Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 167 guests, and 10 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    parentologyco, Smartlady60, petercgeelan, eterpstra, Valib90
    11,410 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 2 of 6 1 2 3 4 5 6
    Beckee #127120 04/09/12 10:02 AM
    Joined: Jun 2008
    Posts: 1,840
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Jun 2008
    Posts: 1,840
    Originally Posted by Beckee
    My point is that sometimes it can be difficult to tell the actions of a fairly typical middle school student who thinks they won't get caught from that of someone who will later be called a psychopath or sociopath by the press.

    Originally Posted by JonLaw
    The guy who bullied me in elementary school ended up gunning down his parents and killing himself.

    Almost all bullies learn the behavior as a result of repetitive direct abuse or observing it somewhere.

    There are tests that can clearly pick most of these kids out.

    Right now the "solution" is to detect overt behavior at school and "discipline" the kids. The underlying issue still exists. Most kids will move on and find a way to deal with the underlying problem and some will not.

    The better solution is to get counseling for these kids, the bullies, and to identify the adults in their lives who are doing the behavior. Most people do not want to go there as this is another layer that will expose some pretty ugly stuff.






    Lori H. #127121 04/09/12 10:04 AM
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    B
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    Originally Posted by Lori H.
    A relative overheard me telling another relative with young children about the documentary and she told me there was no problem with that where we live. When I and other relatives gave her numerous examples--personal experiences, friends' experiences, she then said that it doesn't just happen here, it happens everywhere especially with kids she described as "artsy". They seem to think most "artsy" people are gay and since they believe that is sinful it is perfectly reasonable to shun them and verbally bully them. My kid is considered artsy because he does musical theater instead of sports. My relative says shunning, verbal abuse by kids and adults, shunning, etc. happens everywhere. We are just supposed to accept it. It is just the way things are.

    I think there is currently a panic about bullying, as described at

    http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/04/is-there-a-bullying-epidemic
    Stop Panicking Over Bullies
    Despite a flurry of recent documentaries and attention, school hasn't been reduced to jungle law.
    Nick Gillespie
    Reason Magazine
    April 4, 2012

    I am concerned that "anti-bullying" efforts can become a form of bullying by administrators. I don't think "shunning" -- avoiding someone -- should be conflated with more active sorts of bullying such as name-calling and physical violence. And even regarding name-calling, if one student writes mean things about another on his Facebook page, should the school have jurisdiction? I know of cases where the school has stepped in. Do students have any 1st Amendment rights? The anti-bullying crusaders never talk about free speech or the right to free association (which includes "shunning").


    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
    Bostonian #127123 04/09/12 10:26 AM
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 2,007
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Jul 2011
    Posts: 2,007
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    [The anti-bullying crusaders never talk about free speech or the right to free association (which includes "shunning").

    Public school is about taking a chunk of same-age children and throwing them together randomly.

    There's no free association there.

    That's why "shunning" becomes a problem to be avoided.

    Schools are a very artificial form of human ecology.

    Bostonian #127128 04/09/12 11:29 AM
    Joined: May 2007
    Posts: 982
    L
    Lori H. Offline OP
    Member
    OP Offline
    Member
    L
    Joined: May 2007
    Posts: 982
    In some places, like where I live, it feels like "jungle law" is close to the reality. It starts here with most boys being held back a year for sports. My relative with a young son who will be old enough and academically more than ready for pre-K is being told she should hold him back so I felt I needed to tell her about our experience with kindergarten. My husband and I refused to hold our son back. In his musical theater class the new kids that saw him read at age 4 would ask him what grade he was in because they saw that he was able to read his Alice in Wonderland script for musical theater practice. It had to be at least 5th grade level. He was the youngest in the group at that time but he could read very well, follow directions, and he just fit in really well with the older kids. His friends were all several years older. I just could not see that it would be a good idea to hold him back.

    When the doctor at his 4 year old checkup saw him read he said he should do really well in school. I didn't think there would be any problems, but there were.

    The boys who had been held back were a year or a year and a half older. They were much bigger than my son who was five with a May birthday. Two of them physically threatened him whenever the teacher wasn't looking, so he stayed close to the teacher. He didn't mind, because he loved talking to her about the things he was learning about at home. He already knew how to read but he did learn some new vocabulary at that school. He learned what nerd and geek meant in kindergarten. It was only the bullies that called him those names. The other kids liked him. So even though it was only two boys who did most of the bullying and I guess that wasn't really an epidemic, those two bullies made his kindergarten year more difficult. The bullying is what he remembers most vividly from that year.

    My son does not want anyone to try to prevent free speech even though it looks to us like the physical bullying often starts with the verbal bullying. He just wants to know that he has that same right to free speech to defend himself or others whether it is kids or adults who are verbally abusing someone. I have told him that he has my permission to say what he wants to say even if it is an adult or teacher or preacher and even if it is a relative. I know that the kids in our school don't really have this right and some of teachers here do verbally bully students who are different. I am glad my son doesn't have to deal with this in addition to the pain he feels from his brace. I don't think we should stay silent about what is happening here any longer. I am willing to risk being shunned.





    Last edited by Lori H.; 04/09/12 11:30 AM.
    Lori H. #127131 04/09/12 11:51 AM
    Joined: May 2007
    Posts: 982
    L
    Lori H. Offline OP
    Member
    OP Offline
    Member
    L
    Joined: May 2007
    Posts: 982
    WebMD even has an article on teacher bullying. http://www.webmd.com/parenting/features/teachers-who-bully

    I think going to a school where some of the teachers are bullies and nothing is done about it would make a bullied child feel even more powerless.

