Not the "toxic" masculinity which the white liberal women decry. That is the false masculinity of weak, cowardly men and ugly women that is running us into the ground.
America needs to restore the masculinity of our youth.
The current bullies in the school system are the teachers. This is why the “stop bullying,” campaigns have failed. My DIL is an elementary school teacher every morning I meet her at the school to pick up my youngest granddaughter. This semester I have witnessed two fights in the line waiting to go into the lunch room for breakfast. One just two weeks ago, was a 1st grader who was choking another first grader. I asked if the child had been expelled and the answer was no. To expel them would mean the school misses out on their federal funding, so the insanity remains. Idk maybe I’m old school, but keeping one’s hands to themselves is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
If by "bullies" you mean big kids who beat up on little kids, I´ve gotta disagree. Such bullies are not so much wolves as tiny monsters, up-and-coming psychopaths and criminals, or else overcompensating crybabies themselves, imitating and avenging the violence they´ve seen in their own families. In any case, it´s not good -- and sooner or later someone decides to forego fists and brings a knife or gun to school. Then the bully or the bullied opens fire on a classroom and the resulting carnage has nothing in common with Yellowstone.
I´m all for free-range parenting, all for letting kids stumble and fall and gain confidence in their own resources and abilities. But there is a point where it makes sense for parents and teachers to step in and that point is before physical violence.
Yes, but we need to accept that a few sheep will be eaten along the way. Protecting every last helpless sheep is the reason we got into this mess in the first place. We need to put men back in charge and do away with the female "zero tolerance" for bullying.
I think the "zero tolerance" policies for anything have always been bullshit virtue signaling. It keeps people's small addled brains from actually having to think so they can bully the kids they want--the decent kids--and then they ignore what they want from the ass pains.
Empathy fail on your part there, gato. Shame on you. Yes, you have a bit of a point about the virtue of toughness, and there certainly doesn't need to be any government commissioner against fat shaming, but your excuses for schoolyard bullying are not only cruel but fundamentally illiberal in the classical sense. The main cause of bullying at school is the harshly authoritarian nature of school. Luckily for us libertarians, the policies that really work to prevent persistent bullying are the very same policies that let kids have an early start with personal liberty. The youth rights/child lib movement may lean leftward demographically, but I see no reason philosophically why this should be so.
Won’t argue that. I hold that bullying is at its core an issue of personal responsibility. Bullies need to be larned the lesson. We could do this the easy way, or the hard way.
Schools do not cause bullying, bullies cause bullying. That is a fact of personal responsibility that cannot be transferred to an institution. This article is a perfect example of enabling crying to be an emergency, the subject of EGM post, in the form of glorified mob rule and tyranny.
It's the environment. Disease of any sort loves a toxic environment. Schools - and social media - combined - are toxic environments in which the Bully Disease thrives.
Is there mob rule and tyranny at the Sudbury Valley School or its many imitators? No, there isn't. Instead, there is liberal democracy and the rule of law. Mr. gato has a bit of a point on the virtue of toughness, but there is also virtue in compassion, the baby you're throwing out with the bathwater.
Yes there is. It is very far beyond a reasonable process. Simple, clear, written rules and policies suffice for discipline. The Sudbury “process” unnecessarily enables arbitrary, subjective control based on tyranny of a majority a.k.a. ganging up. Banning from class for a week because person A didn’t like something person B did and got a few people to agree. Extra-judicial and arbitrary. The so-called supreme court style discussions are the giveaway that novices have strayed out of bounds. Recall, democracy is not a good thing as our Founding Fathers understood. I’m so happy my kids didn’t attend a horror show like that.
Meanwhile, in a typically authoritarian school, kids are sent to the principal's office to be punished without due process. And according to you, that's not the horror show. Wow.
I was one who got punished for being in the wrong place, wrong time. I was not with the offending students (age 10?) but was punished with them. However - I lived. My crying was not an emergency.
If only EVERYONE did this ONE thing, the world would be perfect.
Denial of human nature as it exists. Let me know how that works out for you. We've seen what other postmodern nutty ideas have done to society already.
Psychology Today just happens to have the data to support my argument. Are you willing to give the data a look, so you can either change your mind or try to change mine?
Thanks for making my point for me. Prisons, jails, and orphanages all demonstrate my point that persistent bullying is caused or prevented at the institutional level. "Bullying occurs regularly", explains the psychologist Peter Gray, "when people who have no political power and are ruled in top-down fashion by others are required by law or economic necessity to remain in that setting."
Personal experience informs my opinion. I've been to all three places in my 78 years. Authority can remove a bully from a population of potential victims but all that happens is the second bully in line steps up. What stops a bully is a victim stepping up and clocking the bully, consequences be damned. Generally the consequences are delivered by the authority in charge. Ask me how I know.
