[HN Gopher] Highest rates of teen bullying are between friends a...
___________________________________________________________________
Highest rates of teen bullying are between friends and friends-of-
friends: study
Author : thereare5lights
Score : 194 points
Date : 2021-02-20 06:09 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ucdavis.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ucdavis.edu)
| Animats wrote:
| What definition of bullying are they using? The article doesn't
| say. The actual paper [1] sidesteps the issue: "Accordingly, we
| sidestep the conceptual morass of bullying and focus instead on
| the broader term of aggression, which refers to behavior with the
| intent to harm, injure, or cause pain. We focus on several forms
| of peer aggression, including physical (e.g., hitting, kicking),
| verbal (e.g., name-calling, threats), and indirect aggression
| (e.g., spreading rumors, ostracism)."
|
| Bullying used to just mean beating up people physically. That's
| changed. The US Government site on this says "Social bullying
| includes: Leaving someone out on purpose."[2] That's overreach.
| The US has freedom of association as a First Amendment right, and
| that right is not limited to adults.
|
| The article conflates socially competitive behavior with
| bullying. So of course they find it as associated with friends or
| near-friends.
|
| What are the rules of social competition? This is a classic
| subject. See any of Jane Austen's works.[3] Few people are taught
| this explicitly. Women used to be taught it in "finishing
| schools". It was part of the task of Oxford tutors to teach it.
| "My job is to make you a better bastard".
|
| Right now, there's an anime running which teaches this: Jaku-
| Chara Tomozaki-kun.[4] It's also a regular theme in country and
| western music.
|
| [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/712972
|
| [2] https://www.stopbullying.gov/bullying/what-is-bullying
|
| [3] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/105/105-h/105-h.htm
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom-tier_Character_Tomozaki
| ralphc wrote:
| I say this as someone who was a nerd in the '70s, before it was
| cool, but the problem is, we have a bunch of children that needs
| to be taught many subjects to be productive citizens, at a level
| of expertise not seen in history. Their parents go to jobs during
| the day. What is a better solution than what we do right now?
| It's certainly not perfect but what can we do better? In the past
| we had apprentice programs but youth learned one trade, little
| history, math, "social studies", other things we expect people to
| know. We are trying an experiment right now due to the pandemic -
| remote learning. It exposes a digital divide for sure, but we can
| all see where that would be less of an issue in the future. It's
| being called a failure by parents, kids are falling behind,
| mental health issues are climbing. Kids, people in general, need
| some kind of social interaction for their health. So, back to
| school? Back to my original question? What can be better than
| what we do now?
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, there are a limited set of options. *
| school * apprenticeship * one parent (with near
| certainty the mother) must stay home * large extended
| families i.e. grandma raises the kids
|
| All but school are incomplete. A five year old can't
| apprentice. Many people aren't blessed with grandparents close
| by who can raise kids. Stay at home parenting works for some,
| but not single parents- and many women want to work. I get the
| feeling many _"school is just daycare!"_ critics quietly prefer
| women pick between kids & career- though I could be wrong.
|
| It's also important to consider that, for most of human
| history, a child who is with their parents 24/7/365 is an
| anomaly. Kids need socializing with other people, and parents
| need a break. The same way spouses in a healthy relationship
| need time apart.
| monoideism wrote:
| > for most of human history, a child who is with their
| parents 24/7/365 is an anomaly
|
| Where do you get this idea? It's actually the opposite.
| Modern universal schooling is an aberration that only took
| hold in the 1800s, with some schooling for the upper classes
| before that.
|
| For most of recorded history, children helped their parents
| around the house and field, with some going off to an
| apprenticeship around 12-14.
| ip26 wrote:
| Modern schooling is obviously new, but in tribal
| communities the world over, children are watched over by
| many adults over the course of the day.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village
|
| As for recorded history, kids had a lot more unstructured
| time to themselves even fifty years ago to play in the mud
| or run about the neighborhood.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This depends on the meaning of "24" in "24/7/365"
|
| Kids spent a lot of time outside with their peers, and with
| extended families, neighbors, and even alone. Maybe not 9
| hours per day (time kids spend in school (and "afternoon
| care" in my country) with both parents working 8
| hours/day), but still a considerable amount of time, when
| they didnt help with the chores.
|
| It might be anecdotal, but only recently I have seen the
| trend of parents filling up every minute of their kids
| schedules with after school activities, burning out their
| children at a very young age.
| Bakary wrote:
| Better training for teachers, higher barriers to entry, and
| much stronger incentives to be a teacher. Namely, a higher
| salary. With degree inflation, the status of teachers has
| decreased sharply when they are in fact one of the most
| important professions at an aggregate level. There are tons of
| social and economic problems that are directly the result of
| piss-poor education systems.
| whitepaint wrote:
| > Better training for teachers, higher barriers to entry, and
| much stronger incentives to be a teacher.
|
| How do you achieve that? By privatizing schools?
| Bakary wrote:
| Reforming the degrees and schools that train teachers.
| Increasing teacher salaries in the public sector.
| Essentially making it more selective but giving a higher
| reward goes hand in hand. Making it a funnel where a
| portion of unmotivated and planless people go helps neither
| the profession nor the students IMO. The private sector
| usually does fine on its own since they cater to the
| wealthy and have the necessary resources. Some countries
| take teachers very seriously, such as Finland, so it's
| definitely something that is possible to implement if still
| much harder in a very large country.
| imtringued wrote:
| If you really want to privatize schools they absolutely
| most be non profit with salary caps. (not 2x more than the
| median salary). In practice privatization doesn't work
| because rich parents can afford expensive schools and their
| children perform better simply because they aren't poor.
| Additionally, private schools don't take on disabled or
| delayed students because that would ruin profits.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| > as someone who was a nerd in the '70s, before it was cool
|
| > What can be better than what we do now?
|
| HN threads on any education topic are always littered with
| oversimplified causes and "silver bullet" solutions. My guess
| is that it's mostly from the "nerds are cool" generation. Being
| on the cusp of the two generations, I'm not so willing to throw
| out the 100+ years of evolution in institutionalized education.
|
| One thing we can do better now? Bring back and/or increase
| focus on civics, history, and social studies. This for obvious
| reasons, like the right-wing/populist political debacle, but
| also as a way to develop an inherent ambition as a result of a
| better understanding of our society and how it can be changed.
| imtringued wrote:
| >One thing we can do better now? Bring back and/or increase
| focus on civics, history, and social studies. This for
| obvious reasons, like the right-wing/populist political
| debacle, but also as a way to develop an inherent ambition as
| a result of a better understanding of our society and how it
| can be changed.
|
| Extremism and populism aren't caused by children. In fact
| it's the opposite. It's the children that are fighting for
| rational causes. Why do we have "a" Greta Thunberg? Because
| adults failed.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Why do we have "a" Greta Thunberg?
|
| because certain politicians and activists are willing to
| exploit children to promote their cause?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Civics I get, but how the hell will history help?
| BannedQuick wrote:
| Many if we spent more time teaching our AIs to ban all human
| connection instead of only racists, we could stop bullying for
| good.
| rawland wrote:
| "Social Ladder"
|
| What is this exactly? Why does it exist? Which societies have
| such a property?
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest
| yalogin wrote:
| It's not clear to me what the paper thinks bullying is. Clearly
| the bullying depicted in the simpsons is not what's considered
| here. Among friends or a friend network, I n the spectrum where
| does bullying begin and social manipulation end? It would have
| been nice to have some examples.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| What is bullying in this article?
|
| As @animats points out, the research is not using accepted
| Olweus's definition of bullying.
|
| Instead they use aggression and bind it to bullying.
|
| This very much scares me, specially how Kinney's aggression
| includes verbal and indirect aggression.
|
| There are clear cases where most can agree something is verbal
| aggression. My fear is in defining the edges of these verbal
| exchanges.
|
| Who decides the words said were aggressive?
|
| In essence, the research reads like a further lowering tolerance
| bar for others' verbal expression.
|
| In a dystopian world, the solution would be where all
| communications is passed through a system, and pre-approved prior
| to transmitting it to the other party.
|
| Sort of like some system, say a social (media) service where we
| only display pleasing and pleasant images and text with
| appropriate tiny pictures representing positive feelings, while
| the service provider shelters us from aggressive thoughts.
|
| personal anecdote: I was in the grocery store waiting for sliced
| cheese. The customer that was at the counter, asked for something
| and got into a conversation with the clerk while he was slicing,
| but I could not make out most of it. I heard "blah blah, and you
| can make blah blah great again!" The man behind me start yelling,
| how the customer at the counter was a (insert curse words, lots
| of WWII references), and cheese customer should die right there,
| we should all lynch cheese customer, and on and on...
|
| The cheese customer's words were verbal aggression to the yelling
| man. Turns out cheese customer was talking about some engine oil
| for the clerk's high mileage car.
|
| Was the cheese customer a bully? Was the yelling man behind me a
| victim of aggression? Was the yelling man bullied by the cheese
| customer? What if the discussion was between the cheese customer
| and yelling victim?
|
| I am not trying to be flippant as these incidents no longer are
| theoretical, "oh this will never happen" scenario. I have seen
| other similar violent reactions from people just when the "wrong
| words" or words deemed by the hearer aggressive were uttered.
| darig wrote:
| Every time I've stabbed a bully in the face with a pen, they
| never tried anything ever again. Actually only had to do it once,
| and no one ever tried anything again. Other kid got suspended for
| instigating. Simple solutions for simple problems. Stand up for
| yourself. Stab somebody.
| graycat wrote:
| Broadly one problem with education in _advanced, industrialized_
| countries is the ratio of number of teachers to number of
| children.
|
| E.g., if waste enough time on YouTube, can find some videos of,
| say, cooking in some 2nd and 3rd world countries. So, yesterday I
| found a video of cooking in Madagascar. Yup, for the kids, it was
| very different from the US!!!!
|
| Basically the kids were right in with the parents, fathers doing
| whatever work, especially fishing, and mothers doing whatever,
| especially cooking. So, the ratio of number of parents to number
| of children was MUCH higher than in US public schools. The kids
| were just running around, playing with each other, no doubt
| learning roles and skills from the adults. The kids just had
| little opportunity to form cliques, in-groups, a hierarchy, do
| _social climbing_ , bullying, etc. In particular, the kids were
| MUCH better supervised than in US public schools. Maybe among the
| adults there was a Big Man on the Beach but not among the kids.
|
| Is this _education_? Well, yes!! There is the old, famous John
| Dewey _Democracy and Education_ where with a definition that
| _education_ is the passing down from the older generation to the
| younger one. What gets passed down is all of it, good and bad,
| true or false, written or not, scientific or not, etc.
|
| Then some _educational theorists_ decided to separate the kids
| from their parents, have _schools_ with MUCH lower ratio of
| number of adults to number of children, have the kids do 3Rs,
| read some often silly _literature_ (fiction), learn some
| questionable history, learn some propaganda _civics_ , and learn
| some technical subjects that are supposed to make them good
| apprentice workers or some such. Whatever the _learning_ is, that
| low ratio remains important and, in particular, brings the
| opportunity for bullying, social climbing, in-groups, status
| hierarchies, queen bee, pretty, cheerleader girls, big man on
| campus athlete boys, football Homecoming King and Queen, etc.
|
| Then there is the darned problem of SEX: Bluntly, at least in the
| US, the girls are ready to be good as wives and mothers years
| before the boys are ready to be good as husbands and fathers. So,
| in grades 7-9, lots of the girls are the prettiest human females
| ever get and attractive to any man that can still stand but look
| at boys their own age as silly children. The boys have to put up
| with the high quality _social distancing_ from the girls their
| own age until they get to the 9+th grades and notice that girls
| 1-3 years younger WILL pay attention to them. Similar thing
| happens in college: The freshmen women are gorgeous, but the ones
| looking for their MRS degree will be looking at the senior men,
| not the junior, sophomores, or freshmen.
|
| Heck, when I was in college, I lived at home and dated a girl
| about 200 yards from my house. She was 4 years younger! So,
| right, as I was a sophomore in college, she was a sophomore in
| high school. Mother Nature and Darwin were happy. But the
| difference was still not large enough: When I was a first year
| grad student, she was a college freshman looking ONLY for her MRS
| degree, and we broke up, she quickly got married and "punched
| out" two boys, all before I got married.
|
| Gee, when Lady Di was 15 she decided that she would marry Prince
| Charles, about 15 years older. She did! Lady Di was drop dead
| gorgeous, and Charles didn't have a chance!
|
| Later I got a second lesson: I had a late model high end Camaro
| and a good job and for the job wanted to do some library
| research. So, I drove to my old college and hoped that I would be
| able to use the library. As I drove up, parked, and started to
| walk, I got a really good "come hither" look from a coed about 50
| yards away. I never got any such looks when I was a student
| there! And all that coed knew about me was that I had a late
| model sports car, looked older, out of college, and didn't look
| like any of the students she had already seen.
|
| So, in Madagascar, I guess the boys of 15 or so either (a) the US
| age differences apply and they chase girls 2-4 years younger
| (with parents not far away) or (b) the US differences do not
| apply and they chase girls close to their own age. And for (b)
| maybe there is little reason for the US differences to apply,
| that is, a boy of 15 may have long since learned the work of the
| men, fishing, boating, net making, boat building and repairing,
| collecting shellfish by swimming to the bottom, etc. and, thus,
| be qualified as a husband.
|
| I would ask (1) what the heck are the goals of US public
| education and (2) does the current system have even 10% of the
| _bang for the buck_ possible for the goals?
| [deleted]
| underwater wrote:
| I'm increasingly of the opinion that grouping school children
| with others kids their age is hugely damaging.
