When bullies and bullied are both stuck in the same school ...

HomeSchooling, Germany and US · Other Thread Under Same Video (excursus : Continuing first separate Thread) · When bullies and bullied are both stuck in the same school ... · There are Other Debates Too

...it doesn't make them solidaric, except in a bad way. Another thread on the video from Black Forest Family.

Ni' rassas

I went to a German public school and I had massive bullying experience. more than 20 years after I left the school I still struggle with social anxiety issues. But even after all the negative experience I have made and all the issues I still have, I am still in favour of the German compulsory school attendance law. My personal experience is no reason to deny the the benefit of regular school attendance.

The Black Forest Family

I'm really sorry to hear about your bullying experience. Although it is very hard to stop completely, I very much am in the camp that schools should do more to curb bullying and help to support children in their physical and emotional wellbeing - especially now-a-days when online cyber bulling is getting harder to track but easier to get away with.

Ni' rassas

@The Black Forest Family There are way too many moving parts involved in bullying to combat bullying effectively. When I was at school in the 90s teachers had little to no real understanding of bullying, which of course favoured the bullies. More awareness on all fronts would help way more, including at home, in schools and in society.

I really can't blame anyone in particular for the things that happened and realistically just get to a point where I can live a happy life.

Blotto

@The Black Forest Family At my school the teachers were the greater bullies.

Hell Kitty

@Ni' rassas I totally understand that. I experienced the same things and even though my teachers and parents were well aware of what was going on and tried to help, it really wasn't working too well. One of my teachers even had a project week on the 3rd Reich, bullying etc. including a course by the Weißer Ring that taught how bullying works and how it feels etc. but it didn't change a thing. It got better after some guy left the Gymnasium after 10th grade and after I spent a year in the USA, but the bullying never stopped, it only got a little less. Maybe I eventually found people to surround me with that I got along with and just wasn't as bothered as much as before.
Now, about 20 years later, I thought I had worked over most of that, but had one occurence at work that brought everything back. That was a real bad day, and I didn't feel like going to work the next. I did go and stayed with the company for about another year. (My colleagues weren't even aware that some things they said in jest were triggering me. They didn't mean any harm and there was hardly anything directed at me.) It was the right thing to go to work the next day, but I wasn't feeling well with all those bad feelings coming back.
Luckily, by now I understand better why I had to experience all that. I always knew I was different and at least part of that is explained by now. I'd also like to take another test to verify another thing that I suspect me of (high to very high intelligence, which kinda let me to always get to grads and not having to learn at all) and that probably got the other students to dislike me even more.

I actually also think I learned a lot through those experiences. Like it social standing isn't as important as work results. Social standing comes and goes without much you can do and you can put way too much effort into trying to keep it. (I'm not talking of how people view you helping other or such things, but rather "Beliebtheit", fanboyism etc. which is very volatile.) I also learned to differentiate between true friends and people you know. I may know a lot of people, but a true friend is a rare thing you should treasure. I also learned that looks aren't as important. I found quiet a few people I got along with and spent a lot of time with, that weren't dressed in the newest stuff etc. Most wouldn't have given them a second thought, but boy, some of them had some real hidden talents! So, I don't judge people by looks, I always give a second chance to prove that they are nice people. Many people are nice and want to be nice. And through all I experienced that being nice just makes people be nice back. Like, smile at people and they will eventually smile back, maybe even greet. Especially if they realize, that you don't care what they look like (I mean, clean would be good, but I don't care about the age of clothing or the design etc.), that you care for them as who they are. I don't know if others learned that from bullying, but looking back, thinking on it, that's some of the conclusions I arrived at.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas "There are way too many moving parts involved in bullying to combat bullying effectively"

Except of course by homeschooling.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Blotto I was first bullied, then homeschooled, twice.

In Austria the teachers were the bullies, in Sweden they weren't.

I survived thanks to homeschooling chosen by my mother.

Ni' rassas

@Hans-Georg Lundahl That's not really fixing the bullying problem, it's just dodging the issue.

Raising awareness, encouraging others to step in and discouraging the bullies is way more helpful imho. But I'm not a fan of running away and hide in a corner, what homeschooling would be an expression of to me effectively.

Motion in Mind

Imagine if you'd been homeschooled and then sent out into the real world even LESS prepared to deal with things than you were after your sad experiences in the public school.