It seems your knowledge comes from an education superior to mine. Good on ya. You wantm to know how it really works get down in the mud and rassle with the hogs.
Again, your lived experience in those places only helps demonstrate Peter Gray's point and my point about what happens in those places. I don't claim to have had "an education superior to yours"—I got plenty of bullying in government schools—but unlike you, I don't let despair keep me from acknowledging the success of the Sudbury experiment.
I have a slightly different take on this. I was bullied and teased on the school bus during my first year in high school (I had gone to a small Episcopal school before that). My response was to ask my parents for a 10-speed bike (this was back in the early 70s) so I could bike to school (6 hilly miles). This eventually led to my getting into racing for a few years. So yes, I avoided the confrontation with the bullies, but became stronger and more independent.
"Return to those days"? When were those days? When I was a schoolkid in the Eighties, standard school policy was to punish every participant in a fight. There was no recognized right to self-defense for "minors". If it's a rite of passage, why was it punished even in the unwoke Eighties?
When I was in elementary school in the fifties/early sixties, teachers always determined who started it on the playground. There was no punishment for self defense or protecting others.
Sorry, No: I disagree with you. I worked in a rural school as an integration aid for years, helping disabled kids learn as much as they could and integrate happily with the other students.
There were bullies, and they picked on the weaker kids, knowing they wouldn’t fight back. The other kids didn’t ‘punch the bullies in the nose’ because they knew it was wrong. But they stepped in to protect the disabled kids, and reported every incident. The bullies spent a lot of playtime in detention: their parents were told (not that they cared) and they lost certain privileges. Most of those bullies understood that they had done wrong, and learned how to find better ways to assert themselves.
The boys who protected the disabled were heroes. They didn’t lower themselves to violence but protected the defenceless and dealt with every incident the correct way.
The girl bullies, sadly, were rarely caught and never learned that lesson. I don’t think a ‘punch in the nose’ would have gone down too well with them either...
Then he/she is no hero, unless they suddenly come across the bully assaulting someone and there is no time to call a teacher/authority/police.
Look at the law - for adults. If you hear someone is bullying a friend of yours and you visit the perp one night and beat the crap out of them, who is the one who will be arrested and charged? You: not the bully.
However, if you call at your friend's house and find the perp is there assaulting your friend, and you beat the crap out of the perp, you shouldn't be arrested.
However, these days the good guy seems to be the one treated as the perp, and the villain gets away with murder.
ImanAzol, your comparison of Conservatives and Liberals is (mostly) accurate, and made me smile! I do understand your point of view, but I think we are better people if we can deal with the bullies in a pro-active, kind way rather than give in to our understandable urge to "teach them a lesson". However, that may only apply to young people who can be set on a better path. In the case of military defense and aggression in warfare, your views are 100% correct.
So well said. Surprising that this slice of our culture doesn't think this process through to the end - that the apple cart isn't always going to be upset and once it's righted they will have no skills to navigate the world.
I'm so old that I remember every kid being bullied on the playground at recess.
This appeal to weakness denies the youth that incredible feeling resulting from the right of passage known as punching the bully in the nose.
We need to return to those days when you learned to stand up for yourself, and the ones who don't learn, never get to be in charge.
Hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men.
Weak men make hard times.
You are here.
the return of bullies to schools will be like the return of wolves to yellowstone.
the whole ecosystem will heal.
Yes. What we need is a return to masculinity.
Not the "toxic" masculinity which the white liberal women decry. That is the false masculinity of weak, cowardly men and ugly women that is running us into the ground.
America needs to restore the masculinity of our youth.
Make Nosepunching Great Again!
go for the body. striking the face can hurt your hands.
The current bullies in the school system are the teachers. This is why the “stop bullying,” campaigns have failed. My DIL is an elementary school teacher every morning I meet her at the school to pick up my youngest granddaughter. This semester I have witnessed two fights in the line waiting to go into the lunch room for breakfast. One just two weeks ago, was a 1st grader who was choking another first grader. I asked if the child had been expelled and the answer was no. To expel them would mean the school misses out on their federal funding, so the insanity remains. Idk maybe I’m old school, but keeping one’s hands to themselves is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
If by "bullies" you mean big kids who beat up on little kids, I´ve gotta disagree. Such bullies are not so much wolves as tiny monsters, up-and-coming psychopaths and criminals, or else overcompensating crybabies themselves, imitating and avenging the violence they´ve seen in their own families. In any case, it´s not good -- and sooner or later someone decides to forego fists and brings a knife or gun to school. Then the bully or the bullied opens fire on a classroom and the resulting carnage has nothing in common with Yellowstone.
I´m all for free-range parenting, all for letting kids stumble and fall and gain confidence in their own resources and abilities. But there is a point where it makes sense for parents and teachers to step in and that point is before physical violence.
