Mainstream schools don't take responsibility for bullying

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A recent news article in the Australian press highlights an ongoing problem with schools (particularly highschools) not taking responsibility for bullying, particularly when the bullies (who are known to the school) take their bullying online or outside of school grounds.
https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affa ... 91f003a9e4

However in my experience mainstream schools don't do enough to prevent verbal bullying even on school grounds. Although the majority of her classmates are well behaved my daughter is daily subjected to verbal taunts in her mainstream high school over her autism. She handles it remarkably well but does tell me and asks what to do. She has told her teachers but over the last couple of years my impression nothing is done with her tormentors who seem to be strutting around school non-plussed.

Should school policies be more proactive with policing their students? how have other parents handled bullying?

First of all, sorry to hear about the death of a boy.

But that case is an exception. Crimes do happen. I mean, here in the US, we all know school shootings happen with frequency. Sure, there is outrage, but equally certain is: not much will be done.

Boy Scouts of America just filed for bankruptcy (from lawsuits related to sexual abuse). The Catholic church is just as bad. You wish things belong to the past tense, but the reality is crimes keep coming back.

And so is bullying.

If there were a simple solution to bullying, it would have been found a long time ago. We are talking about something that has been there for thousands of years.

So, we have to accept that, being bullied, unfortunately, is part of growing up. Yeah, people may recommend one approach or another. But, again, if there were a simple/magical solution, it would have been found a long time ago and we wouldn't be discussing this subject here.

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I can tell you what happened to my son and my daughter. In the case of my son, 3 boys used to bully him. I contacted the teacher. The teacher talked to the boys. The school psychologist also gave a talk to the class, with my son's presence, to explain different perspectives about autism. Yes, he did explain to the class that, to us (my son and myself), autism is just a difference, not a disorder/disability/defect. After that, my son's life has been good in school. Here are some of the notes he got for Valentine's day (most notes were common phrases, but these ones here were personalized):
- When you are not done with something, you get it done.
- You are the best LEGO player.
- You are smart cookie.
- You are the smartest in here (and you are very good with tech).
- You always follow the rules.
- You are a quiet student.
- You're shy but you have a talent for being awesome.
- You are very intelligent.
Sure, my son fits the stereotype of an autistic boy. But, he is happy in school and at home. And that's what matters.


My daughter's case was different. She used to scream when bullied by other students. One of the teachers back then, instead of dealing with the bullies, would send my daughter to a room for her to "cool down," which was a horrible idea. I sent the article http://www.eikonabridge.com/fun_and_facts.pdf to the teacher and called for an IEP meeting. After that, my daughter was never again sent away from the classroom, and her life has been good. Basically, I had to teach the teachers on how to approach autistic children, and explain to them that there are other ways to handle crisis situations. See, there are ways to solve issues permanently. What the teacher was doing before was not effective, as bad things would come back, again and again.

So, what can I say? None of the approaches I have used was out of ordinary. They were just common-sense measures, but they did get issues solved in a respectful manner to all parties involved. Sure, from time to time I still needed to express my opinions forcefully, to the school. But so far all teachers have cooperated with me. Sure, some teachers have been friendlier than others (we still hang around with a few teachers from years back), but overall, I guess things have been good, and my kids are happy in school. Every day when I picked them up from school, I can see the smiles on their face. That is a lot, because I do know other autistic kids that constantly tell their parents that they don't want to go to school.

Yep. Those are good approaches. Young kids do respond to this sort of approach.

John Taylor Gatto wrote a book titled "The Underground History of American education". In it he describes why children are often victimized in schools. He says that like other institutions such as prisons, the staff really have little control over what happens. It is the inmates that control things.

When Western civilization was more Christian, society (in and out of prison and schools) was kinder. Now that a more self-focused dynamic predominates in society, one should expect that the natural inclination of sinful nature will be more frequently and brutally expressed.

This is just one of many reasons to consider homeschooling.