I want to add, schools MUST be forced to stop bullying!

Friedrich der Große

Do you have kids of your own?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Motion in Mind "even LESS prepared to deal with things"

I wouldn't have been.

Because I wouldn't have been that used to having bullies have it their way, and never getting caught or punished.

Andrew Mattox

@Hans-Georg Lundahl , "Because I wouldn't have been that used to having bullies have it their way, and never getting caught or punished."

-Exactly, people shouldn't be "used" to certain behaviors.
The people who engage in this kind of behavior are the problem. Not everyone else.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Andrew Mattox There are two applications of a rule who force the victims to stay with the perpetrators:

• the perpetrators have school obligation
• the victims have school obligation

If the perpetrators could be thrown out at the discretion of the school or the victims leave at discretion of the parents, everyone else in the school would not have to take on the role as bystanders. Meaning of course those who want to stay in school and who are allowed to.

This means, the one rule which is mental ruin to victims, moral ruin to bullies and somewhere in between to the rest, is, school compulsion.

My Life in the USA

I was bullied in school as well. i would have loved to be able to do the work from home.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@My Life in the USA A very good point.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas I think all of these - encouraging others to step in and discouraging the bullies - presuppose, that bullies are not too discreet and too strong.

"it's just dodging the issue."

It would be if the being bullied were an "issue" about the victim.

"I'm not a fan of running away and hide in a corner, what homeschooling would be an expression of to me effectively."

That's perhaps how the bullies would see it?

Are you saying what psychologists told you?

Could such people be in league with your bullies? I am pretty sure they were with mine in 8th grade. The ringleader was sent to a psychologist and when asked to say what he was about, when this was brought up after my brief homeschooling was ended, he regurgitated psychology stuff "we are just helping him to adapt"

Ni' rassas

@Hans-Georg Lundahl This rhetoric of yours is exactly the reason I am against homeschooling.

First is the "victim of bullying" mentality. I am not a victim. I went through bullying and retained lasting trauma. From a victim mentality it's easy to fall into a bad habit of self pity that can be a lot more traumatising than through a "target of" mentality, that is revitalizing my self worth.

Then you sound like I can't think for myself? As if I would just repeat the things others say? No, I am not. To an extent we all repeat the things we learn from others, but eventually we have to filter for what resonates with ourselves the most. Please be more respectful and don't assume dumb things.

Lastly: I beg your pardon but "could they be in league with your bullies" sounds awfully close to conspiracy theorist. Don't be a conspiracy theorist, those people are the most loopy thing out there.

dijikstra8

I had a similar experience growing up in Sweden, being bullied and because of that skipping school a lot. It has really hampered my social skills as an adult and it's something I had to work through for a long time, but I'm still very much in favor of compulsory schooling. I can only imagine who I would be if I was home schooled and spent even more of my childhood in front of my computer, in isolation from other kids.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@dijikstra8 "if I was home schooled and spent even more of my childhood in front of my computer, in isolation from other kids."

For some weird reason, you suppose you would lose contact with all your school mates and not just your bullies if homeschooled.

The situation you describe, namely that of you skipping school, doesn't sound like a potentially homeschooling home, so why do you bother about pronouncing yourself about homes you don't have a clue about?

ZW

Wow, Stockholm syndrome comes to mind. Who would want to pu their kids through a childhood that left themselves permanently traumatized. That is insane. You see that, right?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ZW Thank you, I perfectly agree!

Celina Kiss

@Hans-Georg Lundahl You can't just see the bullies as the forever bad guys. You can't just give up on them when they're still kids by isolating them. Instead teach them what their actions are doing and find out the underlying cause of their agression. Therapy can help with that. Not homeschooling.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Celina Kiss "You can't just see the bullies as the forever bad guys."

Who said I did? They may be bad for that school, but good for some other context, when they are expelled.

"You can't just give up on them when they're still kids by isolating them."

Who spoke about isolating? Expelling them from school doesn't force everyone to avoid them. Allowing them to quit school and do some actual work is hardly isolating either.

"Instead teach them what their actions are doing and find out the underlying cause of their agression."

Who is interested in the underlying cause of their agression? Expelling them from school is to make it stop, to protect someone else, that's all.

"Therapy can help with that."

