Posted on 04/01/2006 10:14:46 AM PST by billorites
David Knight couldn't look at the salmon entree, the chocolate mousse or the strawberry tarts at the conference luncheon.
He had to address a crowd of Montreal educators and he was nervous. Eating would give the former bullying victim-turned activist a bout of stomach cramps - the kind he used to get as a teenager, when he had to return to high school after lunch and face his tormenters.
Now 21, Knight is wiry and stands more than six feet tall. He has a steady girlfriend and loves fixing up old cars. He's wearing jeans and a pin from Canada's air force - where he's an officer cadet - affixed to his blazer lapel at Monday's conference.
But at times, Knight still feels like the 5-foot-4, 120-pound teen who was shoved, punched and robbed by bullies for years at his school near Burlington, Ont.
"I used to fit really well into garbage cans," he recalled.
David Knight and his mother, Nancy, first made headlines in June 2002 for suing an Ontario school board for $500,000 in damages, a public apology and a promise to come up with concrete plans to deal with bullying.
Their case, which is still winding through the justice system, alleges Knight's principal and board officials knew of the bullying for years but didn't stop it.
Knight spoke Monday at a conference on bullying, organized by the Centre for Educational Leadership, a pedagogical think-tank based at McGill University.
The Knights are one of a growing number of Canadian families seeking legal recourse against former tormenters or against schools officials for allowing the taunts to continue.
On April 10, Ghyslain Raza's $160,000 lawsuit against three ex-classmates is to be heard by a Quebec Court judge in Trois Rivieres. Raza - who gained notoriety in 2003 as the "Star Wars Kid" - is suing his former classmates for posting a private video of him wielding a mock "light sabre" on the Internet.
Shaheen Sharrif, a McGill professor specializing in education and the law, argues that school principals have a legal duty to stop bullying if they are aware of it. For her doctoral thesis, Sharrif studied more than a dozen cases where parents in the U.S., Canada and England initiated legal proceedings over a case of school bullying. She noticed a trend of school officials failing to enforce their own anti-bullying policies.
Knight's mother filed the lawsuit when David was shoved into a locker and punched in the face during the end of Grade 12.
They also pressed criminal charges against the bully; the judge ordered him to do community service. Yet the bully had his own emotional problems. In 2003, he committed suicide.
Ugh.
Seriously, bullying is a problem. Stopping bullies is one of the things I would expect a school to be able to do. Other things I would expect a school to be able to do are: teach math, teach English, teach history. Unfortunately, government schools have shown an inability to do any of these things well.
Sorry, but that Raza kid needs a smack. Put the broom stick down and join the world.
Yep. The kids are in school by mandate. They are a captive audience. The schools have a duty to protect their charges, or at least make a good attempt.
"I hope they both win their lawsuits"
Me, too. A bully is the one of the lowest forms of life.
I agree. Bullies need to be stopped in our schools.
However, you are going to see a number of people posting in this thread, and other threads on bullying, who think that bullying is a normal part of growing up, and that the victims should either shut up and take it or resort to violence to stop it.
Very sad.
I think there was a bully in my school named tuffydoodle.
He drew scathing cartoons.
So, the big guy puts his gloves on and is just grinning ear to ear and the little guy is pretty scared. Then one of the coaches tells the big guy to "turn around". While one coach tied the big guys hands behind his back another coach tied his ankles together. The coaches told the senior that anytime the freshman asked the same thing that was about to happen would happen again.
What happened next was very interesting to watch and only took about 3 or so minutes from start to finish. It might have taken longer except the gloves were heavy for the little guy and he got tired. I think he felt kin of sorry for the big guy to who was screaming like crazy for him to stop. You might think at this point that even though the big guy had his hands tied behind his back and his ankles tied together that the little guy probably could not hurt the big ape because the little guy had boxing gloves on. That would have made sense except for that the coaches figured that it was also fair to hand the little guy a aluminum baseball bat. I guess they thought that the little guy could not hurt the big guy too much by swinging a baseball bat while wearing boxing gloves. They were very very wrong. That little kid hit several home runs.
Oddly enough, well maybe not THAT oddly, the big guy changed his ways after this experience.
Being physically small and bookish, I was picked on a lot in school, but I never went and sued anybody over it. I muddled through and dealt with it and now that crap is just a distant memory.
Right.
That must have been quite a school.
Were you the little kid?
bump
Nope. By the time the little guy was a senior that he had gotten pretty big and was known for protecting the freshmen. He also turned out to be pretty good at baseball. LOL!
