Bullying in Schools

The school district my daughter attends, like so many others now, are actively trying to fight bullying in their halls.

When I went to meet with some teachers I happened to see some of the materials out promoting the pre-packaged program on which the district spent a pretty penny on; posters dotted the halls replete with trite slogans and various papers with crayon drawings and misspelled phrases by the students in the elementary schools.

But the thing that surprised me most was that in this program there are forms where teachers fill in incident reports for bullying. There were a series of labels for which you got into trouble...you were a bully, a henchman (aren't they the first ones to be smacked around by Batman?), or a bystander.

Yes. Bystander.

I remember when I was growing up we called this "minding your own business." I wasn't a victim of bullying...I didn't actively seek trouble, and I didn't actively cause trouble (outside of being a class clown, anyway).

But the current system of education teaches kids that minding your own business makes you an accomplice to bullying.

I talked to a teacher about this; she said that she's torn with her own personal opinion on this issue because while she agrees that children should be active in preventing bullying, she remembers when she was in school and she stuck up for another kid being bullied. She ended up being punched in the nose.

Every day there's bullying. As adults, we call it office politics. Or we call it someone annoying the bejebus out of us. Here's a list of what constitutes bullying (according to this site):

• constant nit-picking, fault-finding and criticism of a trivial nature - the triviality, regularity and frequency betray bullying; often there is a grain of truth (but only a grain) in the criticism to fool you into believing the criticism has validity, which it does not; often, the criticism is based on distortion, misrepresentation or fabrication
• simultaneous with the criticism, a constant refusal to acknowledge you and your contributions and achievements or to recognize your existence and value
• constant attempts to undermine you and your position, status, worth, value and potential
• where you are in a group (eg at work), being singled out and treated differently; for instance, everyone else can get away with murder but the moment you put a foot wrong - however trivial - action is taken against you
• being isolated and separated from colleagues, excluded from what's going on, marginalized, overruled, ignored, sidelined, frozen out, sent to Coventry
• being belittled, demeaned and patronised, especially in front of others
• being humiliated, shouted at and threatened, often in front of others
• being overloaded with work, or having all your work taken away and replaced with either menial tasks (filing, photocopying, minute taking) or with no work at all
• finding that your work - and the credit for it - is stolen and plagiarised
• having your responsibility increased but your authority taken away
• having annual leave, sickness leave, and - especially - compassionate leave refused
• being denied training necessary for you to fulfill your duties
• having unrealistic goals set, which change as you approach them
• ditto deadlines which are changed at short notice - or no notice - and without you being informed until it's too late
• finding that everything you say and do is twisted, distorted and misrepresented
• being subjected to disciplinary procedures with verbal or written warnings imposed for trivial or fabricated reasons and without proper investigation
• being coerced into leaving through no fault of your own, constructive dismissal, early or ill-health retirement, etc

Wow...most people are bullied just by going to work.

So is it worth the money and time being spent on "anti-bullying programs"? Is it being blown out of proportion? Or is there a genuine need to bring this into the public awareness?

Surely the stories I hear about are those like the one from this guy, now a nearly perfectly adjusted (if not really bitter about his childhood) adult working at Google. I thought these were extreme stories, things that happen to a relatively small number of people, like winning the lottery or managing to get out of debt.

When I was growing up I experienced very little outstanding examples of bullying despite being fat and definitely a nonfan of athletics and sports. I figured that most of those stories were exaggerated, seeing as I was a prime stereotypical target for bullying and I wasn't actually experiencing it. Maybe someone reading this could post comments about their experiences growing up, or as parents with kids in school now.

Is bullying really a big problem?