I recall the ringleader of my 8th grade bullies had therapy. When in class he was confronted with his behaviour, after I was forced to return there to meet him, after some good months of homeschooling, he told the teacher and the class "we are just helping him to adapt" - to me, the MAIN bullies are the therapists.

Do you know the kind of dishonest glaziers who pay boys to play soccer near shops or appartments?

Well, that kind of therapist is exactly who would like MORE children exposed to bullying.

Getting the bully among actual adults who do actual work, instead of in a playground where he is some hormones and muscles ahead of someone else in puberty and likes to show it, is hardly death penalty.

"Not homeschooling."

Why not, in general? For certain homes, obviously not, that's why I mention going to work, but in general? Do bullies just come from neglected homes? Sweden betrayed me, because it was not acceptable that my social superiors should be shamed as having bullied me. 8th grade was a horror, the ring leader was the son of a teacher (yeah, the one who got therapy). Up to homeschooling. After 8th grade, I was sent to a boarding school, because some damned therapists or psychiatrists or whatever had "figured out" I was actually part of the problem. That boarding school was for the richest persons of Sweden, the King and Olof Palme had gone there, took only a few once in a while from social services sending them there, and those cases were NOT my bullies. And yet I was bullied to clinical depression (probably) in 9th and 10th. Yeah, by upper class children. Parents either entrepreneurs or major employees of big corporations. There were diplomat children there too, but there I cannot claim they bullied me. In 11th and 12th, I was demoralised. I had to put on a heavy mask of self irony, pretend not to notice a rumour about me being gay and passive partner, avoid trying to get bullies punished and so on, to stay relatively free from the Hell that 9th and 10th had given me.

And you want me to trust SHRINKS on how to deal with bullies? Do you feel you need one, or are you one?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas "First is the "victim of bullying" mentality. I am not a victim."

I don't say you are a victim now, I don't say I am a victim of THAT bullying now, but we were actual crime victims back then.

"Then you sound like I can't think for myself?"

I was asking. "Target of" mentality sounds like a good thing, but it's not available on demand for each teen.

And there is a way for a teen not to have to chose between "victim of" / "target of" and that is being out of harm's way.

Perhaps you are all muscles, I wasn't and aren't now either. I was fat, and had no fighting sports.

So, perhaps it's your judo teacher or karate teacher from back then, and it obviously resonates with you.

What resonates with me is how C. S. Lewis ended the chapter "Belsen" in Surprised by Joy.

"sounds awfully close to conspiracy theorist."

I will not pretend that Heliocentric Astronomers are all closet Geocentrics, or that P Z Myers is a closet YEC. I will go as far as to say, they don't like some arguments being forwarded, because they know which side their bread is buttered on.

So do therapists.

"those people are the most loopy thing out there."

If you mean ... no, I'll look it up ...

Ah, yes, here is Urban Dictionary : "Being loopy is the state of being mentally deranged, possibly out of one's mind. Calling someone loopy is to suggest that the person is in some form of daze. Therefore their speech or acts seem incoherent and disconnected."

So, AS you mean "conspiracy theorists are basically mad" you are definitely on the side of:

• people pointed at as conspirers
• shrinks

and obviously, my observation was against both. So you react badly to that? So what?

Being an ex-victim of bullying is hardly a canonisation for either of us, it just means both of us knew a bad thing.

But I also knew a good thing. Homeschooling. If not, I might have been dead.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Hell Kitty "Like it social standing isn't as important as work results. Social standing comes and goes without much you can do and you can put way too much effort into trying to keep it."

Did you ever go through actual bullying?

When you stepped out of the classroom and into the corridor or the schoolyard, were you ever afraid of getting a rough time beyond what you could even possibly prepare for?

Did you have "comrades" clench their fists, while others looked away, so as not to get victimised themselves?

Or perhaps because the ringleader (who was getting therapy, who had a teacher mother) had convinced them it actually was for my good?

But whether for their safety or for shady theories about my needs, they did look away. Did you get used to a certain gang clenching fists and telling you "now you tell us how it is..." and actually going through an interrogation?

Did you feel like a Catholic or a Protestant on the wrong side of Belfast? And that every day, except weekends? And even weekends, once on boarding school?