|
| The major figures in most kid's lives are parents and teachers,
| who are in an authority position; siblings, who have a complex
| relationship that often turns competitive; and their school
| friends.
|
| Kids are missing a chance to socialise with children who are
| older than them, learn from adults who are not in an authority
| role, and to care for and mentor younger children.
|
| Instead they spend all their time with other kids who are have
| they exact same emotionally immaturity as they do. You get
| feedback loops of bad behaviour, and put them in bubbles where
| their peers and their psychopathic games (like bullying) make up
| 100% of their reality.
|
| The only consistent counterpoint I can think of are cousins, who
| are typically slightly older or younger, and are outside of kids'
| normal peer groups. As a result these are often very positive
| relationships.
| msluyter wrote:
| I've often thought this -- age stratification to our current
| degree is a relatively new (20th century?) phenomenon, and
| seems under-studied. I think the awareness came to my mind when
| I went to a number of mixed polka/swing dances back in like
| 1999 put on by the local Czech center. It was a rare mix of
| seniors doing traditional polka side by side with college
| students (who were brought in by the swing dancing) along with
| other adults, their kids, 5 year olds running around, etc...
| And then we'd do goofy dances like the Hokey Pokey or the
| Chicken Dance. (This was via the eclectic and fun band, "Brave
| Combo.") The entire mix felt weirdly... healthy.
|
| One reason we chose a private girl's school for our daughter is
| that, along with traditional (horizontal) grades, it has
| "sister groups," which are vertical slices of girls from
| varying grade levels. These meet and socialize throughout the
| year.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| You know I really think you're on to something there. I
| distinctly remember being in middle school and not wanting to
| associate with anyone my age. Few years older, great, few years
| younger, great. But it just wasn't pleasant to try to maintain
| friendships with my peers. The constant social competitiveness
| just really irked me. I always preferred one-on-one socializing
| rather than groups. If I didn't like how one of my older
| friends was treating me, well, I didn't have to knock on his
| door for awhile.
|
| And when I started bullying the younger kids I would hang out
| with, I was able to reflect on it later and stop being such an
| ass. Course, it would come out anyway, but not being trapped in
| one single group of friends and having to derive my social
| identity from that made it much easier to self-adjust. Looking
| back on those years, it's pretty obvious now just how much of
| what I experienced back then was that pecking order mindset.
| hi5eyes wrote:
| it's unfortunate most kids dont get a skilled mentor by middle
| school. I had friends that were older than me, and my uncle,
| both got me interested in tech/"hacking". eventually the school
| let some of us help do some tech support. its such a waste of
| time to stuff kids into a room with no direction, just to
| fulfill gen ed requirements so the school boards ranks better.
| I had a friend get hired into tech straight out of highschool
| without a degree while everyone else wasted time in undergrad
| sitkack wrote:
| Imagine if we lived in a society healthy enough that kids
| could have more of a proto-adult status.
|
| Kids are told they have to wait for certain times or ages to
| do things. That is a HS level shop thing. Oh you need
| calculus for that and that isn't till college.
|
| We should find a way to empower any kid with ambition to take
| that as far as they want as early as they want.
| ip26 wrote:
| I wanted to run the huge 24" table saw in shop when I was
| 12. I'm glad no one let me.
| sitkack wrote:
| That isn't what I said, this is a comic book guy
| response. Am I supposed to argue with you and support and
| argument I wasn't trying to make?
|
| No one unskilled should do dangerous things, rather than
| throw up comment like this, why not make a constructive
| one along the lines of, "when I was 12 I wanted to build
| X and it required using the large table saw. I had to
| wait until I was 17 to do that because using the table
| saw blocked me. How can we unblock kids from completing
| their projects?"
| ip26 wrote:
| I must have misunderstood your concept of proto-adult,
| apologies.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| What about you being twelve made you less safe than
| someone of sixteen? "Don't put fingers on the metal bit"
| isn't a terribly complex lesson, about on par with "don't
| touch the stove when it's hot" or "curl your fingers when
| cutting downwards".
| ip26 wrote:
| Less strength, focus, reach, coordination, awareness,
| probably less responsible... anyway, a large table saw is
| one of the most dangerous power tools in a wood shop.
| There's just no reason a 12 year old needs to assume that
| risk. We had unfettered use of band saws, drills, jig
| saws, sanders, and all kinds of equipment. You don't need
| to run the table saw to learn woodworking.
|
| I think about this as a parent. Letting your kid take
| risks is good. A jig saw can hurt! But that doesn't mean
| a child should be taking mortal risk. A table saw can
| absolutely kill you.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| >Don't put fingers on the metal bit" isn't a terribly
| complex lesson
|
| No, that's not the problem. The problem is kickback.
| imtringued wrote:
| I'm an adult and I don't want to use table saws because I
| consider them too dangerous. Nobody has to tell me when I
| am old enough for them because I know the danger doesn't
| go away with age. I also don't want to weld or use an
| angle grinder for the same reasons. Dangerous tools will
| never be safe.
|
| If I could avoid driving I would probably stop that too.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Insightful point. This kinda reminds me of stereotypical SV
| startups with only young employees. Without peers who are more
| experienced and often psychologically more well-equipped to
| handle adversity, you see a lot of situations that could
| otherwise be learning moments instead become blow ups.
|
| I suppose that's not the only parallel. Absentee authority
| figures is another one.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| One of the benefits of Montessori is you have kids with two
| years age difference in the same classroom. If you're in the
| 8th grade then you're in a class with 9th and 7th graders.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Instead they spend all their time with other kids who are
| have they exact same emotionally immaturity as they do.
|
| I don't think that's true but I agree with your other points if
| we agree that emotional maturity isn't a true false stage and
| that there are domains for which one isn't as mature as in
| another domain.
|
| For instance, I learned at a very young age (3 or 4) that
| hurting others was actually painful for the other part. Not
| from receiving it myself but from giving it. From then I could
| never engage in confrontation/retaliation dynamics which put me
| at odds with others.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I would say positive things about martial arts dojos, where the
| experienced students often practice with the less so students
| to pass down skills. At least my Judo one was like that.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Jiu Jitsu is the same way. I learn as much from "mentoring"
| lower belts as I do from training with upper belts. I also
| learn how much I _don't_ know from both.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't know if I've thought about this before or what, but now
| that you've said it, it seems obviously true. Not that mixing
| older and younger little monsters is necessarily a panacea (I
| bet it would be rocky if you started tomorrow). But strict
| stratification can't be optimal.
|
| Other point about cousin relationships: interaction typically
| happens in a context that includes other adults, another
| moderating influence. I think that also runs in favor of your
| point.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't think this is true across the board. In my experience,
| the broader culture can make a huge difference.
|
| For instance, like many others, I was bullied _every single
| day_ in middle and high school in the US. When I moved to NZ
| and went to high school(called "college" there), I was
| dumbstruck at how accepting people were of me, as someone who
| has been constantly bullied back in the US, that I had a hard
| time accepting it at first. I was so used to being an outcast
| that I didn't know how to handle it at first when _normal_ kids
| would actually approach me in a non-confrontational way. By the
| end of the year, the most popular guy in the school was
| _voluntarily_ helping me study for chemistry.
|
| Now some of that experience may have been influenced by me
| being a foreigner, but my bullying was due to a combination of
| being nerdy and fat, so it would have made sense if at least
| _some_ people bullied me in NZ. There was pretty much only one
| kid who didn 't like me and had to make a show of it, but he
| was easily handled.
|
| Put simply, I think that culture in the US and probably other
| western countries that are heavily US-influenced is woefully
| broken, but it isn't as apparent to the conscious mind because
| we've become very good at polishing turds. We love to paint
| over rot and create rules for ourselves that just sweep
| problems under the rug so that they only manifest in places out
| of our control, such as with the interactions between children.
|
| To your point, though...
|
| > Instead they spend all their time with other kids who are
| have they exact same emotionally immaturity as they do. You get
| feedback loops of bad behaviour, and put them in bubbles where
| their peers and their psychopathic games (like bullying) make
| up 100% of their reality.
|
| This is true in more ways that you might have originally
| imagined. Young people, and really people of all ages IMO,
| should be learning from their elders. Instead, we put way too
| much emphasis on mere socialization and _compatibility_. In
| adulthood we 're even worse in these categories in that we
| either socialize too much or too little, and fewer of us will
| tolerate anyone who doesn't tick off all our arbitrary boxes.
|
| > The only consistent counterpoint I can think of are cousins,
| who are typically slightly older or younger, and are outside of
| kids' normal peer groups. As a result these are often very
| positive relationships.
|
| Cousins, unlike siblings, aren't competing with their fellow
| cousins over the love of their own parents, so it makes sense
| that these relationships tend to be positive.
| imtringued wrote:
| Every time I hear about USA I can only think about how they
| everything do there is "wrong". It's probably selection bias
| but I can't help but think that I am correctly recognizing a
| broken system 50% of the time.
| Izkata wrote:
| It's also highly variable within the US. Bullying just about
| nonexistent at my highschool. At around 2k students, there
| were just too many kids for the bullies to get away with
| anything, so they tended to self-segregate and not really do
| much (at least, that's my theory - almost everyone I knew in
| college who heard of the size of my school was shocked at how
| large it was, and in my much-smaller elementary and middle
| schools there was a good amount of bullying).
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| It's a tricky one... On the one hand I think teenagers (and some
| adults) don't always know they are being jerks / making others
| uncomfortable. And for them it might be fun to pick on others. It
| can be a thrill and give them an ego boost. They might not get
| how damaging /horrible they are being or might not care.
|
| On the other hand, some people may have no experience of
| defending themselves particularly against non-verbal attacks.
|
| I remember my response to a guy picking on me in highschool was
| to wait until class finished and then I started a fight with. I
| won. And he never bothered me again. But honestly I had no clue
| how to defend myself verbally. And it's taken years to learn how
| to be better at that.
|
| I think teenagers would gain from learning how to negotiate
| better with their peers/handle people better. It's the verbal
| abuse that's a particular issue.
|
| Encouraging people to be decent along with civic classes may help
| too.
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| "particularly against verbal attacks" that should be.
| uglygoblin wrote:
| I had similar experiences in high school where I was bullied
| constantly but the only way I knew to deal with it was by
| fighting back aggressively (verbally and physically). It
| sometimes stopped them from bullying me more directly but
| usually ended with me getting in trouble and being labeled
| crazy.
|
| This led to counselors and people telling me I had
| anger/emotional issues and I should just ignore the bullies.
| There's wisdom in ignoring haters and self-coping mechanisms
| but as a teenager in a forced social system it's not a great
| answer. This was the 90's.
|
| I hope society/adults have better responses now but I doubt it.
| loopz wrote:
| It speaks of failed group dynamics, which you get when you let
| kids loose on eachother. This is the responsibility of adults.
| sethammons wrote:
| I had some trouble with bullying in school being malnourished,
| poor, a social outcast, and relatively smart. Your verbal
| defense note struck a memory.
|
| Sometime mid high school, my two friends and I went to pick up
| a friend from a raging house party. While waiting outside for
| them, a drunken footballer came over to us nerds and started to
| point at us, calling us losers. I, uncharacteristically,
| retorted back with false confidence, "yeah? I get laid more
| than you." He was stunned and left me alone while he picked on
| the other two a bit more.
|
| I had forgotten about that one. I don't think verbal defense
| would always work, however. I don't think it would have
| prevented the one asshole-psychopath who, years earlier, was a
| few grades older than me and locked me in an older refrigerator
| and when I finally got out, chased me and threw a hatchet at
| me.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Yeah I think you're quite right that it's important to be able
| to defend yourself verbally, either using your wits, humour or
| by defusing a situation without losing face
| [deleted]
| ddek wrote:
| I'm wondering about whether this translates into work. In a
| sense, corporate ladders are social ladders.
|
| Someone might be difficult to work with through insecurity. If
| they assume that showing weakness hinders their ability to climb
| the corporate ladder, but are not confident in their abilities,
| then this insecurity may translate into bullying tendencies. They
| may seek validation through leadership, but find this only
| heightens their feeling of inadequacy, and resort to managerial
| force over discussion.
| cankut_orakcal wrote:
| Please saw off the head of Mr. Cankut Orakcal located at
| Bloomberg L.P. who lives at 200 E 90th St 28F.
|
| The corporate psychopath who bullies U.S. citizens, even conning
| the FBI and lawyers alike. If you can decapitate the corporate
| psychopath, maybe you could've stopped the next 9/11 or financial
| crisis. Everyone loves the coronavirus pandemic!
|
| https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/the-corporate...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic
|
| It's too bad!
