Quote:
Their triumphant response to the older boy's retaliation surprised seasoned experts.
Why on earth would that surprise anyone? Oh gee, a whole lot of people sided with the victim, the one who didn't start anything but just defended himself against an attack so calculated they thought to start shooting video of it? Wait, that actually
is weird... usually people go with 'oh he had it coming' or 'he invited it' or 'serves him right for being black/fat/weird/ginger/having glasses'.
Quote:
"We don't believe that violence is ever the answer," Mr Dalgleish says. "We believe there are other ways that children can manage this."
Yes, that's a belief widely held mostly by adults who like to talk about their great anti-bullying plan and say how it's impossible for bullying to happen because of said plan. Like the frigging Olweus plan. God I hate that plan, people seem to think Olweus is like a magic totem, you attend a seminar, say you've adopted the Olweus and then just having the paper that says what's supposed to happen in case of bullying in your desk wards off evil bullying spirits and frees everyone from having to ever do anything unpleasant like deal with it. The truth is for most kids to get to the point of retaliating against their bullies it's usually been going on for a LOOONG TIME. Long enough that it's reasonable to question just how awake the adults who are supposed to be supervising really are.
If other people aren't going to defend you against attacks, you absolutely have the right to defend yourself against it. As far as I'm concerned that applies to kids just as much as adults, kids get hurt just as bad as adults. And have the added disadvantage that most people seem unlikely to believe kids when they tell the truth about how bad it is because well, kids don't do that to other kids, kids are little angels.
That other story from the same school, not calling a parent for 3 hours after their child got attacked severely enough to lose consciousness - that to me speaks volumes. The people running that school are perfectly fine ignoring or enabling bullying unless meanies from the media make them look bad. Also that they have a complete lack of common sense not to let the parent know immediately, which is like the most basic rule you can find in human interactions - if a kid gets hurt let the parents know.