Fighting back is the way to deal with bullies.
All of this "anti-bullying" stuff is crap, anyways.
There are plenty of ways of fighting back, too. I mostly fought back psychologically. Or, alternatively, I adopted the pre-emeptive strike approach.
I remember this one time, where I was sitting behind a well-known bully in English class, and I spent the whole class tormenting him about his discount-store jacket and clothing until finally he leaped over the desk at me, only to be restrained by three people as I laughed hysterically.
I f he would have beat the bully's ass when he was in school the bully may have straightened out his life
They are both losers
That being said, however, I have to say also that I am concerned that this off-and-on again press campaign against bullying in school has a huge hidden agenda, that it will eventually end up being all about "gay" students being bullied, and no one else's bullying problems will count. Having followed this topic for some time, I feel I have seen plenty of reason to suspect this from the content and tone of earlier press coverage. We hardly need another professional victim class to add to the ones we already have.
Bullies are a horrible life form. I wish there was a formula for punishing them and stopping their behavior...one that is acceptable in public schools.
Trite post, but heartfelt sentiment.
I have never bought into the asinine claim that behavior (assault) that would result in arrest and jail time if committed by an adult against an adult is just a "kids being kids" and ought to be ignored and winked at when it involves the younger set.
No one should have to tolerate that kind of abuse in a civilized society.
I liked your son's response. He will have the last laugh as he goes on to be very successful in life. Unfortunately, I don't think a lot of kids have the same self confidence as your son. It often has a much more negative effect on some. I have worked as a 4th grade teacher this year and have seen the bullies emerge during the second half of the year. Yes, it seems to be a natural occurance, probably related to increased hormones, the beginnings of puberty. I do believe that schools and teachers have a responsibility to intervene in this kind of situation. It is very difficult when the parents of the bully are encouraging the behavior though. I had one dad tell me that if his son was smarter and stronger than the other boys, then God obviously wanted him to have his way. After this conference, I decided to work on bully avoidance skills with the other students instead of the bully himself. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. You have obviously done a great job with your son.
His child may be on his way to the state peniteniary where he will share a cell with 6" 8" 400 lb tattooed biker named Bubba, who will give him a graduate education in social darwinism.
Come to think of it, when it comes to bullies, prisons and public schools have a lot in common.
I agree with you 100%. It is a problem and needs to be stopped.
Here is my experience.
Came to high school as a scared little Freshman who became a bully magnet for the older and bigger punks in my suburban school.
By the middle of Tenth Grade I learned the secret of getting them off my case-be a troulemaker and disruptor.It worked.I became"one of the guys",starting riots and throwing things around class.I got"respect",if not acceptance.
Only problem was that it dragged down my academic record significantly and I wasted a lot of time goofing off when I should have been learning.
But I had to do what I had to do to survive.
I didn't get picked on, but i was always jumping into the middle of a bully situation to bail out the kid getting pulverized. Always. I had no fear. I didn't care how big the bully was or how many thugs he had with him. I would work to stop the assault long enough for the victim to withdraw to safety or for the bully to decide to waste his time doing something else. There were the occasional mutual affrays between kids that didn't involve a bully scenario. A bullying situation was different. In my schools there were always just a few bullies and everyone knew exactly who they were. Forty years some of these bullies are dead, in prison, or just miserable failures. I know of one who has been reasonably successful but I recently became aware that he is being actively investigated for inappropriate and unethical conduct in his business affairs. Like most bullies, he has an exaggerated sense of his own entitlement and a poorly developed sense of appropriate boundaries.
LOL. Maybe then dad will tell me that God wanted him to go to prison. Well...maybe not. Sadly, this is not a public school. It is a Catholic School. While this does give me many more alternatives in discipline etc. it is hard to fight a dad who feels like his child is a "God-endorsed bully"..
A friend and I had gone to play tennis at an outdoor court in a park near our homes. After we had been there about an hour the local gang of thugs, about eight in all showed up like a pack of feral dogs looking some carrion to roll in. Discretion being the better part of valor, my friend and I slipped out the opposite side of the court just as they were coming in to pick a fight with us. The came around the court and started after us at full speed. It was easy to outrun them, but it was still galling that we hadn't been been able to finish our match.