Celina Kiss

@Hans-Georg Lundahl yikes at your lack of respect for human beings and insistence on witholding education from children

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Celina Kiss It is not lack of respect for a bully to get him out of where he bullies.

You might love foxes, just not among your hens.

School education is not the only education available, both homeschooling and learning a trade are valid alternatives for a teen.

A bully is showing one thing very clearly to me about the underlying cause of his aggressions - he doesn't enjoy having education foisted on him galore by teachers who are stronger than him. That's why he's looking for someone he can educate.

So, if he doesn't enjoy getting education at school, what's disrespectful about sending him away?

Giving him what he very obviously wants is obviously anything but disrespectful to him. You can do it in a disrespectful way, but it is not disrespectful.

School education is not salvific, getting expelled from school is not getting excommunicated from the Church outside which there is no salvation.

Hell Kitty

@Hans-Georg Lundahl There's so many ways of bullying. I luckily wasn't abused physically too much, but being laughed at, not understanding what I ever did to those people. I didn't have friends to start with and when I eventually had one, I was clinging to her, driving her off with it.
I couldn't prepare for what people said. It's never been my way of thinking and most likely never will be.
I only just learned why I see things different, feel different etc last year. I AM different. It's not something bad. It's me. It allows me to analyse differently, to view things differently. I am also glad I only learned of the why so late in life as I may have choosen a different path to encounter things, go about studying etc. Would I like to leave out my childhood and teenage years? Leave out the humiliating ways people behaved towards me? Of course! I'd love to never having felt all that. Not having to decide if I want to live or not. At some point I decided to bear the pain and stay strong. I didn't want my family to hurt, didn't want those bullies to win. Was it easy to pull through? No. But me being who I am allowed me to stand by my decision. So far, nothing changed my resolve to live my life and make the best of it.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Hell Kitty "Would I like to leave out my childhood and teenage years?"

Well, how about leaving other children and teens less scars?

By abolishing school compulsion.

Ni' rassas

@Hans-Georg Lundahl I can clearly see that you never left that victim mindset and you still appear to be under the impression that you are the target of oppression and persecution.

There is little to no reason to talk to you about anything, because that claustrophobic mindset of self-segredation is really disgusting und I really don't want to spoil my life thinking in that kind of terms.

Did it ever cross your mind that these "feel good" phrases could actually have something true to them?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas Yeah, right.

If I want others protected from what happened to me, I'm self degrading, making myself a victim.

Serves the cause of people who want to perpetate the evil system of school compulsion and the corrupt system of therapy.

Feeling good is one thing, but when certain people around me arrange certain things, I can hardly pretend I am not a target. No. It is not about the ones who targetted me back then. It is about the ones who target me now.

But why should I count you as one of them? You want to feel good, and f... the rest who are being bullied now, if their option of getting away is actually getting away from the school. They are not you, and they don't make you feel good.

For my part, I do sth by writing.

Ni' rassas

@Hans-Georg Lundahl thanks for the laugh mate

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas Enjoy. You might need it.

Ni' rassas

@Hans-Georg Lundahl Eh, the ocean is thirsty, ya know?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Ni' rassas What's that supposed to mean?

Nika

I feel exactly the same! Of course it was awful but I shudder to think what my parents homeschooling would have been like,,,
Ultimately, a lot of parents get children out of a sort of sense of social obligation and even besides outright abusive parents, a lot just aren't prepared to do something teachers study for and get trained for for years.
Homeschooling may work if it's heavily regulated and checked on.
Although the experience of school did do a ton to prepare me for working life (although I've barely started). Especially with school valuing discussion and oral participation a lot, as well as the experience interacting with people I don't necessarily like all that much (not the bullies, just people that aren't my cup of tea) but have to work with regardless.
Even though I was bullied until grade 6, I did make a few very good friends later that I still talk to at times and the positive social experience from that helped me open up more and learn how to interact with people again.

The German school system does have a lot of issues, but I think being mandatory for children isn't one of them.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Nika " but I shudder to think what my parents homeschooling would have been like,,,"

So, because your parents wouldn't have been good tutors, other children and teens than the one you were should be deprived of homeschooling as well?

"Even though I was bullied until grade 6,"

Wait, you were only bullied as a child, never as a teen?

Nikki H

@Motion in Mind Abuse in childhood does not set up one for life. What a ridiculous comment.