No More Bullying! Except for a Good Cause
There was an excellent article a few days ago on some of the reasons why the government is too big, expensive and pervasive. There are additional reasons, including the very nature of the bureaucratic process and the propensity of many to demand that the government do something no matter how trivial their cause may be. Since few politicians feel that they can get elected or reelected by failing to construct or at least to stumble onto bandwagons, that’s what they do. Fortunately for them, President Obama is spearheading a new warm and fuzzy domestic initiative. They can clamber onto his rainbow colored bandwagon and ride along; they may not even have to get off and push.
Tearing himself away from the difficult responsibilities of dithering about a plethora of domestic and international problems, and while being decisive on some really important stuff such as videotaping his NCAA picks for subsequent broadcast, President Obama found time in his busy schedule on March 10 to use his “bully pulpit” (interesting phrase that, in context) to decry the bullying of children. As to this critical national issue, President Obama’s White House has taken “full leadership.” Bully for them all. President Obama knows personally all about bullying; he has bravely acknowledged that as a child people bullied him on account of his big ears and funny name (he was called “Barry” until he decided, when in college, to revert to Barack); it must have been a horrible cross to bear.
Approximately one hundred and fifty anti-bullying advocates — lobbyists for gays and lesbians, legislators, White House officials, at least one cabinet secretary and the first lady — assembled at the While House:
… to cheer for increased government monitoring and intervention in Facebook conversations, in playgrounds and in schoolrooms around the country.
No officials at the televised East Room roll-out of the White House’s anti-bullying initiative suggested any limits to government intervention against juvenile physical violence, social exclusion or unwanted speech. None mentioned the usefulness to children of unsupervised play. None suggested there were any risks created by a government program to enforce children’s approval of other children who are unpopular, overweight, or who declare themselves to be gay, lesbians or transgender.
“It breaks our hearts to think that any child feels afraid every day in the classroom, on the playground, or even online,” first lady Michelle Obama said.
“We’re going to prevent bullying and create an environment where every single one of our children can thrive,” the president said, as he announced a series of government actions intended to fund, guide and pressure state and local officials to adopt regulations and programs that would shield children from insults or social-exclusion as well as from physical harm. (emphasis added)
Nothing was said at the White House love-in about the 145,100 public school teachers attacked, or the other 276,700 threatened, by students at their schools as reported in the Department of Education’s Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2010. Be that as it may, having already taken over the regulation of school bake sales and lunches, why not stumble into this arena as well? Kids might bully each other for their yummy treats.
Some bullying is, apparently, more importantly destructive than other:
Joel Burns, councilman in a Fort Worth, Texas, applauded the president’s focus on kids who say they are gay or lesbian. “The president did not shy away from LGBT as a topic,” he said. Also, the president endorsed “enumeration,” which is especially important, he said. Enumeration is the specific inclusion of gay, lesbian and transgender categories as deserving of regulatory protection.
Legislation against bullying at the college level has been reintroduced to “require colleges and universities that get federal money to adopt policies that prohibit harassment based on a student’s sexual orientation, race, gender, and other factors.” Although that and similar legislation seems unlikely to get very far, progress has been rapid on other fronts in the fight and there is already a White House anti-bullying website describing all sorts of initiatives. There will be more:
Federal officials can push the initiative forward with many other tools, including agency employees, federal grants to advocacy groups, agency regulations, cooperation from companies such as Facebook, and the White House’s bully pulpit. In the next few weeks, Facebook is set to announce new steps that could allow kids to highlight online conversations and insults for subsequent inspection by adults, school officials and regulators.
What this really is, is PC with a new wrapper.
My experience telling the teacher;
1) “Ignore them, they’ll grow tired of it.”
WRONG! What they will do is intensify until they finally do get your attention.
2) “Don’t you think you bring some of this on yourself?”
Oh, now there’s a brilliant response. You MADE the bully attack you. Kind of like that girl really wanted to be raped? Or the Wife Made the abusive husband abuse her.
NO I didin’t think I brought it on myself.