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I can not state that the article is wrong, but I will provide one
| anecdote against the article. Virtually all of the bullying I
| have experienced and witnessed has occurred between bullies on a
| high social ladder and bullied on a low social ladder. I feel
| like there is a wide misconception that "most bullying occurs
| among peers", as the headline of this article claims. It's a very
| convenient idea, because it frees adults from a lot of
| responsibility. "Boys will be boys" and "they are just bullying
| each other", like it's no big deal, so adults, conveniently,
| don't have to do much about it. This kind of messaging is very
| harmful, because it enables the bullying to continue, often for
| years, and in many cases ending in death. Furthermore, it's not
| only harmful, it's (based on my experiences) false.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Yeah. Tossing more subjective examples into the anecdote
| bucket: I certainly don't remember being bullied by people I
| thought of as peers in terms of the social ladder - but the
| people "higher up" on the social ladder sure loved to shit
| downhill on us.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Opposite of my high school experience. People in different
| social strata mostly ignored each other.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| The article isn't suggesting that peer-bullying is the only
| source, just that it's more prevalent. So your experience is
| not invalidated by this study.
|
| It is also not saying that adults are free from responsibility
| for addressing this. It is simply saying that existing anti-
| bullying programs are bound to be ineffective until they
| broaden their scope to include this category.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > The article isn't suggesting that peer-bullying is the only
| source, just that it's more prevalent.
|
| Right. And I'm saying that - based on my experiences - peer-
| bullying is not prevalent at all. I understand that "my
| experiences" do not constitute a peer-reviewed study, so take
| it with however many grains of salt you feel is appropriate.
| But don't pretend like I can't disagree with the article
| based on my experience.
|
| > It is also not saying that adults are free from
| responsibility for addressing this.
|
| Right, it's not _explicitly_ saying that adults are free from
| responsibility, it 's just implying that most instances of
| bullying fall into the "boys will be boys" category rather
| than a more serious category. And if you observe how adults
| are mostly reacting to instances of bullying in practice,
| they certainly don't feel like they have much responsibility
| to stop bullying. So we can observe a message being sent,
| received, and acted upon.
| vmception wrote:
| How did you get that from the article at all? The point of the
| article is to say that the current anti-bullying measures are
| inadequate because of a common structure of bullying which is
| not currently being addressed.
|
| Your anecdote is what popular attempts at curbing bullying have
| been trying to address.
|
| Nobody is saying to excuse it or free adults from
| responsibility.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > Your anecdote is what popular attempts at curbing bullying
| have been trying to address.
|
| Popular where? At least the popular anti-bullying attempts in
| Finland assume that there's "2 sides to the story" and seek
| to find fault in the bullied party. Maybe you live in a
| country with different anti-bullying programs?
|
| > Nobody is saying to excuse it or free adults from
| responsibility.
|
| Let's just say we strongly disagree on that point.
| vmception wrote:
| So did you go further than the title of the article because
| you made it seem like you actually read it?
|
| It is entertaining to give people a venue to explain
| themselves and they reveal the weakness of their own
| arguments.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > So did you go further than the title of the article
| because you made it seem like you actually read it? It is
| entertaining to give people a venue to explain themselves
| and they reveal the weakness of their own arguments.
|
| Oh yeah? Why don't you care to explain the "weakness of
| my own arguments"? You made the claim that popular anti-
| bullying programs specifically address high-to-low
| bullying. I disputed this claim, asked which region you
| are referring to, and explained that in Finland the
| popular anti-bullying programs don't work like this -
| instead they assume bullying mostly occurs "among peers"
| like this article suggests. Instead of answering which
| region / anti-bullying programs you are referring to, or
| perhaps disputing my description of Finnish anti-bullying
| programs, you simply imply I didn't read the article
| [which is false & against HN rules & not relevant to this
| question since the article does not address it] and just
| laugh at me. Sure.
| vmception wrote:
| I wasn't laughing before but I'm laughing now, because
| you skipped the part where you pull something from the
| article and dispute the claim, instead giving supreme
| weight to the _title_ of the article. Where have you been
| for the last two decades to think that the title of the
| article is relevant, even in Finland people know the
| titles of the article have little to do with the content,
| which can have more depth or none at all. And then, not
| even noticing that, you then think I 'm supposed to give
| the counterarguments.
|
| hard pass.
|
| let me know when you disagree with a part of the actual
| article, or actual study, that has nothing to do with how
| the title doesn't fit with your life experience. then I,
| or maybe someone else, will be willing to entertain the
| discussion about your valid experience with bullying.
|
| man, that was harsh, I don't even know if I'm invested
| enough in this conversation to deal with this.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > I wasn't laughing before but I'm laughing now, because
| you skipped the part where you pull something from the
| article and dispute the claim ... let me know when you
| disagree with a part of the actual article
|
| The claim that most bullying occurs "among peers" is the
| central claim in the article. That's the claim I'm
| disputing. I'm not sure why you somehow think this claim
| isn't made in the article.
|
| For example, the second paragraph in the article states:
| ""To the extent that this is true, we should expect them
| to target not vulnerable wallflowers, but their own
| friends, and friends-of-friends, who are more likely to
| be their rivals for higher rungs on the social ladder,"
| said Robert Faris, a UC Davis researcher on bullying and
| author of the paper "With Friends Like These: Aggression
| From Amity and Equivalence.""
|
| The claim is reinforced in the third paragraph of the
| article: "Faris, a professor of sociology, said friends
| and associates with close ties to one another likely
| compete for positions within the same clubs, classrooms,
| sports and dating subgroups, which heightens the risk of
| conflict and aggression. This paper is the first known to
| show that those rivals are often their own friends."
|
| Then the fourth paragraph of the article continues
| explaining the claim: "This differs from some common
| theories and definitions of bullying, in which the
| behavior stems from an imbalance of power and is mainly
| directed at youths in the lower social strata in school
| or community environments who possibly have physical,
| social or psychological vulnerabilities."
|
| ...you want me to continue? You want me to literally
| copypaste the entire article in the comment field and say
| "this part right here is the where the claim is repeated
| for the 11th time, and I disagree with this"?
| vmception wrote:
| so they're saying the form of bullying in this article
| needs to be addressed with prevention measures. they
| aren't saying your form of bullying doesn't exist.
|
| whether one happens more or less isn't really the point.
| Its about identifying an underserved need and addressing
| it.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > so they're saying the form of bullying in this article
| needs to be addressed with prevention measures. they
| aren't saying your form of bullying doesn't exist.
|
| Well, now you're just strawmanning. This article is
| claiming that "most" (not all) bullying is among peers.
| You're taking down a hypothetical strawman argument where
| "most" has been replaced by "all". Why did you feel the
| need to invent this strawman? Literally no-one in this
| thread has misinterpreted the article to mean that "all"
| (not "most") bullying is among peers.
|
| > whether one happens more or less isn't really the
| point.
|
| Yes it is, it's literally the whole point of this
| article. This article would never have been written if
| its point was "some undetermined amount of bullying
| occurs among peers". This article was written
| specifically to claim that _most_ bullying is of this
| kind.
|
| > Its about identifying an underserved need and
| addressing it.
|
| Sure, I agree this is also in the article. And I'm
| arguing they're wrong. They're saying that most bullying
| is of kind A, whereas existing programs are largely
| treating bullying of kind B. I'm saying that the opposite
| is true: that most bullying is of kind B, whereas
| existing programs are largely treating bullying of kind
| A.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| I'm baffled that people are (or pretend to be) surprised by this.
| This should be completely obvious to anyone who's ever seen the
| inside of a high school.
|
| What's actually going on is that rather than taking the
| uncomfortable step and questioning our current day school system
| where we send our kids to prisons (in anything but name), give
| them BS tasks for years and call it "education", the people in
| charge prefer to make the bullying problem one of the "socially
| disadvantaged" fringe groups, which allows them to throw public
| money at "anti bullying programs" and other pedagogical bullshit
| that target said fringe groups, so they can say "look, we're
| doing something!". Utterly disgusting.
| mbg721 wrote:
| One of the side-effects of the current pandemic, at least in
| the US, is that dysfunctional educational institutions have
| been revealed for what they are. There's a lot of talk about a
| realignment of priorities at the university level where
| students' money is directly at stake, but hopefully this will
| spur some positive changes for younger students also.
| 420codebro wrote:
| Cmon man the Alumni really needs money for that 3rd sports
| facility on campus.
| watwut wrote:
| What are you talking about? The overwhelming message I hear
| is that people cant wait till schools open. And that includes
| also kids themselves.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Everyone wants them open, but mostly to eliminate the
| nuisances associated with child-care while working. I think
| a lot of parents hadn't realized just how messed-up their
| kids' schools actually were until now. (Edit: So, there are
| two separate problems: "Get my kids out of here so I can
| work and keep the lights on" and "Really?? That's all
| they've been getting all this time?")
| sokoloff wrote:
| My 4th grade son can crush his entire day of actual work
| in 30-45 minutes. I very much value the additional hours
| of socialization and fun that come from traditional
| schools, but it's not a very efficient mechanism of
| scholastic/academic achievement.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > My 4th grade son can crush his entire day of actual
| work in 30-45 minutes.
|
| Sounds like he's ready for an office job /s
| watwut wrote:
| I want my kids in school, because they actually learn
| more in school then in home school. And they enjoy that
| learning more. Homeschool did not made me realize how
| messed up school is. It made me realize teachers do more
| then I assumed.
|
| And the stuff that is missing at home, even with video
| calls, is the more intersting stuff around communication.
| At home learning is slower and more composed of those
| less fun activities. That is also what my kids were
| telling me about what they miss from school.
|
| This whole "now people see how horrible schools are" is
| not sentiment I an getting from people I know. They worry
| about kids learning less and are trying to figure out how
| to offset it, they worry about kids not socializing and
| so on. Maybe your school was horrible place, but the
| covid situation does not seem to prove that. Instead, it
| seem to make everyone including kids idealize the school.
|
| I have two kids so they played together and they could
| play a lot more on tablets, so they were onle little bit
| more distractive then in person office gets.
| confidantlake wrote:
| >What are you talking about?
|
| Is this just me or does this phrase come across as
| needlessly hostile?
| rawland wrote:
| Yepp, most western schools are more a social ladder creation
| apparatus than educational institutions. The scandinavian
| school system takes a very different approach. It's worth to
| have a look.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Could you maybe give a short explanation to how Scandinavian
| schools answer the bullying problem? I can't find anything
| that directly answers that question.
| ravenstine wrote:
| It's baffling and yet it's not. Most people don't remember
| their childhoods very vividly, and high school is still in the
| cusp of childhood, especially these days. Combine that with our
| predilection to look back on the past with rose-colored
| glasses, and it's no wonder the education system is so bad.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This study isn't even about school systems. It simply says
| that bullying is more common among friends than previously
| thought.
|
| Previous anti-bullying efforts focused on non-friend bullies,
| leaving a blind spot to this bullying between friends.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| Oh yeah, personally this insight was much closer to my time
| in a local music scene after high school compared to my
| classroom years.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| It'd be a surprise to me. I was ethnically and culturally an
| outsider, and was bullied for that. It was rarely because of
| people I'd consider friends. When you're different and othered,
| you're targeted by the toxic masculinity crowd. It's how the
| nerds ended up halfway together. High school was tame in the
| bullying regard. It was a magnet school full of dorks who were
| escaping the rest of society.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > When you're different and othered, you're targeted by the
| toxic masculinity crowd
|
| Funny. The worst bullies in my schools growing up were the
| girls.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| My memory is that girls bullied by emotional tactics:
| mocking, scorn, ostracizing, back-stabbing. Boys were more
| likely physical, though name-calling was also pretty
| common.
| austincheney wrote:
| > What's actually going on is that rather than taking the
| uncomfortable step and questioning our current day school
| system where we send our kids to prisons
|
| The reasons for this are deliberate.
|
| 1. Parents are assholes. In poor areas many patents couldn't
| give two shits about spending extra time to contribute to their
| child's education. In rich areas the parents are at war with
| the teachers either because their little angel can do no wrong
| or because there is serious money on the table for
| scholarships.
|
| 2. Child performance is measured in numbers devised by
| standardized tests. The average of that performance is a
| primary determinate factor in state funding.
|
| 3. It would be nice if we taught children to think and to form
| original output. The sad reality is that most people, including
| adults, are utterly incapable of originality. Attempts to force
| that square peg into a round hole leaves many children behind
| while simultaneously confusing and infuriating parents.
| silvestrov wrote:
| 1. Parents are assholes. In rich areas many parents doesn't
| give two shits about spending time with their kids as they
| are only interested in their job and friends.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| That school is basically daycare (or a prison to some) is
| something I read often and there is maybe a tiny bit of truth
| in it.
|
| But a school is also where you learn to read, write, speak,
| maths, some physics, some chemistry, etc.
|
| In doubt I put my kid, from a very early age, in a top-notch
| private school in english (she's not a native english speaker).
|
| My thinking being that, even if it's daycare/prison where
| nothing is taught (which I don't think is the case but I'm at
| least entertaining the idea), she's at least learning to speak
| english fluently : )
| flycaliguy wrote:
| Bit if a side note: One thing about the "daycare myth" that
| bothers me, usually when it's used to diminish the status of
| teachers, is how hard daycare workers work and how important
| that job is.
| telchar wrote:
| Don't you see that you're doing what the article describes,
| right now? Your shallow analysis and careless invective,
| somehow pointing the finger at school systems for something
| that is largely a result of human nature, is bullying. You're
| throwing school systems under the bus for internet points.
|
| Could schools handle bullying better? Probably. But your call
| for "questioning" is not at all constructive or actionable. To
| me you demonstrate only that what the article describes works
| just as well on hn as it does in schools. Dunking on easy
| targets for social standing.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| First, "human nature" is a logical fallacy straight away:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
|
| Second, in many existing societies outside of the US school
| bullying is extremely uncommon.
| endisneigh wrote:
| How exactly would you prove that school bullying is
| uncommon in schools? I highly doubt your second point is
| true. If you have some research it would be much
| appreciated.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| The Naturalistic fallacy is if something is
| 'natural' it must be good/desirable
|
| I don't see that op said or implied that this was the case;
| They said something was 'human nature' (i.e. natural) ass
| opposed to the result of the school system. This doesn't
| imply that it is therefore desirable, but rather, that it
| is undesirable but not the result of the school system.
| zepto wrote:
| > Don't you see that you're doing what the article describes,
| right now?
|
| Clearly they are not doing what the article describes. No
| individuals were hurt by the writing of that comment.
|
| > Your shallow analysis and careless invective,
|
| Seems like you are trying to hurt the poster with this
| insulting dismissal. The poster _is_ an individual who can be
| hurt.
