Is that what the public school system is?

Today, schools promote anti-bullying strategies which encourage the goons to talk to their victims. They attach no blame to the perpetrators. Predictably, they are failing, according to the British children's charity Kidscape.

Using this strategy the school forces the victim to provide a written statement describing how distressed he feels about the way he's been treated. He is then expected to read the statement to the good little boys who have derived pleasure from inflicting pain. This approach gives the thugs all the information they need to torture their victims even more.

One exasperated mother described the dismal results:

"They found out about my son's weaknesses, his feelings and his lack of confidence and had a field day bullying him and telling others. The bullying increased because the bullies knew he would not tell again after this devastating result."

In another instance a school principal refused to exclude a boy who had set fire to a young girl's hair. He was reluctant, he said, to single out a youngster who had "problems." Describing this junior arsonist as a youngster with problems is like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer had an eating disorder.

Maybe the girl with the flaming hair can resolve her feelings about being set on fire. Would anyone like to suggest that she talk to the psychological social worker?

Sure sounds like it to me.

Linkie no workie.

A bully's best friend

It's very pleasant to go to private schools that refuse to enroll bullies, so that they discredit the public schools instead.

Sounds like the school policy was made by a replicant.

The answer, of course, is the separation of the state from education. Now.

It should be on every libertarian's list of top policy issues.

So they're teaching the "United Nations" method?

Reminds of a report a couple of years ago about the popular belief among psychologists that bullies suffered from low self-esteem and so they should have it bolstered to ameliorate their tendency to torture the weak. However, studies of real-life bullies showed just the opposite: bullies have wildly exaggerated self-esteem and their victims have a deep lack of it. Any threat that might undercut a bully's self-esteem is met with violence. (I would think also that feeling superior and powerful makes it easier to act on sadistic impulses.)

Googling around, I found this Wikipedia page with some info on this controversy:

- C.

Adrasteia beat me to it.

There's a great reaponse to this:

http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1409

I solved my own personal bully problem in the only way that works: by fighting the bully -- on three separate occasions. I got my ass kicked in Bout #2, but I won Bout #1 and #3 (I broke the kid's arm in #3). I had no further bully problems after that.

The secret is to NOT CARE: to not care if you are beaten up, to not care if you are expelled. Some things -- basic self-respect -- are worth a few days in the hospital or a blot on one's meaningless "permanent record".

Don't get the wrong idea. I was no high-school loser. I was fairly popular all the way through, got invited to all the right parties, and so forth. These incidents were simply alpha-male dominance battles. I came out on top. I'll train my son to do the same.