Cultural (country) differences in school bullying response

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Shebakoby
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07 Oct 2009, 4:00 pm

I live in Canada. But some of the teachers I had were varied, from other places.

One teacher in particular sounded like a transplant from Great Britain. Middle aged, HUGELY stuck up, stereotypical 'british' female teacher. Her approach to bullying was to ignore it, blame the victim if the victim spoke up, and gave such unhelpful instructions as moving to a different seat.

One of the other teachers who had more of a scottish accent tolerated no nonsense in his class whatsoever. Bullying or otherwise.

Yet another teacher with the standard Canadian accent but with Ukrainian background also had a good handle on his class and would ream out anyone he discovered was involved in bullying.



Thorndrop
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20 Oct 2009, 3:44 am

Yeah.. I'm in England and I can agree that was the general response I got from my teachers.. Shame really. I was the 'victim' since I can remember and all I was told to do is 'ignore' it when kids did stuff like grab my butt and hit me and call me a freak. :?



Jkid
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24 Oct 2009, 11:44 pm

Thorndrop wrote:
Yeah.. I'm in England and I can agree that was the general response I got from my teachers.. Shame really. I was the 'victim' since I can remember and all I was told to do is 'ignore' it when kids did stuff like grab my butt and hit me and call me a freak. :?


The advice "ignore it" is generally useless, because then the perps will escalate the harassment phyically. How do suppose to "ignore" someone one grabbing your butt? You can't.

Basically in many western countries ,schools do not want to deal with bullying because of risk of ruining their reputation. So they rather prefer such incidents swepted into the rug unless they get or threatened with a lawsuit.



Spazzergasm
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25 Oct 2009, 6:41 am

i never got bullied in front of teachers. the moment a teacher came, the kids would flee. i'd try and stick close to teachers for that. but i never told anyone about my being bullied, i was scared s**tless!



Keith
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25 Oct 2009, 8:17 am

I'd generally take a lot of it. But when someone really pushed me, I would lash out very quickly. I've managed to grab someone so quickly he ended up in the bushes. Some people blamed ME for bullying him after that single lash from me.
The latest was when someone pissed me off so much I grabbed and squeezed their throat so hard I could've crushed it.

It's a shame something like that has to be done for them to stop. I know what I am capable of so I try to keep calm and relaxed and not let anything bother me too much. People say I am laid-back. Well - until I am pushed too far.

Irony tells me if I react, I will be punished instead of them...



Spazzergasm
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25 Oct 2009, 8:22 am

my one uncle had a situation like that. he was being bullied mercilessly, and had been. finally some nasty boy kciked him in the nuts too hard....he sort of blacked out, and next thing he remembers is he is on top of the kid, pounding his head into the pavement. no one bothered him after that, but DID find him scary and bizarre.
i never attack people if prompted. well family members i have. :(



Orwell
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26 Oct 2009, 5:46 am

Teachers universally ignored the bullying. Whether this was out of ignorance or apathy, I neither know nor care, but they never tried to step in to stop it. Even on the exceedingly rare occasions that a teacher both noticed the bullying and cared to stop it, they were generally powerless to do so.


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Ralic
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26 Oct 2009, 6:43 am

I was in a few Ukrainian schools before I came to America, and bullying was never kept in check. Complaints to teacher did absolutely nothing and generally nobody cared unless your family was a big shot. The reasons being I believe is that nobody cared.

America manages it a bit better, but still there is a lot, especially among the poorer sections of a school.

I never understand why nobody keeps it in check. It's one of the things that makes me wish public education was not mandatory, especially in places where there's no such thing as homeschooling.