🎯
Yes, but we need to accept that a few sheep will be eaten along the way. Protecting every last helpless sheep is the reason we got into this mess in the first place. We need to put men back in charge and do away with the female "zero tolerance" for bullying.
I think the "zero tolerance" policies for anything have always been bullshit virtue signaling. It keeps people's small addled brains from actually having to think so they can bully the kids they want--the decent kids--and then they ignore what they want from the ass pains.
Hahahaha! Love it.
Empathy fail on your part there, gato. Shame on you. Yes, you have a bit of a point about the virtue of toughness, and there certainly doesn't need to be any government commissioner against fat shaming, but your excuses for schoolyard bullying are not only cruel but fundamentally illiberal in the classical sense. The main cause of bullying at school is the harshly authoritarian nature of school. Luckily for us libertarians, the policies that really work to prevent persistent bullying are the very same policies that let kids have an early start with personal liberty. The youth rights/child lib movement may lean leftward demographically, but I see no reason philosophically why this should be so.
“ The main cause of bullying at school is the harshly authoritarian nature of school.”
Uh, no.
Bullying’s main caus is bullies: enabled assholes who take their angst out on weaker kids.
Shitty parenting, which gets shittier every year.
Won’t argue that. I hold that bullying is at its core an issue of personal responsibility. Bullies need to be larned the lesson. We could do this the easy way, or the hard way.
I must correct your factual error. Persistent bullying is indeed preventable at the institutional level: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-to-learn/201006/freedom-from-bullying-how-a-school-can-be-a-moral-community
Schools do not cause bullying, bullies cause bullying. That is a fact of personal responsibility that cannot be transferred to an institution. This article is a perfect example of enabling crying to be an emergency, the subject of EGM post, in the form of glorified mob rule and tyranny.
It's the environment. Disease of any sort loves a toxic environment. Schools - and social media - combined - are toxic environments in which the Bully Disease thrives.
A healthy biome ejects the bully.
True enough, yet we cannot release bullies from personal responsibilty.
Is there mob rule and tyranny at the Sudbury Valley School or its many imitators? No, there isn't. Instead, there is liberal democracy and the rule of law. Mr. gato has a bit of a point on the virtue of toughness, but there is also virtue in compassion, the baby you're throwing out with the bathwater.
Yes there is. It is very far beyond a reasonable process. Simple, clear, written rules and policies suffice for discipline. The Sudbury “process” unnecessarily enables arbitrary, subjective control based on tyranny of a majority a.k.a. ganging up. Banning from class for a week because person A didn’t like something person B did and got a few people to agree. Extra-judicial and arbitrary. The so-called supreme court style discussions are the giveaway that novices have strayed out of bounds. Recall, democracy is not a good thing as our Founding Fathers understood. I’m so happy my kids didn’t attend a horror show like that.
Meanwhile, in a typically authoritarian school, kids are sent to the principal's office to be punished without due process. And according to you, that's not the horror show. Wow.
Break the clear rules, get sent to the Principal’s office. Simple and straightforward. Your crying is not an emergency.
I was one who got punished for being in the wrong place, wrong time. I was not with the offending students (age 10?) but was punished with them. However - I lived. My crying was not an emergency.
So, according to you [la chevalerie vit], all that stuff about being presumed innocent until proven guilty is for crybabies?
Bullying has been around since humans graced the earth. It's a rite of passage. It sucks, but it teaches kids a lot.
If persistent bullying can be prevented at the institutional level—which indeed it can—then there is absolutely no excuse for not preventing it. And the good news for us freedom lovers is that, to make a long story short, freedom is what prevents persistent bullying: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-to-learn/201006/freedom-from-bullying-how-a-school-can-be-a-moral-community
More utopian b.s.
If only EVERYONE did this ONE thing, the world would be perfect.
Denial of human nature as it exists. Let me know how that works out for you. We've seen what other postmodern nutty ideas have done to society already.
I'm not the denier of reality here; you are. Free, democratic schools such as the Sudbury Valley School have been empirically proving my point for decades, whether you're willing to acknowledge it or not. Here's that link again: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-to-learn/201006/freedom-from-bullying-how-a-school-can-be-a-moral-community
Do you work for Psychology Today? You are ridiculous.
Psychology Today just happens to have the data to support my argument. Are you willing to give the data a look, so you can either change your mind or try to change mine?
Never been to prison, jail, or an orphanage eh?
Thanks for making my point for me. Prisons, jails, and orphanages all demonstrate my point that persistent bullying is caused or prevented at the institutional level. "Bullying occurs regularly", explains the psychologist Peter Gray, "when people who have no political power and are ruled in top-down fashion by others are required by law or economic necessity to remain in that setting."
