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Bullying in school should simply not be tolerated. I'm not talking about some liberal touchy-feely solution to this problem. I'm not talking about "counseling" of bullies. I'm not talking about any of that.

I'm talking about simply kicking the bullies out of school. Period. End of story.

Hey, the world needs gas station attendants, burger flippers and street cleaners too. And most bullies end up taking those jobs anyhow. So why keep them in school where all they do is harass the kids who actually want to learn something and make something of themselves?

I know exactly what it was like to be bullied and "socially isolated." I have a mild case of Tourette's Syndrome and my twitches made me a social outcast and the target of bullies the entire time I was in school. I had "friends" desert me because they didn't want to become the targets of bullies themselves. So I was left on my own. Screw the people who are saying here that I should have just toughened up and that life's not fair, blah, blah, blah. I did toughen up, but it made no difference. They just came at me 4 on one or 5 on one. I already knew that life wasn't fair - I didn't need that lesson reinforced day after day with constant verbal and physical harrassment. It got so bad in high school that I couldn't go into the cafeteria or the bathrooms, except after school, where I would hide in the bathroom for a half hour so that I didn't have to get beat up on my way home.

My public school education was ruined by these thugs. Good thing I joined the Marine Corps to get the hell out of that environment. And good thing that instead of turning to drugs or other self-destructive ways to ease my disenchantment with life in general, I simply lost myself in books. And I never stopped reading to this day so that I am as educated, if not better educated, than just about any college grad.

Our public high schools have turned into jungles and I have no reason they are any better today, even with all the wishy-washy "zero-tolerance" policies towards physical violence. The problem can only be solved by throwing the disruptive kids out of school and turning our public schools into institutions of learning once again - not warehouses for troubled kids.

Fantastic post!

Thank You for your honesty

from a home-educating mom of a child who was also the target of bullies -- took him out of the gov'ment school system and he's grown to become a sweet and yet quite confident young man (on the Dean's list at college before he has "officially" graduated from high school)

"Screw the people who are saying here that I should have just toughened up and that life's not fair, blah, blah, blah. I did toughen up, but it made no difference." Absolutely - your whole post puts it so well. I was sorry to read of your ordeal, I could identify with a lot of it. But in my case, I came from an unstable family background and was constantly swapped around relatives. Most of whom did not want me there, and didn't mind letting me know it. I was a clumsy and shy girl, an obvious target for school bullies, and yet I somehow escaped most of that. Instead, I got bullied by adults at home, and I often walked slowly home from school, trembling because I knew they were going to have another go at me. I met a few nasty kids while growing up, but none of them had a patch on the emotionally abusive adults. Like you, I read a lot.