The following summer we were at the tennis court again and we were able to finish a match. As we were walking across the lawn we heard someone utter a foul string of expletives at us. Off to the side about 40 feet away, the chief thug from the year earlier was sitting on the grass with two two smirking bimbos in halter tops. I turned to my friend and said, "Is that Donny S?" My friend laughed and said, "Yeah. And he's without his gang. What an idiot." I handed my racket to my friend and said, "Hold this," and started walking toward chief thug. As I got within ten feet I removed my shirt (I was 17 and quite buff), and said loud enough for the thug and his chickies to hear, "Hold this too, I don't want to get blood on it."
Just at that moment the thug's eyes lit up with the kind of look you might expect from a paratrooper who has just pulled his ripcord and realized someone had packed his chute with laundry. In a split second it was off to the races with me in pursuit this time. I caught him on a sidewalk, tackled him, and rode him like a skateboard for about ten feet. Do you know what ten feet of sidewalk abrasion with a 160 pounds providing downpressure will do to a body? It isn't pretty. I got him in a headlock and peppered his skull with about 30 quick knuckle tenderizers. The I let him up. He turns to me, tears in his eyes and says, "You wait here while I go get my friends."
Of course I didn't wait for him to get his friends. I laughed, put my shirt back on and went home. What a chump. I saw him a few weeks later downtown, about 50 yards away on the same side of the street. As soon as he recognized me he sprinted across the street to the other side.
As I recall, he died from drug-related issues about five years ago.
Would I give everyone the same advice? No.
But it worked for me.
In many cases, its not merely a case of "boys being boys." Its a case of a group of kids ganging up on a kid who has NO INTEREST in fighting. This happened all the time when I was a kid, with no consequences for the perps.
Looks like John Carmack, creator of Doom, Quake, etc.
LOL....excellent
--Seriously, bullying is a problem.
I think it is too. Regardless of the fact that there have allways been bullies, there's always been a lot of problems associated with bullying and since the sixties there has been less discipline in the schools.
My son told me what was happening and asked me what he should do about it. The school district has a policy that anyone involved in a fight will be suspended for the year, victim or aggressor.
I told him that he should not be a wuss, but to try and avoid a fight if possible. (Side note.... my son was a black belt at the time and wanted to educate the other kids).
Anyway the kids were giving him a rash of crap and he took some martial arts stance and informed them he had a black belt and wasn't going to take their crap anymore.
They backed off, then started asking around my son's friends who verified his training. I told my son that if they started up again he had my OK to kick their butts. I'd home school him.
Problem never happened again and my son had a great high school experience after that.
Funny thing, when he went to his first day at Kindergarten one kid was picking on a little guy. My son stepped in and broke it up. I was sure proud of him! He must have picked up a few ideas being the son of two cops. hahaha
True, but living well is the best revenge. I would have preferred he join the Canadian Marines, but that's another matter.
The key to bullies is, they can't fight. They don't have to, they choose their victims according to who will not swing back.
I watched a bully give my 12 year old cousins a hard time every day for a week. This kid was just a fat little kid who used a big mouth to back up nothing much, and 50 pounds and 6 inches on kids his age. I was 15, so I coached one cousin to simply give him a good shot to the stomach, when he started his daily bs pushing kids around and punching them in the back of the head. He did, and the bully ran screaming and crying all the way home, you could hear him two blocks away, you'd think he'd had a foot chewed off.
After the mothers ceased fire (Italian neighborhood in Westchester NY, boy did I get an earful, the kids mother was threatening to put ME in jail), the kid was no longer feared, and took his rightful place in the pecking order. To this day, my cousin that punched him remembers that day with pride, how he beat up the neighborhood bully.
Something similar happened with my oldest daughter. 4 of my 5 kids are nearing black belts in Tae Kwon Do. One day, a boy wouldn't leave my daughter alone (she's 16). She finally got a bellyfull and nailed him with one of her fancy kicks right to his stomach. She didn't hurt him, but he got the message loud and clear that if she wanted to, she could. He never bothered her again.
Your attitude is a prefect example of the indiffence towards bulling that cause the victims to eventually snap and go on homocidial killing spree.
It's an unfortunate fact of human sociology that some people require an ass-kicking to come 'round...
If you went to a public school 25 years ago, and walked into one today, the differences are frightening. Discipline is non-existent, and even parents are afraid to discipline thier own children, for fear of the government coming down on them...
I was in the 5th grade before I realized that the most effective way to deal with a bully was a 2x4....
Do that once or twice, and they tend to learn that there is cost associated with the bullying, and it's generally not one they are willing to pay......
The same applies to Governments in Human affairs..
Sometimes, you have to have the courage to stand up to the bully, and smack him with overwhelming force....
Machivelli even knew this 500 years ago!
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