I started wearing glasses in second grade. My last name was a synonym for cranky. I had freckles. I moved four times during grade school. Now I’m a trial lawyer and a really good one. I probably wouldn’t have had the back bone to be one if I had been one of the popular kids. Did I mention that my favorite Harry Potter character is Luna Lovegood?
I have always thought that the upswing in “bullying” is due to the fact that through imbecile sero-tolerance rules, if a kid fights back against a bully, he is considered as guilty as the bully, and suffers accordingly.
This is deranged, as bullies are generally not the kind who are going to excel in life and the kids they bully generally are. Bullies therefore have nothing to lose in being suspended.
I remember back in the old, uncivilized days, when the unruly kids were marched down to the PE Coaches office, and paddled silly. No kid wanted that and it was an excellent deterrent. But, as a geek who was picked on, it was fully worth it to pop a bully in the mouth and then watch him get it far harder from the coach than I did. They knew who was the instigator and who was the victim, and meted out punishment accordingly.
Now there is no recourse. No ability to fight back. It’s like.. ‘rats run things or something...
That encourages bullies and discourages kids today from finding the backbone to deal with the problem the way it should be dealt with.
I was sort of a bully in school.
Changed schools, wound up getting bullied myself.
I never thought either circumstance was the end of the world.
And here I am today, humanity’s greatest hope and the very model of reason and compassion.
Fish lips?
Looks more like thin lips or lisp.
“Childhood is safer than ever before, but...”
Safer??? Oh, really? Let’s see, we butcher millions in the womb, so the danger starts at conception.
Then we put the little ones in DAY CARE.
Then when they are old enough to thrust into kindergarten (and get rid of them for the day), we turn them over to ATHEISTIC BRAINWASHING.
Then they “graduate” (utterly uneducated)... and they despise their parents.
Doesn’t sound very “safe” to me.
Didn’t B. Hussein 0bama appoint Kevin Jennings as our “safe school tsar” as one of his first acts to fundamentally transform America? I understand Jennings even had the full support of NAMBLA, so what’s he been doing about the “bullying crisis”?
This guy is way off the mark. Bullying IS worse now, and here’s why:
Parents are worse.
Been to a kids’ sports game lately? The parents in the stands are rude, belligerent, selfish, entitled and lazy.
Their children are just like them.
If your kid is always right, if he/she has been goaded to succeed at all costs and trample over others to get there — be the prettiest, the best soccer player, get into Harvard — you are creating a bully. If you give in to their whining and agree that they have to have the limited edition Nikes even though you’re behind in the mortgage — you’re creating little boy and girl d-bags who send kids with glasses sobbing in the restroom every lunch hour.
And if bullying isn’t “worse” now, how do you account for the fact that teen shooting sprees were utterly unknown in this country until the last decade of the twentieth century?
Helicopter parents who want to keep their kids inside bubble wrap.
Such kids are useless when they are supposed to be ready to work in this society. They hare softer than the underbelly on a possum.
While it’s tragic and horrible when kids kill themselves let’s face it, anybody that commits suicide because people were mean to them wasn’t going to last in this world. Life throws a lot of nasty stuff at us, stuff that makes teenage bullying seem like a vacation, burying parents, dumped by SOs, fired from jobs, natural disaster, friends with terminal cancer. Being bullied in your youth is your chance to build the emotional callouses you need to survive a future that no matter how blessed will kick your ass a few times.