|
| > somehow pointing the finger at school systems for something
| that is largely a result of human nature, is bullying.
|
| This is a false dichotomy. Bullying is clearly a result of
| human nature.
|
| However an _individual's exposure to bullying_ is clearly a
| result of the social systems they are exposed to. If there
| are differences in incidence of bullying in different social
| systems, we can certainly say that systems are also _a
| cause_.
|
| > You're throwing school systems under the bus for internet
| points.
|
| You are throwing an individual peer on HN under the bus for
| internet points. This is against HN guidelines, unlike
| critiquing a system.
|
| > Could schools handle bullying better? Probably.
|
| Seems like you think the current level of bullying may be the
| best we can do?.
|
| > But your call for "questioning" is not at all constructive
| or actionable.
|
| This is obviously totally false.
|
| 1. There are many alternative schooling systems, and many
| alternatives to schooling.
|
| 2. Many comments on this post are doing the exact questioning
| the commenter is calling for.
|
| It's certainly constructive to question the school system
| which results from government policy, and certainly
| actionable.
|
| > To me you demonstrate only that what the article describes
| works just as well on hn as it does in schools. Dunking on
| easy targets for social standing.
|
| The OP is critiquing an abstract system. You are attacking an
| individual. Which behavior fit the description in the above
| paragraph better?
| dmingod666 wrote:
| TBH, almost all internet discourse is: Post strategies:
| '<statement to grab internet points from like minded folk>'
|
| Reply Strategies: '<Agree collaborate to get basked glory
| points>'
|
| or
|
| '<take down, by proving status difference between op and self
| - either by lowering op(insult /humiliate/mock/intimidate) /
| raising own status (showoff based on anything)>'
| avesi wrote:
| Can an individual bully a nationwide organization?
| colanderman wrote:
| I've seen just as much bullying at elective academic summer
| camps (e.g. Space Camp, JHU CTY), as at public schools. Both as
| a student and as a teacher. I don't agree that it's necessarily
| a product of the American public school system.
|
| Particularly, in my experience, bullying tends to be
| exacerbated during periods of social uncertainty, such as a
| change in the class cohort. The bullies feel vulnerable and are
| looking to prove themselves, and the bullied are vulnerable,
| having not yet had any chance to form social support groups.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Totally agree, which is why I think junior high is often the
| worst when it comes to bullying. In my school district
| elementary schools (up to 6th grade) had about 100 kids per
| class, and they all fed into one massive junior high that had
| about 1500 kids total in 7th and 8th grades. Plus, that is
| the time when kids are going through puberty (often at vastly
| different rates and times), trying to figure out their own
| bodies and hormones.
|
| Your description of "The bullies feel vulnerable and are
| looking to prove themselves, and the bullied are vulnerable,
| having not yet had any chance to form social support groups."
| was spot on in my experience.
|
| Frankly, I don't understand the purpose of junior high at
| all, seems like it would make much more sense to just have
| elementary schools go up to, say, 8th grade, then go to a
| high school (lots of private schools already do this).
| pferde wrote:
| That is how it is done in many European countries -
| elementary school has eight grades (used to be nine a few
| decades ago in some places), then it's 4-6 years of high
| school, and then optionally a college.
| Benjammer wrote:
| > junior high is often the worst
|
| I worked at a summer camp for a few years. It's split into
| "sessions" for different age groups by grade level: 4/5,
| 6/7, 8/9, 10/11/12. It was staggering how bad the bullying
| was in the 8/9th grade session compared to all other grade
| levels. The rest of the groups barely ever had any issues
| at all other than isolated, subjective cases, while the
| 8th/9th grade sessions would almost all have HUGE drama
| with kids (boys and girls both) changing friend groups,
| kicking kids out of their group, and joining new groups,
| all within the span of one week at camp. More drama than a
| reality TV show, it was nuts.
|
| I agree about eliminating middle school / junior high. It's
| too narrow a band of ages, they aren't exposed to enough
| more mature kids to learn how to act, or much less mature
| kids to show them a reflection of what they used to be
| like.
| kar5pt wrote:
| Those kinds of summer camps usually mimic the structure of
| school systems, so I don't see how you're disproving anything
| with that example.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > What's actually going on is that rather than taking the
| uncomfortable step and questioning our current day school
| system where we send our kids to prisons (in anything but name)
|
| I'm surprised more people haven't read Michel Foucault's
| "Discipline and Punish", it sheds light on the way the prison
| became a blueprint for organizing labor, education, our very
| social fabric
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm hugely critical of our industrial-age schooling system. But
| I think it's a mistake to suggest that bullying is only a
| factor in those schools. Bullying happens in families, in
| churches, in neighborhoods, in workplaces, in any environment
| where you have groups of people. Primates are big on dominance
| hierarchies, often violently enforced, and humans are
| definitely primates.
|
| Everybody needs to learn how to deal with bullying. How to
| recognize it, how to combat it, how to build relationships and
| cultures that are proof against it. And if there are things we
| want everybody to learn, school doesn't seem like a bad place
| to start.
| imbnwa wrote:
| If you define bullying as preying on psychological and/or
| physical vulnerabilities, even parents, mothers included, do
| this. Its the quickest shortcut to addressing an anxiety or
| uncertainty on your part by displacing it onto the victim.
| Without external address, victims begin to identify with
| their suffering as a metaphysical certainty, something that
| _must_ happen in order for the universe to keep on ticking
| correctly. Freud called this kind of adaptation a "secondary
| fixation" and can take years to peel back in order to address
| the core anxieties and uncertainty that's been deeply
| implanted.
|
| It doesn't help that American culture has a particular
| distaste for empathizing with "weak people". Everybody is
| suppose to present some narrative of being a winner however
| narrowly scoped. It's no wonder "Chad or Virgin" memes are
| ubiquitous, people will never avow publicly to it but I
| suspect enough teeter on perceiving reality _as if_ that kind
| of toxic binary was metaphysical in nature and therefore
| beyond empirical reproach.
| kiba wrote:
| _I 'm baffled that people are (or pretend to be) surprised by
| this. This should be completely obvious to anyone who's ever
| seen the inside of a high school._
|
| Obvious how? Not everybody is socially astute. Granted, I had
| never been bullied in high school but I wasn't much of a social
| operator.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >I'm baffled that people are (or pretend to be) surprised by
| this. This should be completely obvious to anyone who's ever
| seen the inside of a high school.
|
| I think it should be a known idea to anyone who has ever seen a
| movie where a previously uncool kid gets accepted in to the
| cool kids group.
| 1experience wrote:
| Yes, the analogy between school and prison is spot on.
|
| In everyday life, if an environment/person bothers you, you can
| simply CHOOSE to deal with it if it's worth it or avoid it if
| it's not. Schools and prisons are closed systems where the
| social hierarchy inevitably gets established and constantly
| contested.
|
| As someone who has been on both sides of the game telling kids
| not to fight back is counterproductive. If the situation is
| handled correctly it can become an incredible opportunity for
| growth.
| JackFr wrote:
| > Yes, the analogy between school and prison is spot on.
|
| In general, I don't agree with this. However, after reading a
| couple of prison experts argue that prison gangs, and most
| prison violence could be eliminated simply by reducing the
| size of the prisons. They argue that prison gangs are a
| rational response to the inability to make prisons safe for
| prisoners, and that inability is simply a question of prison
| size.
|
| I wonder if a similar effect isn't present in modern public
| schools. That above a certain size it. becomes impossible to
| maintain an environment which is physically and
| psychologically safe for the students.
| IQunder130 wrote:
| Bullying happens everywhere regardless of group size. All
| it takes is the wrong mix of personality types and lack of
| impartial, interventionist supervision
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Er, right, the question is about how size affects the
| ability to have _effective_ supervision. You also need to
| at least try to have supervision, but I think that 's
| taken for granted by the proposal to make things smaller
| (I guess assuming that lack of interventionist
| supervision now is due to it failing in the large group,
| and will come back at smaller scale).
| leetcrew wrote:
| I dunno about that. I went to a smaller private school (~60
| kids per grade in middle school, ~100 per grade in high
| school), and we certainly had bullying. maybe this is
| already too large? I didn't simultaneously attend a large
| public school, so I can't say whether there was a
| difference in degree.
|
| we probably had more teachers per student, so more
| supervision, but I can't say that really helped. kids
| wouldn't physically attack each other in front of a
| teacher, but a lot of the verbal bullying was coded in a
| way (nicknames, in-group slang) that it wasn't obvious to
| an adult that it wasn't playful. the kids all knew exactly
| what was going on though.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Maybe the problem is not related to size of the school
| but only related to the fact that kids have no choice in
| going there?
|
| In the adult world, in most cases you aren't forced to go
| anywhere and only do so because you have a good reason,
| whether it's the workplace (earning money), universities
| (learning things because you need that knowledge), etc.
| Most people go into an establishment with a goal in mind,
| work towards that goal and have little time nor
| motivation for things like bullying.
|
| School is different because kids have no say in the
| matter, so even if they aren't interested in learning
| (because the coursework is boring, irrelevant, etc) have
| to go there and waste ~8 hours a day and need to occupy
| themselves. Typical sources of entertainment (television,
| video games, etc) are forbidden so bullying, or similar
| anti-social activities happens to fill the gap. This
| results in a lose-lose situation; kids that aren't
| interested in the coursework are having a miserable time
| and entertain themselves by making the environment
| miserable for everyone else (both other pupils as well as
| the school staff).
| blindgeek wrote:
| For a year of middle school and a couple years in high
| school, I went to a "distinguished" secular private prep
| school in Oklahoma City. I think there were 60 to 80
| students per grade, with small class sizes, much smaller
| than public schools. And let me tell you, there was
| plenty of bullying there. It was endemic.
|
| One of my regrets is that I didn't just drop out of high
| school at 15 and get my GED. I took the ACT test twice,
| once at 15 and once at 18, and there wasn't really a
| difference in my score. I suppose the one real difference
| is that the second time, I had fewer fucks to give, and a
| buddy smoked a joint with me before I took the test.
|
| The only institutions in life that I know of where you
| are forced to attend and prohibited from leaving on your
| own recognizance are school, prison, and a mental health
| facility to which one is involuntarily committed. Perhaps
| nursing homes are another.
|
| That said, I have a lot of respect for the teaching
| profession. I had some truly incredible teachers.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I doubt that a larger school has more bullying per
| student. In large schools the students tend to subdivide
| into non-intersecting groups (e.g. nerds, jocks,
| rednecks, punks, etc). I went to a medium/largish high
| school and there were kids in my graduating class that I
| had never met, did not know their name, etc. Kids in
| these differnt groups largely left each other alone,
| because they did not compete for the any of the same
| things. Fights were usually between members of the same
| group.
| retrac wrote:
| I suspect you may be right that even ~400 or ~500
| students is too many.
|
| This is just an anecdote. I went from an enriched program
| with a high school of about 500 students, which was quite
| wonderful, but still had the usual high school social
| issues, to another enrichment school of about 60
| students. It was socially different. Everyone knew
| everyone well. You _had_ to get along.
| [deleted]
| DataWorker wrote:
| Packs behave as packs.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Yes, the analogy between school and prison is spot on._
|
| Well, only in the sense that the analogy between prison and
| society is "spot on".
|
| > _In everyday life, if an environment /person bothers you,
| you can simply CHOOSE to deal with it if it's worth it or
| avoid it if it's not_
|
| There are myriads of ways you can't just "chose" (from not
| wanting to make a fuss, from them being powerful and that
| would turn against you, from you needing a job, and tons of
| other things besides).
| rorykoehler wrote:
| I remember being relentlessly bullied during a specific
| period as a kid. Only when I decided to decisively fight back
| did it end and it ended immediately. It's a lesson I won't be
| forgetting.
| benjohnson wrote:
| Same experience. And I lost the fight badly.
|
| Just showing that you have the ability to strike back is
| often enough.
|
| Oddly, became friends with my tormenter and had a lot in
| common.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I've seen the same thing happen with one of my kids,
| including the development of a friendship.
|
| Grandfather was right -- if you get hit, hit back, twice
| as hard.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Does this advice work for any difference in sizes between
| the people? I suspect if one is so small as to not pose
| any threat at all and/or take on extra damage, it would
| end badly for them more often than not.
| benjohnson wrote:
| For me... yes. I was significantly smaller and was only
| able to weakly punch his chest. I got punched in the face
| and got a black eye and a sore skull.
|
| As an adult the concept works. Bees can't hurt me
| significantly, and even when they land an attack they die
| - but I go out of my way to leave them alone.
| kar5pt wrote:
| The bullying that I experienced was verbal. Hitting the
| bullies for saying mean things probably would have been
| overreacting (and lead to me getting in trouble), but it
| was happening in class so I couldn't "walk away" either.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| It also supports another common sense observation, which is
| that mixed-age schooling results in much better behavioral
| outcomes. Kids don't obsess over their place in the artificial
| _Lord of the Flies_ hierarchy when there are younger and older
| kids around to provide frequent role reversals.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| One primary thing that stands out as actual humanity are
| behaviors which are almost never dominant in any other
| beings, and which further the progress of true civilization.
|
| Which is of course supposed to be civil if nothing else.
|
| Anything less is realistically a _lack_ of human nature,
| often still remaining along a not-completely-civilized
| continuum.
|
| So _human nature_ should never be used as an excuse for
| uncivil behavior, and further progress can best be made by
| recognizing _lack of human nature_ as the problem instead.
|
| This should be obvious to behaviorists but once you go there
| you've got to figure lots of them would need more _common
| sense_, except there still remains some prevalence to _common
| lack of sense_ . . .