And finally, after gaining no satisfaction from Teachers and School officials, I determined I had to defend myself. That brought out the BIG ONE.
3) “It Takes Two To Fight.”
WRONG! One not fighting back will still get the snot kicked out of him. That little gem got me a 3 day suspension.
And then finally, after having been pushed around for the better part of my fifth grade year I took a softball bat to the three fellows who had been the primary perpetrators of the bullying all along.
4) “Violence is never the answer.”
This preceeding my 5 day suspension and prohibition from participating in softball during my remaining days in Elementry School.
Now then, here’s the funny thing. That Violence that was NEVER the answer, well for some strange reason those three fellows chose someone else to pick on the rest of the year, and during my sixth grade year as well. The never wanted anything to do with me after that.
All in all, 5 days out, and no more softball were a small price to pay for the peace of mind I had for many years after that. Seems I’d developed a bit of a reputation with would-be bullies into Junior High.
I got the responses you mentioned from my elementary school principal, whom I blamed more than the kids. Years later, when the school board was going to kick him upstairs — during the same meeting when a classmate and I were recognized for sharing the top score on the Regents Scholarship Exam, no less — I pointed out that his new title (in the budget) of “Assistant to the Superintendent” was redundant when we already had an “Assistant Superintendent”. The school board president then had to admit that they were kicking him upstairs. That is how, in our town, the name “John Leifheit” became emblematic of school district waste, if not rank incompetence.
3) “It Takes Two To Fight.”
WRONG! … after having been pushed around for the better part of my fifth grade year I took a softball bat to the three fellows who had been the primary perpetrators of the bullying all along.
Cannot agree with this more. I did the same thing to my tormentors and then, all of the sudden, they wanted to be my friend. My natural response: FYATHYRIO!
Sometimes violence is the ONLY answer. Case in point; today’s news out of Libya.
Good for you. What I want to know is why suspension. In all these articles on bullying I always see “both students were suspended”. First, whatever happened to after school detention that doesn’t go on your record? And second, has anyone stopped to consider what suspending both bully and victim teaches? Besides reading and writing, schools are supposed to be teaching students civic responsibility. With the current policy they are teaching a)no, to self defence, b)there is no right and wrong c)decent people sit down and shut up when confronted by bullies (and dictators).
In truth knocking those bullies blocks off probably did them a life long favor.as well. If never confronted they might have grown up to be full blown sociopaths. I just don’t think you should have been suspended for it.
The three bullies were not suspended.
In fact, I don’t recall them ever getting grief when I was complaining to the teachers and prinipal regarding their actions.
My first suspension was for back talk to the principal reagrding his pronouncement that it takes two to fight. (Mind you the fact that I didn’t say snot, I used a common colloquialism for excrement.)
The second suspension was issued because, clearly, the three bullies were the victims, not I. They kept trying to make me feel ashamed of what I had done, to this day I refuse! I always felt that somehow I was an annoyance to the teachers when I was telling them what happened and the bullies were who they favored for some reason.
Like the U.N. and Israel or Obama and his foreign policy (Wait a minute, wasn’t Obama a teacher?) it came across that the real victim wasn’t important, only the perpetrators.
I’m sorry, JD, but the teacher was right on this one. It does take two to make a fight.
But it only takes ONE to make a massacre!
Personally, given a choice between being on the receiving end of a massacre, and getting into a fight, I prefer a fight.
Apparently, so you you! Good!
I have always and will always hold that it dose not take two to fight.
In fact that montra is EXACTLY wrong.
It takes two to make peace.
Hence there is only one border on the face of planet earth with NO military presence.
The United States and Canada.
This is all such crap it’s unbelievable. Schools are already under govt scrutiny where more minorities are suspended or expelled than their percentage of the student body. The only bullies who will be punished are white, straight, Christian, males. You know, the same people who don’t get hired under Affirmative Action. And can’t be intimidated by blacks at the polls. I don’t blame minorities for any of this. If you let people of other races or religions live in your country, they’re gonna start trying to take over. If you are 2/3 of the population and let them, whose fault is that?