Quote source, not the same link as in my comment above: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-to-learn/201005/school-bullying-a-tragic-cost-of-undemocratic-schools
Personal experience informs my opinion. I've been to all three places in my 78 years. Authority can remove a bully from a population of potential victims but all that happens is the second bully in line steps up. What stops a bully is a victim stepping up and clocking the bully, consequences be damned. Generally the consequences are delivered by the authority in charge. Ask me how I know.
It seems your knowledge comes from an education superior to mine. Good on ya. You wantm to know how it really works get down in the mud and rassle with the hogs.
Again, your lived experience in those places only helps demonstrate Peter Gray's point and my point about what happens in those places. I don't claim to have had "an education superior to yours"—I got plenty of bullying in government schools—but unlike you, I don't let despair keep me from acknowledging the success of the Sudbury experiment.
Except the bullies get shot plus some. Or vice versa plus some.
gato if possible can you reply to my DMs I sent a couple of weeks ago
I have a slightly different take on this. I was bullied and teased on the school bus during my first year in high school (I had gone to a small Episcopal school before that). My response was to ask my parents for a 10-speed bike (this was back in the early 70s) so I could bike to school (6 hilly miles). This eventually led to my getting into racing for a few years. So yes, I avoided the confrontation with the bullies, but became stronger and more independent.
Your anecdote is fantastic. Really resourceful and inspiring. Would make for a great essay that many peeps, I believe, would read. Just sayin.
Big lesson in your story. Resilience isn't always about confrontation but about finding a workaround that allows one to thrive.
there will always be bullies, it's just that now the bullies are the weak and pathetic
Cannot give this enough❤️❤️❤️
"Return to those days"? When were those days? When I was a schoolkid in the Eighties, standard school policy was to punish every participant in a fight. There was no recognized right to self-defense for "minors". If it's a rite of passage, why was it punished even in the unwoke Eighties?
The decline has been going on for a long time.
When I was in elementary school in the fifties/early sixties, teachers always determined who started it on the playground. There was no punishment for self defense or protecting others.
That was better, but still not good enough. I object to the ageist double standard by which kids are expected to fend for themselves in a Hobbesian state of nature while adults have the benefit of institutional justice. The successful experiment of the Sudbury Valley School and its judicial committee system has proven that institutional justice works well for kids, too. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/freedom-to-learn/201006/freedom-from-bullying-how-a-school-can-be-a-moral-community
Still my very most favorite values flashback.. el gato must read in praise of lawn darts!!!
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-lawn-darts
Sorry, No: I disagree with you. I worked in a rural school as an integration aid for years, helping disabled kids learn as much as they could and integrate happily with the other students.
There were bullies, and they picked on the weaker kids, knowing they wouldn’t fight back. The other kids didn’t ‘punch the bullies in the nose’ because they knew it was wrong. But they stepped in to protect the disabled kids, and reported every incident. The bullies spent a lot of playtime in detention: their parents were told (not that they cared) and they lost certain privileges. Most of those bullies understood that they had done wrong, and learned how to find better ways to assert themselves.
The boys who protected the disabled were heroes. They didn’t lower themselves to violence but protected the defenceless and dealt with every incident the correct way.
The girl bullies, sadly, were rarely caught and never learned that lesson. I don’t think a ‘punch in the nose’ would have gone down too well with them either...
Sometimes the heroic kid beats the crap out of the bully.
I think that's on TV. I can't think of any real life examples, though I'm sure there are a few. It happens commonly on TV, though.
I like your approach Lynda H. Peer pressure is a strong motivator.
Then he/she is no hero, unless they suddenly come across the bully assaulting someone and there is no time to call a teacher/authority/police.
Look at the law - for adults. If you hear someone is bullying a friend of yours and you visit the perp one night and beat the crap out of them, who is the one who will be arrested and charged? You: not the bully.
However, if you call at your friend's house and find the perp is there assaulting your friend, and you beat the crap out of the perp, you shouldn't be arrested.
However, these days the good guy seems to be the one treated as the perp, and the villain gets away with murder.
Conservatives have been shamed by liberals that we must alway be the good guys and never sink to their level, while they continue to do so.
Retribution is sometimes known as "justice."
If you require consent from the government--largely liberal--for justice, is it really?
I don't advocate random beatings over disagreements, but sometimes a perp needs taken behind the shed and explained a few things in their own oeuvre.
ImanAzol, your comparison of Conservatives and Liberals is (mostly) accurate, and made me smile! I do understand your point of view, but I think we are better people if we can deal with the bullies in a pro-active, kind way rather than give in to our understandable urge to "teach them a lesson". However, that may only apply to young people who can be set on a better path. In the case of military defense and aggression in warfare, your views are 100% correct.
Worked for Me! Thank you, MSG Nathaniel Woods, Ft. Jackson, S.C. 1964. Some life lessons one will never forget.
So well said. Surprising that this slice of our culture doesn't think this process through to the end - that the apple cart isn't always going to be upset and once it's righted they will have no skills to navigate the world.