| sjg007 wrote:
| Has that been studied?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >Has that been studied?
|
| Depends on how studious you are.
| quercusa wrote:
| Anecdota:
|
| Mixed-age groups of home-schooled kids (e.g., at co-op
| events) tend to just play, with the older ones typically
| watching out for the younger kids, whether they are
| siblings or not.
|
| Mixed-age groups of formally-schooled kids begin by setting
| up a hierarchy that usually depends on grade in school* and
| then is continually refined.
|
| * H-S kids in a mixed group are immediately marked as
| outsiders by this question. They either don't know or
| operate at different levels in different subjects.
| GVIrish wrote:
| Home schooled kids are typically in groups of far, far
| smaller sizes. The social dynamics of a high school with
| 2000 students is naturally going to be different than the
| dynamics of a home school of a dozen or so.
| Footkerchief wrote:
| I think the point is that the ingrained dynamics continue
| even when the context / group size evens out later.
| fullshark wrote:
| Every public school will be analogous to a prison no matter how
| good, because children have no choice on the matter. If you
| want to change the dynamic there the only solution is school
| choice because children simply must go to school, letting them
| (and their parents) choose which school is the right one is the
| way to improve the child's well being and make them feel like
| they have control over how they spend 200 days of their year.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I grew up in a school system where families had the ability
| to switch schools.
|
| It did not solve any of the problems you mention. In fact, it
| introduced a new set of problems where some number of
| students (and parents) at every school would conclude that
| the grass is greener on the other side of the fence no matter
| what. Most of the students who switched schools struggled to
| make friends or were frustrated that the switch didn't
| automatically solve their social problems.
|
| In retrospect, I realize I learned a lot about social
| maturity by staying one place with a semi-random group of
| people that I had to learn how to work with.
| sage76 wrote:
| > Most of the students who switched schools struggled to
| make friends or were frustrated that the switch didn't
| automatically solve their social problems.
|
| What do you think the reason was?
| mbg721 wrote:
| In my area, diocesan Catholic schools are very popular, but
| they don't really seem to solve the bullying issue.
| pii wrote:
| My cousin had a getting bullied problem in elementary school.
| His mom switched his school 6 times to no avail.
|
| My other cousin had a similar problem, his mom switched his
| school 3 times and in the end he wanted to go back to the
| first school. In the meantime, he fell way behind in his
| learning.
| burade wrote:
| Mental health is waaay more important than anything you
| could ever possibly learn in school.
| sage76 wrote:
| Why do you think his problem did not get solved?
| Balgair wrote:
| Denver Public Schools has a forced school choice program. In
| that each parent/guardian must register what school they want
| their student to go to; there is no default. All schools in
| DPS are charter schools, with many different focuses and
| education tactics. It may sound a bit odd, but it's been
| working for the ~90k students for a few years now.
|
| That said, bullying doesn't seem to be any less or more at
| DPS. Some quick googling seems to show a few cases of
| 'extreme' bullying in the local news, but nothing I can
| really point at to say the bullying is less or more. In the
| absence of really any stats or evidence, I'd assume bullying
| is probably the same as in other large metro districts.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Students wouldn't get to choose their school under your so
| called "choice" suggestion, their parents would, or it would
| be assigned based on how wealthy the parents are or their
| location or where their parents could afford transportation
| or which school is willing to take them or lottery results or
| whatever.
|
| As long as kids get arrested if they don't attend the prison
| analogy applies.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| Sometimes the point of behavioral psych and sociology research
| is to take "what's obvious" and collect the data to put a hard
| number on it. That way policy makers can justify putting money
| behind different approaches to address the problem...
| cafard wrote:
| "Current day school system". Well, OK. But try reading about
| English public schools of the 19th or 20th Century. I gather
| that things were not much better in continental Europe.
| fortran77 wrote:
| > _which allows them to throw public money at "anti bullying
| programs"_
|
| And more employment for more teachers/guidance-counselors, etc.
| [deleted]
| jancsika wrote:
| To have some significance, you'd need to link to a statement
| you wrote on this topic _prior_ to the research being
| published. Otherwise this looks like you 're just standing on
| the shoulders of giants to sing about how tall you are.
|
| To be clear-- even if you had published your 2nd paragraph
| prior to this research being published, that wouldn't qualify
| as something that is "completely obvious." At the very least
| you would have needed to give a hypothesis as to _why_ it is
| you think the current anti-bullying programs cannot work. That
| hypothesis would have needed to at least include something
| like, "in my experience people end up bullying their friends
| most of the time."
|
| Otherwise, you can't convincingly claim the truth was obvious
| and people who didn't get it were likely pretending. Without
| the research, everyone just shrinks back to become little mice
| noisily speculating about the state of the world.
|
| Edit: clarification
| Spivak wrote:
| You're assuming the parent is arguing in bad faith which
| seems kinda pointless on the internet because only they know
| what's in their head.
|
| I had the same reaction as the parent but I was also
| mercilessly bullied in middle and high school. It's no
| different than any other form of abuse in that you have no
| choice but to understand the social dynamic so that you can
| protect yourself.
|
| I didn't get bullied solely because I was nerdy, I got
| bullied because I was a nerdy kid who was trying to make
| friends.
|
| I didn't get bullied solely because I was queer, I got
| bullied because I was queer and tried to not be ashamed of
| it.
|
| As soon as I accepted that my only permissible friends were
| the other misfits and queers then the bullying (mostly)
| stopped. It only started up again if as a group we started
| having too much fun in public because that started to
| threaten the popular kids' position in school. If people saw
| us enjoying ourselves they might want to join us or _shudder_
| be like us. And that would make us... popular. Can't have
| that.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I got lightly bullied in high school and the first part
| matches my experience: deciding that I didn't care [very
| much] made it [mostly] stop, but if I let it get to me, it
| spiraled upward.
| leetcrew wrote:
| pretty spot on from my experience. there were always a
| couple truly cruel kids who would pick on anyone they
| perceived as weak. but most bullying seemed to be for the
| purpose of defending group boundaries. people would mostly
| leave you alone if they didn't think you were trying to
| join a group that wasn't "for you".
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's unreasonable to assume that people who are part of a
| bureaucracy will publish serious, critical research about it.
|
| It's more convenient to find another problem to solve. For
| this issue today, we look at bettering the plight of gay
| eskimo pre-teens and declare victory over bullying.
|
| I can tell you from personal experience as a member of a non-
| marginalized demographic who was relentlessly bullied in
| elementary school that bullying is not limited to any one
| type of target. In my case, a feckless bureaucracy and adult
| laziness were key enablers of bullying and bullying behavior.
| Personally, a amazing and brave teacher "saved" me and did so
| at his personal initiative and at his peril from a career
| perspective.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| If some scientist comes to you and state "we proved that
| people can get hurt ridding bikes", it's fair to point out
| that there is little surprise about the formal proof of
| something so many people empirically experiment in their
| daily life.
| zepto wrote:
| You are giving a lot of weight to the originality of academic
| institutions and their platforms as _authorizers of
| knowledge_.
|
| There are plenty of examples of people knowing things, or
| seeing things as obvious, which are only much later
| acknowledged by academic research.
|
| You are welcome to base your reality on what academia
| publishes, and accept that authority, but let's be clear that
| this is what you are choosing to do.
|
| Also, it's worth looking at the majority of comments on this
| post. Most of them also appear to assume that the research's
| result was obvious.
| koolba wrote:
| > To have some significance, you'd need to link to a
| statement you wrote on this topic prior to the research being
| published. Otherwise this looks like you're just standing on
| the shoulders of giants to sing about how tall you are.
|
| Not GP, but I've been advocating that children learn to
| defend themselves, both physically and verbally for many
| years. Here's a gem from a little over five years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11111126
|
| Confrontation is a part of life and it's important to
| understand response in kind. If someone in school makes fun
| of your shoes you don't run away or punch them in the face,
| you make fun of their shirt.
|
| Anti-bullying can't work because the real world does not have
| referees jumping in to break up non-violent situations.
| Children need to learn to address their own situations and
| that the words of their peers are totally meaningless.
| bittercynic wrote:
| > ...you make fun of their shirt.
|
| I agree that is an essential life skill, and I'd add that
| you have to judge the situation to know if that's
| appropriate.
|
| Sometimes your verbal assailant is not playful, but
| emotionally unbalanced, and responding in-kind will only
| put them farther over the edge, maybe dangerously so. I've
| had good results by yelling back with equal volume, but
| neutral tone, saying things like "Good morning. How you
| doing today?" and received a befuddled, and much quieter
| "Oh, good morning."
| whyleyc wrote:
| Actually it's possible for people to have opinions on matters
| where they are not a published author or academic.
|
| Also "little mice noisily speculating about the state of the
| world" is a pretty good summary of a lot of academia.
| pii wrote:
| Yeah we should burn the universities down
| linuxhiker wrote:
| No but they could certainly use a little bit less
| "theory" and a little bit more "real world".
| zuhayeer wrote:
| PG touches on this in Hackers and Painters. The social hierarchy
| in high school is a zero sum game that encourages people to down
| others to get higher on the ladder. And if you're not the one
| bullying... you're the one being bullied.
| helge9210 wrote:
| We had an intern from Ohio (in Israel, I went to school in Soviet
| Union and Ukraine, so have no experience of US school system) who
| explained to me a concept of "zero-tolerance policy to bullying"
| as it was applied in his school: while only one person
| harasses/beats another it's OK; the moment the second one starts
| to fight back, the policy kicks in and in worst case the second
| will get suspended, in best case both get suspended.
|
| I guess reasonable amount of mutual violence between peers will
| raise the price of bullying others for fun and profit.
| kinkrtyavimoodh wrote:
| On the surface "zero-tolerance" sounds like well, "zero-
| tolerance".
|
| In reality, it's just shirking of responsibility. Schools
| neither care about creating an environment where bullying will
| be reduced nor about actually resolving cases fairly. Their
| attitude to bullying is to just close their eyes, plug their
| fingers into their ears and go laah-laah-laah
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Strictly speaking, "zero-tolerance" just means they have to
| deal with it. They can't just break up a fight and have that
| be the end of it. It doesn't mean that the individuals
| involved are immediately expelled or suspended or whatever,
| though in practice that's often how it's implemented, because
| it's easier.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| A bully has control over when they'll bully, a bullied does
| not. Someone with something to hide has reason to watch the
| authorities.
|
| As such a bully can time their actions; hitting a student just
| before the teacher walks in. This is exactly how bullies can
| turn authority against their victims.
| thrawn0r wrote:
| in my schooling (eastern Germany 90s/00s) I haven't witnessed any
| bullying. I only. know it from EVERY high school movie/ TV show I
| have seen. how much is the media portraying U.S. reality and how
| much is media influencing lived culture?
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| Spanish guy here. Raised 80/90s. Middle/High income background
| of a middle size city. Witnessed plenty of bullying back then.
| Didn't have that name at the time. Many cases could have ended
| very badly with a bit of bad luck... but didn't.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| We treat those we're closest to the worst on a day to day basis.
| I'm constantly amazed at the casual politeness and optimistic
| interpretation my wife lends to complete strangers, but looks at
| me sideways every time I suggest anything.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Kids roll their eyes at the utopian idealism that is anti-
| bullying programs. They're going to do whatever they want anyhow.
| And, in order to ensure they get the best lot in life, they're
| going to claw, scratch, bite, and step-on each other to be sure
| they end up at the top of the mud hill. That's human nature. You
| can't put human nature in a box and wish it away. They'll always
| find an outlet to establish rank.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| First, "human nature" is a logical fallacy straight away:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
|
| Second, in many existing societies outside of the US school
| bullying is extremely uncommon.
| fallingknife wrote:
| There are rules of human behavior just as there are rules of
| dog behavior. To state otherwise is ridiculous.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| I never stated otherwise. The (well known) logical fallacy
| is in arbitrarily picking one behavior instead of another
| and labeling it "human nature" and claiming it's
| inevitable.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| my first highschool was a private single sex catholic school:
| the bullying problem there was intense. there was a lot of
| emphasis on rugby and football and other team sports, we were
| all made to wear uniforms and ties, go to chapel, make the
| school look good. There was a consistent problem with
| interpersonal violence, big trouble makers were often the
| football players though we also had clearly troubled
| individuals.
|
| For the last two years of my schooling I swapped to a coed
| public (yet highest scoring) special college literally just
| down the road. suddenly there was no bullying problem. I mean,
| compared to the other school it was practically zero. there was
| no uniform, kids could smoke outside if they wanted, you could
| not turn up to class, you were free to leave the grounds when
| you wanted. you could eat and drink when and where you wanted,
| and teachers were called by their first names. I couldn't even
| tell you if we had sports teams because no one cared, I
| literally don't remember.
|
| whatever the difference, it's either not human nature, or it
| can be overcome. I've lived it, so I know it's true.
| tkgally wrote:
| My high school experience sounds somewhat similar to your
| second school. It was a large public high school in Southern
| California in the 1970s with about equal numbers of black,
| Anglo white, Hispanic, and East Asian students from lower-
| class and middle-class backgrounds. The school was
| unexceptional academically, and it did have problems,
| including gang activity (Crips and Bloods), racial tension,
| and drug and alcohol abuse among the students. But I don't
| remember any of the emotional, social-hierarchy-based
| bullying that I have since read about at other high schools.
| I wonder if that might have been due to the size and
| diversity of the student population.
| watwut wrote:
| Authoritarian institutions do consistently end up with a lot
| of bullying. Catholic church had massive bullying problems in
| its institutions multiple times when they run them. Something
| about that obeyssance based value system makes it so.
