Let's all cower and give in to it. (Bullying in Schools)

Member Name: Plumptious

Product:	Bullying in Schools
Date:	10/03/01 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None.

Disadvantages: The system does little to help.

Tagging after my mother's travels, I had just moved to yet another new school. Unbeknownst to me, I was in for a new experience.


In my form were two exomorphs - more brawn than brain - and they decided that I would make a splendid new target. It started off with name calling. I was a reasonably confident and articulate 13 year old, and retaliated in kind. To this day, one of my old classmates recounts with laughter the face of one of the bullies when I accused them of being fat - apparently no one had dared do that before. I wasn't to know that, though. After all, in all the previous schools I'd attended, I'd never encountered behaviour like this before. I'd always been accepted without any problems.

Threats followed, the most notable of which was the threat to break my head off my body. I took them seriously, and remember speculating as to how this might be achieved. Even in my naiveté, I realised that this was no mean feat, and was impressed by the strength of someone who claimed to be able to do it. It worried me quite a lot, and I used to wonder how exactly I would avoid this person when they approached me to do this.


Things came to a head one day. Amongst the first in a classroom, I selected a likely desk and settled down. One of the bullies arrived and told me to move to another desk, claiming it as theirs. Because of their choice of words, I originally thought that the teacher had assigned pupils to specific desks. I began to apologise and tried to establish how I might determine which desk had been assigned to me. I soon realised that the desks had not been preassigned, and that the bully was simply trying to oust me from a desk over which they had no rights. I refused to move.

An argument followed. The bully began to hit me. I had never been in a fight before, let alone get hit. I stood no chance of retaliating successfully, as the physical volume of my opponent was nearly
three times my volume. Instinctively, I grabbed their sleeves in an attempt at prevention. The punches abated somewhat. I was told through gritted teeth to release their sleeves. As the punches had not totally stopped, I hung on grimly.

Unknowingly, I had stumbled across a new weapon. No matter that a bully is supposedly "well hard". The chances are that if they have a ruined jumper, they have a mother at home who will demand an explanation. With me hanging onto the jumper sleeves, every attempt at a punch resulted in the sleeves being stretched with undesirable effects. Wimpy, but effective.


The teacher arrived. We were duly separated and presented to the head teacher. We were interviewed together and separately. I described the events which had transpired, confident of my right in the matter and was dismissed from the interview. I never heard anything more about the matter from any of the teachers.


It wasn't until a few years later that I inadvertently found out from my mother that she had been summoned by the school with regards to "the problem of my fighting". I hadn't realised that this had happened, and asked her why she hadn't told me. She said that she had questioned me, and been satisfied with my story, so had decided to leave it at that.


What concerns me is that I was known as a well behaved and conscientious student by the teachers, whereas the bully had a history of reprimandable behaviour. I had presented a cogent report of the events to both teacher and head teacher, but it had still resulted in a verdict of unacceptable behaviour on my part.

The only way I can see to have avoided the incident was to simply give in to the bully's demands. With attitudes like that from the teaching profession, no wonder there is such a problem with bullying.


~~~ Update 11.03.01 ~~~
I have had a look round the opinions in this category. Wha
t of some victims of bullying have had to contend with beggars belief. Any right minded being would want to have stopped it in any way they could, but many of these victims found their cries for help ignored.


~~~ Conclusion ~~~
The bullying I experienced was comparatively very mild. I was fortunate enough to have had over a decade of "bully-free" time during which my confidence was built up , and circumstances were such that I escaped the bullies' attentions unscathed.

The attitude shown by Maury in her opinion and her comments in this section was the attitude I expected from the authorities. In the event, their attitude was not what I expected.

What I find ironic is that as an adult many years after the event, it is not the actions of the bullies which bothers me, but the actions of the authorities which continues to haunt me. Every so often, there will be a televised interview with someone in authority wherein a new campaign against bullying is discussed, and victims are urged to be more assertive and to report incidents.

I find myself watching the the speaker, and then my thoughts begin to drift along the line of "but I was assertive", "but they made ME the culprit", and so on and so forth in an annoying repetitive cycle.
So in my case, it was the authorities who made the real negative impact, not the bullies.


~~~ Today ~~~
I look after a little team. I sometimes find myself quite unpleasantly surprised at the fact that name calling is something that actually happens in an adult environment.

The team is generally made up of intelligent individuals, pleasant and self motivating - a dream to work with, just the type of people I would wish to work with. However, even in such a group, there are problems.

On the whole, the team thrives on laughter, both at itself and the problems we encounter. We find that it's the best way to remain
sane.

Some of the younger members of the team, bright young personable high achievers, think nothing at all of making repeated insulting references to the modes of dress/attitudes of the older members of the team. A thin line is crossed here, as the individuals insulted are often not within earshot, or occasionally just within earshot. The combination of personalities and circumstances are such that the victim gets little opportunity to retaliate, even jokingly. The incidents are repeated.

This is where I step in to discourage such behaviour. Nothing formal, just an indication that such behaviour is not really very clever. The instigators showed slight surprise initially, but after a few instances, the behaviour ceased. Or at least, it?s abated so that they no longer shout it out to half the department.

Some might consider this to be priggish behaviour on my part, but the bottom line is that the recipient of the insults was not comfortable, which is how I judged the behaviour to be unacceptable. It's the litmus test of when something ceases to be funny. Its simply a matter of good manners, and just because we're out of the schoolroom, it doesn't mean that we have to stop learning and applying them.

Footnote : Before someone erroneously applies a stereotype about females and verbal attacks here, I would like to say that they are all males here!

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