lookout for similar behavior in the future and then taking action, even if the parents of the kid involved do not.  The best teachers I had in school treated students with respect and the assumption students were mature enough to act like adults in the classroom.  When individual students failed, they were dealt with privately in an effort to prevent disrupting the rest of the classroom.

Programs in many schools today to intervene in bullying and also identify students having problems coping seem more robust than in the 1970s and 1980s when I was in school.  I don't want students to be coddled (and I think some parents go over the top in defending their children), but a positive learning environment is going to be more productive and effective for everyone.
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