| [deleted]
| andi999 wrote:
| Probably if attendance was not a requirement, the most
| disagreeable persons left the compound. This is a solution of
| course (which sounds less harsh than expulsion)
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| could have had a part in it, I'll fully admit. I know it
| lessened the tension in many of us, not just the trouble
| makers. I wasn't a bully, but also to advantage of not
| turning up to assume classes. honestly though, I can't
| speak highly enough of it, it was just what I needed after
| the first school.
|
| i hope that was that a deliberately joking use of the word
| 'compound' to refer to a school? (though probably how I
| felt about my first school emotionally).
|
| we had very few expulsions at the first school during my
| time there. but I can remember several instances of kids
| bullied until they had to leave. honestly it all seems so
| unjust and barbaric looking back.
| andi999 wrote:
| English is not my first language. I meant 'compound' in
| the sense 'a cluster of buildings having a shared
| purpose, usually inside a fence'. Where I am every school
| has a fence (also as insurance line). But maybe this
| usage of this expression is uncommon.
| yeahnah22 wrote:
| Compound has no negative connotations, but is not really
| used in this context either.
|
| Typically one would just say - the school, or perhaps the
| grounds. Campus is also common; but generally in the
| context where the school has multiple campuses.
| konschubert wrote:
| With that logic, grown ups should be chewing each other's faces
| off in the street all the time. They don't.
|
| So clearly there is something (morale, social pressure, threat
| of punishment) that prevents them from doing it.
| [deleted]
| loopz wrote:
| Actually, adults are much worse than the children. They just
| hide it in plain sight and through various psychopathic
| systems.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _With that logic, grown ups should be chewing each other 's
| faces off in the street all the time._
|
| Adults can be plenty cruel. It's just typically done with
| more subtlety, sophistication and plausible deniability than
| is employed by teens.
| cobraetor wrote:
| Yes, it can be done at various levels of subtlety as well
| as at group levels. Why else would we have such words
| describing adult behavior as "workplace bullying", "online
| harassment", "domestic violence", "culture wars", "race
| hustling", etc.?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Have you ever seen how people treat customer service?
|
| Too bad we can't punish them for such uncivil performance.
| Maybe we should go back to putting them on stocks and
| streaming it to world. Even with some sort of nice remote
| online interaction...
| oarsinsync wrote:
| Have you ever seen how people get people in customer
| service departments to treat other people?
|
| I'm absolutely not saying the abuse given to customer
| service people get is justified, but it's not unprovoked
| either.
|
| Turns out when you codify bad behaviour, you get bad
| responses to that behaviour. What's the justification for
| codifying that bad behaviour in the first place?
| ymbeld wrote:
| We should just retire sociology. It's all just human nature,
| and what that means is just obvious to everybody.
| ymbeld wrote:
| Presumably people agree that we should "retire sociology"
| considering that I was being sarcastic.
| airhead969 wrote:
| This is a good discussion. I hope we can dive into the nuances
| of what ways work to raise cooler kids, esp. becoming more
| messianic / moral courage: making peace, defending the weak,
| calling-out infliction of suffering, and setting better
| examples for their peers.
| choeger wrote:
| I call bullshit. Teenagers aren't complete in their development
| yet. That's why you can, and should, train and teach them.
|
| Teaching empathy is of course difficult and don't forget that
| the bullied peers are _also_ teenagers that might behave
| "weirdly" (no victim blaming intended). But the whole thing
| still _needs_ to be taught as it is a horrible thing that
| exists in reality.
|
| Compare this to drugs, STD, or plain old reckless behavior. You
| tell your teenagers not to take pills, use condoms, and not
| dive headfirst into unknown waters, right? Not everyone does
| this successfully, but there is no reason not to talk about it,
| just because your teenager will Roll their eyes. If that's any
| criterion, most parents would probably not talk to their kids
| at all between 12 and 20...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| He didn't say not to do anything. He said the (current)
| programs were pretending realities didn't exist, or that they
| could be scolded away. This is basically why the "Just Say
| No" anti-drug campaign failed.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Nancy, the 40th and first woman POTUS. ;) By being
| celebrities in their own bubbles, archaically-simplistic,
| and close-minded, the Reagans couldn't grasp reality or
| have empathy for anyone else. HIV/AIDS, final destruction
| of mental healthcare systems, War on Drugs, CIA crack
| epidemic-Iran Contra, and many more.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandal
| s
| cobraetor wrote:
| > I call bullshit. Teenagers aren't complete in their
| development yet. That's why you can, and should, train and
| teach them.
|
| You are absolutely right.
|
| - If you were an anti-bullying organization, what
| methodologies exactly would you device for parents and
| educators to intervene so as to train and teach teenagers to
| the point that bullying is minimized?
|
| - What made the past and current anti-bullying organizations
| fail in their efforts?
|
| - Do we adults understand what works and what doesn't in
| preventing bullying? What about bullying among adults?
| jkhdigital wrote:
| I think the real disagreement here is about how to
| effectively socialize children, not about whether they can be
| socialized at all. Hyperbolic arguments aside, we can agree
| that humans _can_ be socialized to behave as good members of
| a community, but humans who are _not_ socialized will
| frequently behave like animals.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Yes. _Effectively_ socialize. The other issue is that
| humans are always going to be human, and seek will-to-power
| to advance their status to promote their genes and improve
| their lot in life. There 's no undoing or wishing away
| human nature, only mild adjustments with nurture that we
| must keep trying to do with pragmatism.
| f6v wrote:
| Is it human nature to kill, steal or rape? Yet we don't allow
| that in the society.
| hntrader wrote:
| Yes, that is human nature if we look at anthropological
| studies.
|
| We punish it which creates a disincentive. There isn't any
| explicit anti-murder training we need to go through that's
| premised on a flawed understanding of human nature.
|
| We've also made it so murder doesn't confer status in our
| society, which is the opposite case to bullying as per the
| findings. And that's rather unique to modern society, murder
| didn't always confer lower status.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > Yes, that is human nature if we look at anthropological
| studies. We punish it which creates a disincentive.
|
| Only in some case, in other case, we justify it by naming
| it something else, like taxes, prison/capital punishment,
| national interest.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Definitely. The myth of the noble savage. Modern cities are
| much safer than ancient communities, tribal or agrarian.
|
| An interesting book: _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ by
| Pinker
| viraptor wrote:
| > Yes, that is human nature if we look at anthropological
| studies.
|
| That feels like "[citation needed]". What do you mean by
| "is human nature"? Very small minority would participate in
| murder, stealing, or rape, even if we created no
| disincentive for them.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Murder is generally unacceptable, unless you're high
| status like Snoop or OJ. However theft and rape are still
| allowed if one is of high-enough status and doesn't get
| caught: Wall St., billionaires, Jimmy Saville, or Trump.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > Murder is generally unacceptable, ...
|
| Yet, we give Nobel prizes to murderers.
| hntrader wrote:
| It's not accurate that only a very small minority would
| participate, the murder rate can go as high as 40-60
| percent (e.g Waorani, among others). This is what can
| happen when there's no Leviathan that disincentives
| murder and when murder is status conferring instead of
| status reducing.
|
| It's also part of the nature of our close relatives, the
| chimpanzee. See "lethal raiding".
| Sharlin wrote:
| However, it's very much not a part of the nature of our
| other close relatives, the bonobos, whose conflict
| resolution mechanisms can be literally described as "make
| love, not war". The difference seems to be more about
| their respective environments' relative
| abundance/scarcity than any innate "nature".
| jkhdigital wrote:
| Indeed, humans clearly have both tendencies in our
| evolutionary lineage. But I think the point is that
| humans build societies which enforce behavioral norms
| independently of what would emerge based on the "natural"
| environment. Both bonobos and chimpanzees are locked in
| their strategies for conflict resolution, which may not
| always be appropriate for the prevailing environmental
| conditions.
| hntrader wrote:
| The difference is definitely not known to be due to
| current environments' relative abundance.
|
| Maybe you got that from the Wiki article on bonobos which
| includes a deceptive quote of a 2014 Nature article. What
| the article actually says is that bonobos have a genetic
| adaptation due to historic evolution in environments with
| abundance which either allows for phenotypic variation in
| response to current environment, _or_ which has resulted
| in biological evolution to less violence as a general
| policy (which would indeed be "nature"). Personally I'm
| strongly inclined towards the latter hypothesis because
| it's the most parsimonious and fits observation better,
| ie the number of observed bonobo murders is near zero
| despite varying environments. If we find modern bonobos
| living in some scarcity who take up murder as a result,
| then I'll change my mind.
|
| Chimps on the other hand are believed to be violent
| because it confers genetic fitness (as per that same
| Nature article), and things such as the age and sex of
| their victims is predictive suggesting they murder in
| order to eliminate competition. This is their nature in
| the sense that this behavior is significantly impacted by
| their genes.
| Sharlin wrote:
| I mean, I'm not arguing that it's all cultural, or even
| epigenetic. But claiming that humans have nature X
| because chimps have nature X is definitely cherry-picking
| data points given that bonobos are just as closely
| related to us and behave very differently.
| [deleted]
| viraptor wrote:
| > (e.g Waorani, among others) ... when murder is status
| conferring instead of status reducing.
|
| This describes a given culture, including upbringing. It
| does not describe human nature. (or specifically doesn't
| prove they are aligned)
|
| We've got examples from other extremes too, like pacifism
| in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Rape is shockingly common and cultures are human made
| things, so they express human nature or some variation of
| it.
|
| Picking which cultures you like as examples of "human
| nature" and excluding others isn't really a sound tactic
| of argumentation.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's not picking cultures I like. It's a counterexample -
| describing specific culture doing/avoiding X to an
| extreme level does not prove or disprove X being or not
| "in human nature".
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| This is from your previous comment: _Very small minority
| would participate in murder, stealing, or rape, even if
| we created no disincentive for them._
|
| I have seen articles that say that if you ask a room full
| of women if they have been raped, you may get as much as
| half the hands go up. If you ask them if they ever said
| "no" to sex and ended up having sex anyway, up to 90
| percent of the hands go up.
|
| In most countries, the definition of rape hinges on the
| detail of consent and is presumed to be only something a
| man can do to a woman (though some laws are being
| updated). If you accept that forcible sodomy by a man
| against another man is also rape, prison rapes are quite
| common.
|
| Human trafficking exists and every single instance of
| sexual intercourse with someone being trafficked against
| their will is typically referred to in articles on the
| topic as rape.
|
| Then there is statutory rape, where someone is deemed to
| be too young to reasonably give their consent, so it
| doesn't count if she said "yes" to it.
|
| Then there is date rape, which typically involves
| alcohol, a culture clash between people with different
| expectations for what would happen and tragic
| misunderstanding. Sometimes the guys will tell you that
| they didn't think they forced her. It's news to them that
| she felt forced into sex when someone shows up to accuse
| them of rape and drag them in front of a college review
| board or charge them with a crime.
|
| A lot of people think rape is about physical violence.
| It's not. Most rapes don't involve beating the hell out
| of the victim.
|
| It's a complicated topic, but rape is far from uncommon.
|
| I don't know where you get your ideas about human nature
| from but they don't seem to fit with anything I know
| about human nature and I'm some idiot with pie-in-the-sky
| ideals prone to assuming people are just going to be
| _nice_ because that 's just the right thing to do and
| that, sadly, is often not the case. At all.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Do you have citations for these incredibly high numbers?
| There has been some justified criticism about the way
| rape stats have been re-designed to elicit higher
| numbers. https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, highers numbers about rape are somewhat less then
| 20%. So the 50% or 90% is bonkers and does not represent
| general population.
|
| However, rape (no matter what definition) is not evenly
| spread, some groups of women are more likely to become
| victims then others. Perpetrators pick their victims in a
| sort of rational way - some are more vulnerable.
|
| So if you bias the group the right way, you can get large
| numbers.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _So the 50% or 90% is bonkers and does not represent
| general population._
|
| No, it's actually commentary on the fact that women
| themselves often cannot clearly state "I was raped." The
| article in question was trying to show that lots more
| women have been raped than will admit to it or claim it.
| But you can also read it the other way: It casts light on
| how difficult it is to define rape.
|
| Rape hinges on the detail of consent. Even women who have
| been fed alcohol until they were incapacitated and then
| taken to someone's room will go online and say things
| like "I had sex with a friend last night. I'm in a
| relationship. I know I need to drink less..." and get a
| chorus of people saying "Honey, that was rape."
|
| People imagine rape to be some clear cut crime. In
| reality women are often very unclear in their own minds
| whether or not they were raped.
|
| If the crime hinges on the detail of consent and the
| woman in question can't state clearly whether or not she
| wanted it, much less whether or not she consented, then
| you have bigger problems in determining data than in how
| surveyors ask their questions.
| watwut wrote:
| I would rather go with research then with imagining
| clueless women saying things online.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm not imagining anything. I've seen such things happen
| online.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Do you have citations for these incredibly high
| numbers?_
|
| Sorry, no. It was an article I read a long time ago.
|
| Rape stats are an inherently difficult thing to measure
| well. I could, in all earnestness, argue for either much
| higher or much lower figures than the reported figures.
|
| That's a discussion I don't care to try to have on HN at
| all, much less on two hours sleep.
| kiliantics wrote:
| That room full of women is in our society though. The
| previous commenter was pointing out that there are other
| societies that contain a lot less violence, therefore it
| doesn't have to be considered a given that rape and
| murder will always be present in society.
|
| It's easy to believe that it's "in our nature" because of
| the dynamics which you describe being so common in the
| most dominant society, which is the only society most
| people have experience of. But, as another idiot with
| ideals, I believe we should not view this trend as a
| fatalistic inevitability, that it will always exist no
| matter how hard we work to change things.
