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The Real Mary Rose's avatar

Bullying has been around since humans graced the earth. It's a rite of passage. It sucks, but it teaches kids a lot.

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Brian Dixon's avatar

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

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The Real Mary Rose's avatar

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.

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Brian Dixon's avatar

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

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The Real Mary Rose's avatar

Do you work for Psychology Today? You are ridiculous.

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Brian Dixon's avatar

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?

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Landroll's avatar

Never been to prison, jail, or an orphanage eh?

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Brian Dixon's avatar

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

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Landroll's avatar

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.

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Brian Dixon's avatar

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.

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