JD, you are exactly right. As a mother and grandmother, school and neighhood bullies have been a big part of my life. When bullies are small their parents defend them. When bullies grow up teachers and schools defend them. When they become adults they rob, murder and rape and the courts defend them. You see it is all society’s fault. As I see it bullies are maufactured by bad parents. To all reading this there is a thing in society called shunning. This should be brought back and used against any bullies and their parents. If they are isolated they can only bully each other.
Surely you expected nothing else? After all, Democrats are intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us. To expect them to cleave to a moral standard that implies otherwise would be absurd.
Note also that they believe they hold a monopoly on truth. That entitles them to use slander, denigration, vilification, outright threats, and any other imaginable rhetorical tactic in public discourse. After all, in the defense of absolute truth, nothing they say could possibly be wrong, right? Right?
(Say, haven’t these guys spent a few decades trying to convince us that there are no absolute truths?)
I’m still waiting for Obama to give a speech to all of his Union friends and to the Democrats in Wisconsin about maintaining this new era of “civility” he called for after that Congresswoman was shot in Arizona. Yes, I’m still waiting for that speech to be made. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…
Watching the grade school kids taunt legislators from the Capitol balcony in Wisconsin with their union sponsored, teacher taught limerick is of course state approved bullying. I guess some bullies are more equal than others.
4. Sara Burke
“Watching the grade school kids taunt legislators from the Capitol balcony in Wisconsin with their union sponsored, teacher taught limerick is of course state approved bullying. I guess some bullies are more equal than others.”
This is appalling. Union funded, state paid teachers, surely somewhere the laws of the state were broken. Children used and taught Alinsky rules. Shame on you America. Wisconsin has more problems than just union teachers. Shame on you Wisconsin. Glad I don’t live there, not a good place for kids to grow up.
What do you expect, from a Political Party that seems to have NO PROBLEM with a Black President’s Black Attorney General, running a Justice Department that only Prosecutes Cases FOR Blacks AGAINST Whites?
“We must REWARD OUR FRIENDS and PUNISH OUR ENEMIES.”
It’s a crime that we don’t have a Functioning Press.
I have always thought that the school anti-bullying effort was nothing but a lot of sloganeering nonsense.
Instead, what the schools REALLY need to do is to identify those disruptive, violent kids, remove them from the classroom, and give them the well deserved attention they crave.
I also believe that suspension and expulsion are tools that too many shy away from. If the child’s parents or guardians refuse to deal with this situation, then LET THE KID FAIL! Oh, and before kicking him or her out of the door, take their DNA and let them know that if it turns up in a crime scene anywhere, we’ll know who they are and we’ll go after them. If they become an adult without getting in to trouble, the DNA records will be expunged upon request.
The most important lesson we can impart to our children is that we do not owe them an education. We owe them the opportunity to get educated. There is a difference.
And certainly, no bullying, unless you haven’t hired enough black cops.
I’m sure they will be used to “protect” the voters at the polls in November. You know, the black ones; “My people”.
My son had finally had enough in the sixth grade. He decked the kid and received a one day “in school” suspension. The bully received 3 days “out of school”. Not all principals or vice principals are “progressive”. Some know how the world really works. My instructions to my son were that he was to defend himself and those too weak to defend themselves. He knows he won’t be in trouble with me for doing what is right.
As a martial arts instructor, we teach the kids how to handle it themselves – hopefully short of physically. A lot of bullying is about the bystanders. Bystanders generally side with the bully to keep themselves from getting bullied. We teach our kids to move closer to the bullied kid and try to diffuse the situation with words like “SO?”. Some of them will do it, some of them won’t but it is sure better than anyone but THEIR PARENTS stalking them on facebook.
The grown up versions of bullying are: Community Organizing and Union Organizing – or getting someone else to do your dirty work while you benefit from their activities . Personified and perfected by our little Nincompoop prompter-reader president. By the way he does need his ass kicked. Any volunteers ?