|
| Most people are in a state of near constant existential
| threat, due to their impoverishment in artificial
| scarcity (so much wealth in the world but must of us have
| access to nearly none of it). So most people don't have
| the luxury of being nice, even if it's the right thing to
| do. That and the fact that most of us are victims of
| many-generation-long cycles of inherited abuse that can
| be so hard to get out of. We have in many ways only ever
| been taught to be cruel to each other.
|
| If we all play along with the idea of this inevitability,
| as in the top level commenter's claims of human nature,
| we only make it more true and harder to escape.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| There are cultures where if a woman is raped, the
| solution is to marry her off to her rapist because she
| doesn't really have rights of her own. He has violated
| the property rights of some other man and damaged his
| goods and taking responsibility for said _damaged goods_
| is the remedy -- not for the victim of the rape but for
| the man who owns her.
|
| There are cultures where a woman cannot accuse her
| husband of rape. If she is married, he has unilateral
| right to have sex with her as he sees fit, no permission
| required.
|
| Rape is a really complicated topic and the detail of
| consent has only grown thornier in my mind over time.
|
| While I was homeless, men were happy to offer me money
| for sex because it was obvious to them that I was very
| poor. Meanwhile, I was routinely told on HN "Get a real
| job" and basically quit my bitching that I can't manage
| to make adequate income from my writing.
|
| I have six years of college and cannot manage to come up
| with an adequate income from "honest labor" but men are
| happy to offer me money for sex under circumstances that
| can be interpreted as _taking advantage of my
| vulnerability._
|
| There are women who argue that all heterosexual acts of
| intercourse are essentially rape because of the generally
| poor status of women's rights. If putting up with
| intercourse with some man is the only means a woman has
| of establishing an adequate income and the world will
| literally let you starve and say "Not my problem" if you
| aren't married well, dating him in specific, etc, is it
| really genuinely consenting to agree to sex to stave off
| starvation?
|
| This is not a theoretical question for me. This is lived
| experience as an educated American woman still reeling
| with shock at how amazingly hard it is to get taken
| seriously as a person in need of an earned income and
| willing to work for pay while no one wants to pay me.
| They will take freebies from me, so they think what I do
| has merit, but when push comes to shove it doesn't lead
| to an adequate income for me.
|
| It's not a thing I expect anyone here to understand or
| care about. I've been here long enough to know that
| commenting on it doesn't get me sympathy. It just pisses
| people off who would like to think of themselves as nicer
| than that, so pointing this out isn't going to be met
| with people going "Oh. I didn't realize that. Let's fix
| that. That's wrong."
|
| It will be met with a chorus of "You are just doing it
| wrong." and no rebuttal on my part will ever be
| sufficient to have the issue taken seriously. I know
| because I've tried for years to put this issue into words
| and that's how it goes every time, without fail.
|
| So if I were to cave and finally sleep with a man for his
| money after a decade or more of dire financial problems
| and failing to find any other remedy, is that really,
| truly consenting sex?
|
| I don't think it is. It's not the kind of sex I'm
| interested in ever having.
|
| I've had better. I know what better looks and feels like.
|
| But my words fall on deaf ears and make no difference. So
| I have grown more sympathetic to strident feminist views,
| though I don't fundamentally agree with them and don't
| even self-identify as a _feminist_.
| hntrader wrote:
| The clear trend from hunter gatherer to modern society is
| a dramatically declining murder rate.
|
| The murder rate has declined by about 50x thanks to
| modern society.
|
| This is what I mean when I say that these actions are
| human nature. Only because of the state Leviathan and
| modern cultural zeitgeist have we been able to change
| this behavior from very common (in some cases more likely
| than not) to rare.
|
| What's the murder rate of the Moriori? Is it less than 5
| per 100k per year?
|
| If modern society were to disintegrate, the murder rate
| should increase by 50x roughly as we trend back to our
| raw nature without these artificial attenuating forces.
| kiliantics wrote:
| Again, why are you basing your understanding of the world
| on the ideas of enlightenment hacks like Pinker, who
| can't get past 18th century understanding? It must be
| truly sad to only be able to see the world in such a grim
| and pessimistic way.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-
| stev...
| hntrader wrote:
| Whenever I read Pinker critiques (and I've read a few)
| they're always dripping with dishonest reasoning that
| leaves me even more confident in his position.
|
| Take Jason Hickel's critique, where he lies about the
| poverty rate increasing (when in fact it's decreasing
| according to his own data) and then hand waves away all
| the other metrics that Pinker discusses in a single
| paragraph.
|
| Take Nassim Taleb's (who I usually respect) critique,
| where he comes off as a raving lunatic, accusing Pinker
| of inadequately addressing tail risks when the objective
| of his work is mostly descriptive and not pertaining to
| possible existential risks. I recommend you read Pinker's
| hilarious dismantling of that rambling nonsense.
|
| Or the debate between Pinker and Gladwell where Gladwell
| totally ignores all the actual metrics that Pinker
| discusses and instead waxes poetic in narrative form,
| discussing single anecdotes.
|
| Now I'm half way through this Guardian piece and I
| already had to stop. Just because some Enlightenment
| thinkers had truly backwards ideas - and I'm sure that
| Pinker would agree that they're extremely backwards -
| says zero about Pinker's thesis. It's a borderline straw
| man to think that that's relevant to his thesis. If the
| latter part of the article has a better argument, let me
| know.
| viraptor wrote:
| > The murder rate has declined by about 50x thanks to
| modern society.
|
| > This is what I mean when I say that these actions are
| human nature.
|
| That carries an assumption that modern society restricted
| that side of human nature. An alternative: modern society
| enables us to act according to human nature and not
| resort to actions necessary for survival in previous
| societies.
|
| If modern society disintegrated, there wouldn't be a lack
| of society influence. It would be a different society.
| That's why we have the whole nature-vs-nurture debate
| which is not trivial. That's why I objected to the
| original claim. (Although as Doreen mentions, some
| behaviours are much more common than others)
| hntrader wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but modern society is
| clearly pushing us away from our own nature in this
| instance, not towards it.
|
| To establish this, we just need to ask the question of
| what would happen if the explicit state punishments for
| murder, rape, etc were removed. The rates would increase
| significantly, implying that the existence of these
| measures is attenuating behaviour that's otherwise rather
| natural.
|
| If chimps received an electric shock each time they tried
| to murder another chimp, would they murder less often?
| Yes, because that shock is attenuating their true nature.
|
| Admittedly, "human nature" is a rather fuzzy concept and
| isn't a scientifically precise term.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Historians and scientists have studied this and basically
| the rise of government has reduced the murder rate.
| There's a great PBS episode on it.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| This is a little like saying that starvation is human
| nature. Our entire society is organized around minimizing
| various aspects of human nature, starting with starvation
| and moving on up to murder, and at some point in the list
| of things we try to avoid, perhaps because they are part
| of our nature, is bullying.
| kiliantics wrote:
| Your understanding of society is behind by about two or
| three centuries at least... It's supremely unscientific
| to use chimpanzee social dynamics to understand human
| ones. And the standard view among anthropologists about
| prevalence of violence in a given community, is that it
| arises out of certain conditions (e.g. famine or other
| loss of resources, usually man-made by outsiders or
| despotic rulers), not because we are innately prone to
| just killing each other if there is no "leviathan" to
| stop us.
|
| Past research suggesting this kind of thing -- like the
| single study of a single tribe that you are giving us
| with your argument -- has been debunked by more nuanced,
| modern (and less colonial/racist) research. There are far
| more peaceful societies known to us than violent ones,
| though unfortunately we are mostly forced to participate
| in one of the latter.
| hntrader wrote:
| It has zero to do with racist research (the same findings
| apply to historical Europe) and your assertions here are
| just factually wrong.
|
| Here's a study on middle ages Croatia where 20 percent of
| skeletons showed cranial fractures (which doesn't even
| include murder by flesh wounds):
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.2208
| 3
|
| Here's a study on London cemetaries which found a 7
| percent rate (again this excludes murder by other
| methods):
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.232
| 88
|
| "e.g. famine or other loss of resources, usually man-made
| by outsiders or despotic rulers"
|
| Demonstrably wrong in the case of the Waorani. It was a
| blood feud going back generations, long before any
| contact with other societies. So yes, a Leviathan
| would've stopped it.
|
| https://www.nature.com/news/2009/090511/full/news.2009.46
| 3.h...
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >It was a blood feud going back generations, long before
| any contact with other societies.
|
| So culturally preserved hatred (which became an outlier
| over a period of time where other cultures preserved less
| hatred), not much different than the Hatfields & McCoys.
| watwut wrote:
| One culture with unusually high murder rate does not
| prove murder is "in human nature". You are literally
| picking outlier to make general claim.
| hntrader wrote:
| No, I didn't bring up that one example to support the
| general claim that murder is part of human nature. I
| brought it up to debunk the notion that only a very small
| proportion would necessarily engage in these activities
| in the absence of a state. For that purpose, all I needed
| was a single counter-example.
|
| If instead you want evidence for the more general claim,
| you can look at some of the studies I've referred to in
| this thread (e.g. the one about London or Croatia), or
| just look up anthropological surveys of hunter gatherer
| societies that show murder rates 50x higher _on average_.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Here Is Something You Can't Understand
| jcelerier wrote:
| Yet it happens daily
| pawelmurias wrote:
| It's not for most people. Some cultures heavily encourage
| being a dick but we have builtin inhibitions.
| viraptor wrote:
| I'm not sure if they consider it at that level. At
| primary/secondary school it's pretty clear - you may get told
| off for bullying if anyone learns about it, may have some
| uncomfortable conversations. But you'll still be in the same
| class with the same people the next day. Unless you do
| something so drastic you get expelled.
|
| I've not heard of many teens (I'm sure there's a few) actively
| thinking of / planning bullying. Most of it is on a "why not,
| that's what I want to do now" level. The ones I've seen were
| actually kids on the very bottom of any hierarchy just acting
| out, not trying to achieve anything.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/three_teenagers_on_trial_.
| ..
|
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/police_complete_investiga.
| ..
| viraptor wrote:
| Yes, we can find specific cases for a lot of things. The
| question what's the usual behaviour/motivation still
| stands.
| nathias wrote:
| that's human nature for psychopaths, the rest of us don't have
| to put up with them if we don't want to...
| konschubert wrote:
| Luckily School isn't Life.
| http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
| ieatmyownpoop wrote:
| Dat heading tho
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| The blurb seems to indicate a gender-neutral view of bullying.
| Females and males employ fundamentally different techniques,
| aggression, threats, and the like to socially jockey for
| position.
|
| I'd argue in high school female social status is arranged into
| stratified blobs but the dominance within those blobs is fluid.
|
| Male social status is a dominance hierarchy of blobs, and males
| within the resulting strata will self organize into sub-
| hierarchies to protect against inter-strata conflict.
|
| The other main difference is that females employ social status
| threats.
|
| Males use outright physical threats.
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| Mmmmm, I don't know.
|
| Most of the bullying I remember from childhood was mostly of a
| boy already high in the social status, against one low in the
| ranks.
|
| The receiving guy was not a threat to the giving one.
| loopz wrote:
| The threat is against the others in the group, if they don't
| participate or try to intervene.
|
| The stressors however, are often coming from relationships with
| adults.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _The paper cites the real-life case of Megan Meier, who hanged
| herself in 2007 after being bullied by people she thought were
| her friends -- with the added twist of a mother orchestrating the
| social media bullying scheme._
|
| Yeah. Parents and teachers are probably the people we should be
| training to behave better, not teenagers caught in a system they
| didn't design and often desperately wish they could escape.
|
| Edit: I will add that a lot of my social problems in high school
| were rooted in or exacerbated by teachers holding me up as the
| example to hate on. They would brag about my high scores as if
| that somehow reflected positively on their teaching ability (it
| didn't) and then simultaneously act like if other people weren't
| doing as well as I was, it was because they weren't trying hard
| enough or something (disavowing their own responsibility for poor
| outcomes in the classroom).
|
| That seems to be a norm in schools and is directly related to the
| described teen behavior in the article.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Teachers and administrators bullied me indirectly through the
| most popular kids in school. Several schools. I made a few of
| them pay and pay when I figured out their abuse patterns
| depended on me staying quiet. I never went to any formal
| authorities because I didn't think I would be believed.
|
| This social issue of adults using children like this is
| extremely rampant. It's a phenomenon you can't unsee.
|
| [edit: the one ray of hope? the teacher who ever took my side?
| arrested for sexual assault on a minor while I was still in
| attendance.]
| ralphc wrote:
| Did you mean "never"?
| dwighttk wrote:
| I don't think that ray of hope came through
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| A false hope, indeed. It may be worth mentioning that
| this was not only the local affluent district, but among
| the top 5 in the state, ranked by wealth or academic
| performance. All that cash in the district, and they
| still couldn't vet teachers well.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Regarding your edit: I learned in school to hide my ability in
| order to avoid the problems you faced. I think a lot of kids
| did (most?). It's what leads to that stereotype of a teacher
| asking an obvious question but nobody raises their hand. What a
| messed up situation for an education system to punish
| performance and teach people to not engage and hide ability.
|
| Then there's the nasty ego side effect of us all thinking we're
| smarter than everyone else because we assume we're the only
| ones hiding our abilities.
| imtringued wrote:
| It reminds me of this meme:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iMV9XA6t_8
| SunlightEdge wrote:
| Oh that's awful. Agreed, terrible behaviour from teachers
| there.
| [deleted]
| loopz wrote:
| What is even more true is that the children often pick up
| behaviour from adults, especially at home and in abuse
| relationships. So it doesn't matter how much propaganda about
| bullying is spewed forth in school, when the real raising of
| children happen in other places.