    I remember seeing my son's first acting teacher with tears in her eyes as she told them about being verbally bullied by one of our public school teachers who is still teaching. More than ten years later she was still affected by the bullying. Nobody talks about it. Parents of sports kids deny that it exists. When a sports kid injured my son's friend on the school bus several years ago, nothing was done about it because the bully was good in sports.

    I found out from my niece that her brother was bullied at the school. He was a smart quiet kid who didn't do sports. Even though my son does not go to that school now this still really bothers me. I can't let it go.


    Bostonian #127132 04/09/12 12:08 PM
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 658
    G
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    G
    Joined: Dec 2010
    Posts: 658
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    The anti-bullying crusaders never talk about free speech or the right to free association (which includes "shunning").
    My daughter is being shunned in her own classroom, a room in which she has no choice but to spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week. It is directly affecting her ability to access her education.

    It's bullying.

    geofizz #127138 04/09/12 01:23 PM
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    The anti-bullying crusaders never talk about free speech or the right to free association (which includes "shunning").
    Expanding on geofizz and JonLaw, a good analogy is to the workplace. You don't have to like your co-workers, you don't have to be friends with them, you don't have to agree with their values. But you do owe them basic common courtesy. The same should be the standard in schools (or any environment where there is a societal expectation for people to be together and interact, which they cannot reasonably escape from).

    Shunning should be reserved for communities where people have chosen to come together with a shared belief system. It has no place in public organizations in a pluralistic society.

    MegMeg #127153 04/09/12 05:31 PM
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 3,296
    Val Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 3,296
    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    Shunning should be reserved for communities where people have chosen to come together with a shared belief system. It has no place in public organizations in a pluralistic society.

    I'll second that. I'll also add that shunning is a practice designed to mark the shunned as an outcast with no standing in a group. This is very different from deciding you don't want to hang around with someone and leaving it at that. Shunning is a form of aggression and it's completely unacceptable in an environment like a school.


    Val #127157 04/09/12 06:29 PM
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    B
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    B
    Joined: Feb 2010
    Posts: 2,639
    Originally Posted by Val
    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    Shunning should be reserved for communities where people have chosen to come together with a shared belief system. It has no place in public organizations in a pluralistic society.

    I'll second that. I'll also add that shunning is a practice designed to mark the shunned as an outcast with no standing in a group. This is very different from deciding you don't want to hang around with someone and leaving it at that. Shunning is a form of aggression and it's completely unacceptable in an environment like a school.

    Suppose a group of children never talk to "Jim" at lunch. That is shunning. How can you force them to talk to Jim? How do you punish them? A ban on shunning is not enforceable in the way a ban on physical violence is.


    "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." - George Orwell
    Bostonian #127163 04/09/12 07:51 PM
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 3,296
    Val Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Sep 2007
    Posts: 3,296
    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    Suppose a group of children never talk to "Jim" at lunch. That is shunning. How can you force them to talk to Jim? How do you punish them? A ban on shunning is not enforceable in the way a ban on physical violence is.

    Your initial point was that shunning was part of a right to free association. I disagree. MegMeg pointed out that people in the are expected to show common courtesy and that this behavior should be expected of students in schools. I agree with her. No one has to be friends with Jim, but refusing to be polite at lunch and shunning him is wrong, too.

    I was on the receiving end of this treatment when I was 16. My family moved to a part of the US that was very different from where I'd spent all my school years before that. A lot of the kids in my new school decided I was weird. Note: people at my old school didn't call me weird, and I had a lot of friends there. I was just different in the new place, and a lot of the kids had trouble with that (though I didn't understand this at the time).

    My first couple weeks in the new school were hell, primarily because I couldn't find a place to eat lunch. Everyone sat in groups in the same seats every day (custom, not dictate), which made the situation even more difficult. My sole new friends (n=2) ate during a different period. No one else wanted me around, and they didn't have to say "GO AWAY" to make the point. I dreaded school and dreaded lunch even more. Mostly, I ended up sitting alone in a hallway lined with benches rather than face the rejection of everyone else. It was awful.

    Finally, a kid in the senior class invited me to sit with his group of friends. Later, I realized that he knew what was going on and was going out of his way to help me fit in. I became pretty friendly with a couple people in that group of 8 or so, but we mostly just made polite conversation at lunch (as MegMeg noted). It was a huge, huge, positive development for my mental health that year. And I am speaking as a stubborn, outgoing person who is not easily affected by whether others like me or not. That I am this way---and yet felt so miserable---says a lot about the power of shunning. And it must be even harder for people who are shy and/or more sensitive than I am about things like that.

    I realize that sometimes our society goes overboard about certain ideas or practices, but I don't think that bullying is one of them. It's a serious and semi-invisible problem, and allowing children and teachers to get away with it endorses it and encourages it to continue in adulthood.

    The problem, IMO, is that people rely too much on hyper-reacting to instances of bullying once they get out of hand instead of setting meaningful expectations for appropriate behavior on the first day of kindergarten (and continuing thereafter). A little compassion and and a little courtesy go a long way in pre-empting the problem to begin with.

    Added: our daycare provider used to handle this kind of thing exquisitely. If a kid said something like "Let's not play with Jim because he's weird" or "If you don't do X, I won't be your friend," she'd jump all over it. The offending kid would be told, "In my house, we don't treat other people like that. We respect others, and if you can't respect other people, go play alone. We want to play with you, but I can't let you play with the kids unless you can treat other people the way you want them to treat you." I wish more people would handle that sort of situation like she does.

    Last edited by Val; 04/09/12 08:50 PM.
    Page 2 of 6 1 2 3 4 5 6

    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    California Tries to Close the Gap in Math
    by thx1138 - 03/22/24 03:43 AM
    Gifted kids in Illinois. Recommendations?
    by indigo - 03/20/24 05:41 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5