“Unions are thugs, but someone please beat up the President.”
Do you nutjobs think before you write or do you just huff a tank of gasoline and start pounding on the keyboard?
Or are you all just ashamed and embarrassed that for all your huffing and puffing about how your fake astroturfed Tea party movement of “real ‘muricans takin’ muh country back!!”, you’ve been put to shame by a committed populist movement that has a coherent message and real goals, as opposed to a bunch of Fox News-brainwashed motor-scooter-riding old fogies complaining about their taxes when they were actually lowered, and complaining about the big government that pays for their Medicare.
Wow, what an impressive post from a true bully!
Typical leftist filth. Make up something that wasn’t said or implied, and then use it as “proof” of the evil of the right.
The stupidity of it would be funny if the issues weren’t so deadly serious.
Please remember to not feed the troll. It just causes them to breed.
“By the way he does need his ass kicked.”
You’re right. That was uncalled for.
But, the unions do use intimidation tactics to excess. Why do you think they support Card Check legislation? Why allow open ballot voting if not to intimidate? Ludicrous.
Your “committed populist movement” is growing so roundly hated by the rest of the country for its greed and thuggery that it has to throw rocks through our windows and spread nails in our driveways in the dead of night. You can have your “committed populist movement.” I’ll take the rest of America. We’ll see who’s standing at the end.
Apparently you don’t even know what country you live in anymore. Real Americans support labor.
“A majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/28/us/28union-poll-results.html?ref=us
Ah yes, the NYT, the bulwark of integrity in news and comment, aka the Pravda on the Hudson river. Puuuleaze.
Keep on believin’, Bubba. That “majority of Americans” is a Times creation. It’s about as real as the Literary Digest poll that guaranteed that Landon would beat FDR. But you keep on believin’.
Reality will provide the verdict, in 2012 if not sooner. Hope you like what’s coming.
Talk about Oxymoronic a poster with a nic ‘Truth Time’ spouting left wing moonbat lies.
“Real Americans support labor.”
You mean like Obama’s idols FDR and George Meany? What a hoot.
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/fdr-afl-cio-opposed-public-unions.html
So, the President of the free world is flaking on his responsibilities to keep the world safe from aggressors, but to prove he can talk tough, he shows up in the school yard. Let’s see, ‘fail on the national scene, find a smaller venue’ or ‘can’t tame the ocean, go find yourself a puddle.’ What a loser. I can’t forget the photo of him with his little helmet and shorts on a girls bike, looking like a total dweeb.
I find it beyond hypocrisy, beyong chutzpah, beyond godlike arrogance for these two, Barry and Michelle to speechify about bullying. That’s all they’ve done, along with the SEIU since they’ve been in office. Reality will ‘prove the verdict in 2012′ allright – the subterranean tea party/majority of Americans will surface and produce quite a quake removing the One and Michelle from power.
http://potterwilliamsreport.com/2011/03/18/michelles-campaign-against-tortured-fat-children.aspx?ref=rss
The only fights that I got into in school were to beat up bullies and stop them from picking on the weak and defenseless. I never got in trouble for it. Oh how times have changed!
My younger son had difficulty with another boy when he was in about the 7th Grade. We lived on a remote Army Post at the time and the school was on the installation. When I found out that the other boy was not only provoking a fight (or trying to), I called his (the other boy’s) Dad and told him I’d appreciate it if he would talk to his son. I thought that would be the end of it (how little did I know); instead, he stopped my son in the school hallway the next day and said, “So, you had to tell your Daddy, huh? Well, I’ be looking for you after school!” My son ran home through the woods (long way around) to avoid him (and his two friends) who were looking for my son (three on one). He told his Mom and the next afternoon she met all four of them on the path through the woods. She sat two of them down and said, “OK, you want to fight? OK, that’s fine but it will be ‘One on One’ (not all three of them on one)! Oh, and if you don’t like those odds, go get your Mom and she can meet me out here!” No more problems with those three…