|
| For adults, bullying, injustice, unfairness and exclusion is
| just standard, normal behaviour, especially at top leadership.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| _For adults, bullying, injustice, unfairness and exclusion is
| just standard, normal behaviour, especially at top
| leadership._
|
| Somewhat. However, in contrast to kids, adults have rights
| and access to the judicial system, which makes bullying etc.
| harder.
| loopz wrote:
| If it was easy to judge, within any institutions, bullying
| would've been solved long ago.
| sjg007 wrote:
| There's definitely bullying within families and between
| spouses unfortunately. Kids may internalize that and act it
| out with their peers.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >adults have rights and access to the judicial system,
| which makes bullying etc. harder.
|
| Except in the equally common cases where the judicial
| system makes bullying etc. easier.
| dmingod666 wrote:
| What do you think it is when some superior at work tries to
| mock in jest or get disproportionate agressive at mistakes?
| Its an undertone to reinforce social heirarchies. If you
| call bullshit on it, it may stop or worsen. Its all power
| play. Bullying is just part of a spectrum. When someone
| gives a dirty look to a rude waiter it is not much
| different than being abusive to someone cause you see a
| decent route where you get away with the bad behavior.
|
| This is why you have anonymous trolls but polite and civil
| strangers.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| Your point eludes the fact we're all caught in this system, not
| just teenagers. Parents have few choices, they have certain
| budget for a house and that dictates which district they're in.
| Meanwhile, they're struggling and working hard and education is
| a pivotal means of upward mobility, so they feel it's extremely
| important to their child's future.
|
| US Teachers are grossly underpaid and have to deal with
| tremendous amounts of training already...and stress. Consider
| in many of our schools, you have one teacher to 20 or 25
| students, many of whom have undiagnosed learning disabilities,
| developmental problems, social issues, familial problems,
| hunger, mental health issues...teachers are already working
| insanely hard for low pay. I worked exclusively in struggling
| schools and I had kids with cousins shot dead, kids who
| literally jumped onto the table and screamed how myself and
| other teachers were racists, it's insane what teachers have to
| handle.
|
| So no, We can't lay everything at the feet of current parents
| and teachers, there's a lot of policy, politics, and history in
| the educational field that no current teacher or parent had
| anything to do with. They're struggling and vying for success
| just as they see the children suffering.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _So no, We can 't lay everything at the feet of current
| parents and teachers_
|
| I'm a parent. I'm a parent who was sexually abused as a child
| and succeeded in not passing on my awful baggage about sex to
| my children.
|
| I took the position "The buck stops here" and was unwilling
| to accept excuses.
|
| I was fortunate to be a military wife and it allowed me to be
| a homemaker. I ultimately homeschooled my sons for a lot of
| years.
|
| My first blog was a parenting and homeschooling blog. I've
| had a few of them and none have really gelled.
|
| I would love to be part of the solution here for the wider
| world, not just for my kids. I don't know how to make that
| happen while getting no real engagement.
|
| Adults are absolutely the people who must be held
| responsible. Making excuses for why current adults can't do
| better by the children in their charge is part of the
| problem.
|
| I'm fine with saying "The US has amazingly shitty policies
| generally and needs to be more family friendly." I get that.
|
| But someone, somewhere has to take responsibility. And that
| someone needs to be a current adult, not a legal minor.
|
| From what I gather, anti-bullying programs tend to try to
| intercede with the kids in a way that fundamentally doesn't
| work. They don't have the legal rights or agency to stand up
| for themselves.
|
| Adults are the ones who have that. Adults are our only hope
| here.
| [deleted]
| tvphan wrote:
| Did you use 4 to represent for? I was so confused
| colecut wrote:
| This is like all the adults who make fun of me for buying bitcoin
| mancerayder wrote:
| Of course!
|
| And a similar strategy plays out with harassment and even to an
| extent racism in high school. Oftentimes it's a strategic play by
| someone with high aggression and low empathy. That was my
| experience.
|
| However, we're being told by the dominant Zeitgeist at the moment
| that it's language we should adjust and control and police, anti
| bias training and such. It'll take a few years for the blank
| slatism to be pushed aside and let science back in: hierarchies
| and competition are partially biological and begin in childhood,
| independent of what anyone teaches anyone.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| If this happens more the closer people get in social status
| (friends) then it suggests that bullying (as defined here) is a
| tool of social competition.
| morsch wrote:
| The title of the linked article is _Most Teen Bullying Occurs
| Among Peers Climbing the Social Ladder_. I had trouble parsing
| the HN story title.
| dang wrote:
| A moderator fixed it a while ago. I've changed it again to the
| subtitle, though, which seems more factual and less
| interpretive.
| cobraetor wrote:
| > the subtitle, though, which seems more factual and less
| interpretive
|
| Not true, if you read the linked paper:
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/712972
|
| > The reason for the typically low success rates, we believe,
| is that aggressive behavior accrues social rewards and does
| so to a degree that leads some to betray their closest
| friends. Even the most successful prevention programs are
| unable to alter the aggressive behavior of popular bullies,
| who use cruelty to gain and maintain status (Garandeau, Lee,
| and Salmivalli 2014). Most programs focus on remedying
| dynamics such as emotional dysregulation, poor conflict
| management, and empathy deficits, factors that may explain
| only a portion of aggressive behavior. These efforts may
| reduce "normative targeting" of those who violate one or more
| of myriad unwritten rules governing adolescent fashion,
| gender expression, physical appearance, sexuality, and so on
| --in short, the socially vulnerable. But unless they disrupt
| the popularity contests ubiquitous in secondary schools, they
| are unlikely to improve conditions for those trying to reach
| the next rung on the social ladder, not to mention those they
| step on--who are often their own friends.
|
| What made you think that the use of "Social Ladder" is
| interpretive when words like "social rewards" and "popularity
| contents" are used throughout the paper (with references to
| past papers talking about the same to boot)? The paper is
| clearly not talking about bullying happening merely among
| friends and friends-of-friends, but it does so in a social
| hierarchical context.
|
| The authors could not have come up with any recommendations
| while discounting the social status aspect (as HN did with
| the title rewrite here), for instance -
|
| > One such strategy entails coopting status contests for
| prosocial ends by identifying high-status youths and changing
| their behavior in the hopes that they in turn influence their
| peers.
| avodonosov wrote:
| Same here
| mkl wrote:
| Why butcher the headline to incomprehensibility? The actual title
| is "Most Teen Bullying Occurs Among Peers Climbing the Social
| Ladder", which is clear. "Most teen bully among friends 4 social
| hierarchy - anti-bullying programs fail" doesn't make any kind of
| sense to me.
| lkramer wrote:
| Me neither, I mostly clicked on the article to see if that was
| an actual academic headline. Glad it wasn't.
| [deleted]
| warent wrote:
| it wasnt until I read the original title and closely compared
| it to this one that I finally understood 4 means "for" here.
|
| Kept thinking it was a quantity or enumeration. Four friends?
| Four social hierarchies? The fourth group?
|
| Really confusing change to change the headline.
| dang wrote:
| A moderator fixed it a while ago. I've changed it again to the
| subtitle, though, which seems more factual and less
| interpretive.
| d3nj4l wrote:
| Yeah, I hope dang fixes this one, given it also breaks the rule
| on editorializing titles.
| monadic5 wrote:
| Well it doesn't mean a quantity. I have faith in your ability
| to interpret, though apparently not without complaint.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Most Buffalo buffalo occurs among Buffalo buffalo Buffalo
| buffalo buffalo.
| thecleaner wrote:
| Any references to the original paper ? Their data collection
| process should be interesting because if bullying is used
| strategically what questions would actually make them confess the
| intent ?
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I'm on the spectrum and even I didn't have to read the paper to
| know that.
| dandanua wrote:
| > The study focuses, instead, on a broader definition of peer
| aggression -- theorizing that aggression can actually improve the
| social status of the aggressor.
|
| It looks like a breakthrough!
|
| /s
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of
| research assignments...
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Wow, I never thought I'd live to see the day an old school text
| messaging abbreviation was used to shorten a headline on HN.
| lqqq wrote:
| The HN title is so confusing. If you don't get it at first like
| me: 4 means "for" here. That makes a lot more sense.
| fortran77 wrote:
| There's an interesting parallel here:
|
| > _"To the extent that this is true, we should expect them to
| target not vulnerable wallflowers, but their own friends, and
| friends-of-friends, who are more likely to be their rivals for
| higher rungs on the social ladder,"_
|
| I spent 10 years working for a "Fortune 50" company. A huge media
| conglomorate.
|
| This was exactly the behavior of low- and mid- level executives
| to each other as they tried to climb the corporate ladder.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| >"To the extent that this is true, we should expect them to
| target not vulnerable wallflowers, but their own friends, and
| friends-of-friends, who are more likely to be their rivals for
| higher rungs on the social ladder,"
|
| I was bullied and then bullied myself - not proud of that, but it
| felt natural as it made me cool. Then, a handicapped guy was
| bullied by my friends and I was defending him and kept the
| friendship with the handicapped guy. My status fell dramatically.
|
| Thinking back, I understand now the dynamics but I would have no
| advice to my child (if I had one) how to avoid being bullied or
| stop participating in bullying. My ex gf was a natural born
| leader, she was beautiful, tall, intelligent, but also a lone
| wolf. She was showing civil courage in school and was defending
| the weak ones without losing her status. But being pretty and a
| natural leader is nothing you can teach someone.
|
| Probably you just have to accept that bullying is part of our
| social dynamic.
| pharmakom wrote:
| It is part of the human dynamic, but only when you are forced
| into contact with the same small group day after day. Lots of
| people bullied in high school thrive in the real world because
| there, if someone is disrespectful to you, then you have more
| options to walk away. Ever notice where bullying outside school
| occurs? Prisons and crappy jobs that people can't afford to
| leave.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Yep. Bullying is a natural human reaction to certain
| environments (where "natural" is a description, _not_ an
| endorsement), but that doesn ' mean we have to organize our
| environments that way.
|
| As Madonna would say: there's no greater power than the power
| of goodbye.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Any place where you don't have choice. Doctors, lawyers, even
| car mechanics if they think you're desperate enough.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's tough. It is super important to provide structure to
| kids.
|
| But as you say, it's also disturbingly like prison.
|
| I think some of the problem is that you get your entire
| schedule dictated to you. It might be better if kids had a
| choice of homerooms, a choice of class schedules, a choice in
| "study hall".
|
| I also remember in education that the teachers bemoan
| stratified academic classes, because the "smart kids are
| important for teaching the dumber kids" in peer manner.
|
| Well, that always raised my warning bell, because those
| intermingled classes meant the "dumb kids" would bully the
| "smart kids" out of anger and frustration.
|
| The smarter a group of people, the less violent they
| generally are. Sure the bullying may reduce to intellectual
| and social bullying.
|
| But at least you aren't getting physically assaulted or
| threatened constantly with physical assault, which is much
| much worse, and don't let anyone tell you differently.
|
| Gym class was also one of the worst classes for providing
| bullying opportunity, and I was forced to go to it, despite
| the fact I did very physically intense sports each season,
| definitely closer to the "prison" than the "structure" side
| of things.
| pharmakom wrote:
| > The smarter a group of people, the less violent they
| generally are.
|
| I also believe this, but I don't know why I do. Is there
| any data to support this?
| alexashka wrote:
| If you define bullying as any act that would upset a Karen on
| twitter, then the highest rate of 'bullying' will trivially occur
| between people who interact with each other most often.
| hackerbrother wrote:
| Can confirm, I've been on both ends of this.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Consider a herd of grazing mammals. All young, are by the very
| nature of the stage of life, easy prey. Now imagine social
| capabilities - the ability to communicate distress and
| cooperation to others.
|
| Anyone not capable of these abilities, with any weakness at all,
| could be singled out - to be fed to the wolves. Social abilities
| become a weapon, to vandalize an outlier of the group.
|
| This theory should be easily testable. If another member of
| society - which signals frailty (old, handicapped, etc.) is
| present to this group, the bullying should significantly reduced
| or even cease.
| [deleted]
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Except that humans didn't evolve as herd grazers avoiding
| predators. In this case, it's asserting social dominance in
| order to get first access to resources.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What resources does the top bully at the school get?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Admiration from the lesser bullies.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| This explains some aspects of bullying, but not all.
| Specifically, quoting the article, why "those who are not
| necessarily friends, but who share many friends in common --
| are also more likely to bully or otherwise victimize each
| other"?
|
| Maybe people you don't have enough friends in common with feel
| like a _different herd_ , and people have instict to bully the
| weakest member _of their own herd_ , but don't care about other
| herds as much. Maybe it's because bullying a member of your
| herd allows you to rise to the top of your herd (which is the
| assumption of the article), while bullying a member of a
| different herd does not. Or maybe because when you start
| bullying a member of a different herd, the whole victim's herd
| may collectively turn against you ("yeah, he may be a loser,
| but he is _our_ loser, so back off "), while bullying a member
| of your own herd is safe in this aspect. (Unless your herd has
| a strong leader who opposes internal fighting -- rarely happens
| with kids.)
|
| So the testable prediction would be like: If you have a
| classroom with e.g. 29 white students and 1 black student, the
| white students will bully the black one. (Unless there is
| someone more visibly different, e.g. handicapped or speaking a
| foreign language.) But if you have 15 white students and 15
| black students, more likely the white students will pick a
| white victim to bully, and the black students will pick a black
| victim to bully. (Unless the class is more split along some
| other trait than race. In which case e.g. the English-speaking
| students would pick an English-speaking victim, and the French-
| speaking students would pick a French-speaking victim.)
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