Homeschooled, self-taught, parents both worked. Currently I'm in college getting my dream degree in English, and if I have children one day (as soon as I get a job!) they won't know a classroom until they too are in college.

Catholics like me have always had a tough go of it in America; public schools at one time were Protestant during the 19th century and "prayer in school" isn't so nice when it is destroying the faith of the students. It was just another way for bullying to flourish. (At that time Catholics equaled immigrants in the minds of most WASPs.)

Highschools in Australia (unlike primary schools) are less flexible with disruptions. I had a meeting with my daughter's teacher yesterday and she confirmed that my daughter is actually self-managing teasing better than expected. For example there's a girl who walks past her classroom who used to trigger my daughter (making faces) and get her upset. She now ignores her and the other girl has given up her silly teasing. There's a younger boy who swears at her in the playground which is an ongoing issue but my daughter has reconciled that he's a dickhead so I'm happy with that...



Glad to hear, my daughter also really loves highschool and although she hasn't developed deep friendships that extend to after school or weekends - she does have a reasonably large group of classmates in school who she considers friends. I think in addition to training teachers the child needs to self-regulate their own emotions and accept there will be kids who will never like them but I tell my daughter that's just like real life where most people will never be your friend but you can still live/work with them.

I really hate " A Current Affair", but some schools are great at victim blaming:

Kid gets bullied and the school says

"Your child needs to me more resilient, that's the problem"

And some parents still think "playground justice" works. No, it doesn't! It's not justice! If it hurts people, then we shouldn't be doing it.

Bullying extends far beyond just the bully and the victim. It encompasses society. In today's society, teachers lack very much control. If a teacher tries to discipline a child, many times the parents of the child steps in and reads the teacher the riot act. In some cases the teacher loses their job. Many times the parents of a bully was themselves a bully.

Yes I notice one boy who was calling my daughter names comes from a fairly wealthy family and his mother drives a top of the range Tesla to school and is a bit of snob. No surprises where he gets his attitude from.

On a side note: there's a general perception that Tesla drivers are w*kers
https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-ac ... cccfdb73a7

From the very start of my time at Felsted (British public school) I was verbally bullied . The village vicar where I lived wrote to my housemaster about it . My housemaster's response -"Unfortunately he's the sort of boy that invites this sort of treatment" . That was in Nov 1970 .

Yes now I recall there was a boy in my primary and early highschool back in the 1970s who was bullied incessantly because of his slightly eccentric behaviour. He was very thin and wore very high shorts (like a permanent wedgie) and I recall the teachers said exactly the same thing that he "invited bullying". I wish I did more to help him but its easier said than done as the last thing my schoolboy self would have wanted would be to trade places.

That's pretty much how it was with me: it was ALWAYS framed in a way that I "made myself a target" (by being so tall and lanky I guess) and the "help" was focused on making me "act tough", being "normal" and "more like them", which of course failed miserably and made things ten times worse because there is nothing worse than the pseudo tough guy who pretends to be an NFL linebacker. Not once did anybody say "what they are doing is wrong" or "you are not to blame". I suppose all those African Americans who were lynched deserved it by not "acting white" and all the women who are date raped invited it by dressing provocatively.

What's really ironic about these "blame the victim" teachers and managers is that if I were to do something to them like slash their tires, spray paint their house and pull down their pants (basically the equivalent of what was done to me regularly) they would immediately and without hesitation get the law involved!

I was bullied like crazy. I was given the conventional advice. I just had to live with it. I survived, somehow.

We have to enact more proactive solutions for bullying. We have to have counselors who can help students who deal with bullying.

I was lucky, in 7th and 8th grade, when I had sort of an "informal" counselor-type person to sort of hear me out. He took me to his house, we had apple juice, we threw the football around. A nice situation. He was a married man with children. He had no gay designs on me.

I think schools are better about dealing with bullying today but I am sure this is not consistent across all schools and particularly private/wealthy schools where teachers/parents promulgate elitist values where alphas are rewarded and less successful students are not valued.