View Full Version : Here to help!
I really don't know where this topic would lead or whether this is the right place for it, but having read alot about the troubles we hav in the school and the amount of bullying and trashing that seems to go on both in the schools of caithness and on the streets, I personally feel maybe we could start something where all kids, adults etc can put their opinions and experiences across to the public. Whether this be those that are being bullied or indeed the ones doing the bullying.
I wouldn't want it to turn into a he said / she said, he did / she did thread but maybe it would help both victims and bullies to see the results their behaviour has and to try and understand why people do these things.
Obviously no one would have to give out personal information but does anyone else think it could be a good thing? There may even be people on here that can give sound advice!
The country has tried many ways of stopping this line of abuse, perhaps this is another way to try?
There may even be people on here that can give sound advice!
There would probably be some people giving very bad advice as well.
I think that the councelling of young people who are being bullied is a job best left to the experts. If you could find a qualified social worker or someone like that to moderate a forum it would be a good idea but otherwise it would have the potential to do a lot of harm.
I think its a good idear. Some children/ parents cant talk to other people about it , so to be able to come on here and "get it of your chest" with out others knowing who you are is a good thing. Its the same if theres something going on at home, you need to talk about it but cant, but can get advice on here from others who maybe are or have been in the same situation.
I think its a good idear. Some children/ parents cant talk to other people about it , so to be able to come on here and "get it of your chest" with out others knowing who you are is a good thing. Its the same if theres something going on at home, you need to talk about it but cant, but can get advice on here from others who maybe are or have been in the same situation.
We arn't anonymous, any one of us can be contacted with a PM any time, I don't think going on a public forum and saying "I am a vulnerable teenager" is a good idea. It would need a moderator to filter out potentially dangerous posts and steer a young person towards a proper agency such as Childline.
We arn't nearly as anonymous as you think on these forums, I know who you are without even trying to find out, if I put my mind to it I could find out your shoe size.
Someone who has been in the same situation is not always the best person to be giving advice.
With a moderator who knows what they are doing it could do some good, otherwise it makes about as much sense as amateur brain surgery.
Lindarabett
09-Nov-05, 11:20
hiya,
Not sure how this would work, but seeing as there is already a message forum set up, why not have a 'Community Support Network' forum? The estate I live in is currently not the nicest, but has the potential to be really nice through a regeneration programme. Many of us from the tenant's association meetings have decided we need a community support network, which we hope will eventually have it's own website. The idea is that members of the local community will have somewhere to go to with issues of concern, from 'minor' non-urgent criminal activities such as vandalism tonot-so-nice neighbourly conduct. it is also hoped to be a place of contact for people to get to know their neighbours, what's on offer locally and help newcomers settle in and feel more welcomed and a valued member of the community.
This is very much still in the planning stages, but it appears to be something most of the community support and want. It will be run by, and for, members of the local community, with 'outside' support from the police and other agencies. It is hoped that the younger community will also use it for issues of concern to them.
Something such as the incidents that have been described on these threads could be dealt with, or rather aired, on a specific forum. I would agree that someone who has experience in the 'legal'and social side of things would really need to moderate it, but there must be a few folk in Caithness that have perhaps done some counselling courses, advocacy and the such and who might offer some spare time to moderate such a forum? (Particularly teachers of the mentioned school? Anonymously allowing the school staff an insight to the victim's position might bring it home better. I know there are guidlines governing what teachers can and can't do, but it often seems that enough hasn't been done when things go horribly wrong. I recall a sad 'poem' submitted by a member, which really brought it home how the victim felt. I'll try to paste it below).
The boy woke up, just 14 years old.
He brushed his teeth just like he'd been told.
He rushed to the door & grabbed his books & around he then looks.
From the second he reaches the bus the names start to be called.
They made fun of his clothes & the book-bag he hauled.
The boy never really fit in school.
Being smart just didn't make you cool.
I remember one day i saw him drenched in mustard.
Kids were throwing pizza & school custard.
Then one girl poured milk over his head.
He walked to the office wishing to be dead
& the girl he liked had no heart at all.
He gave her a flower & told her to call.
She took the flower & through it in the trash can.
& told him she'd never date such an ugly man.
So that night he said good night to his mother.
Kissed his dad & tucked in his little brother.
He put on his shoes & walked through the night.
Until his middle school crept into sight.
As he grabbed onto the rope he said his goodbye.
For then he decided he wanted to die.
So he took a step & down he fell.
He hung there right in front of his own hell.
"Jon Gettle hung himself in front of his middle school in Illinois at midnight."
He left a note. It stated: "Bullying is a problem"
(Oh good -it worked!!). I found this very moving when I first read this, and thought what a waste of a life, and how awful for Jon Gettle to have gone through this and feeling taking his own life was the only way out. I also feel for his family left behind, who probably felt powerless in trying to help him, and perhaps later, felt guilty, as they probably later felt that they hadn't offered him enough help and support. Such a shame.
Guess I'd better stop prattling. Perhaps the families of the victims of bullying could get together for a coffee sometime, and try to take the idea of a community support network forum further.
Whatever you decide to do, I hope this has been of some help, and I sincerely wish you all the best in whatever you decide to do to tackle the issue of bullying. Please, if you do find something that works, post it up for everyone else to see. It would be invaluable for all. Good luck.
Niall Fernie
09-Nov-05, 11:20
I agree completely with Fred, we have difficulty enough staving off personal attacks against users already without people labeling themselves a "vulnerable" anything.
It might be better to find some other resources on the net that have been complied by experts to point people to.
Hi,
Thanks for all the input, I understand Freds concern about vulnerable people putting these things on here, however I just thought that maybe there was a place on here where teenagers of caithness (or anyone for that matter) could air their views and experiences in these kind of matters.
I for one would be interested in what bullies have to say and the way they percieve what they do. I don't know, maybe Freds right, perhaps it is a dangerous thing to start but it has to start somewhere.
Perhaps if bullies and victims can learn to understand each other in such a way it may help to start breaking down the barriers which can only be a good thing?
I'd love to hear what the teenagers of caithness think to this, ultimately it would be thenselves that would use it.
As for the advice part, I wasn't suggesting that untrained people give unexperienced counselling, just advice and other points of view.
Hi,
I for one would be interested in what bullies have to say and the way they percieve what they do. I don't know, maybe Freds right, perhaps it is a dangerous thing to start but it has to start somewhere.
Everyone here is a bully and everyone here is a victim.
You don't need another forum to see how we percieve ourselves.
Whitewater
09-Nov-05, 13:19
Unfortunately Fred is right. It would be good if teenagers or whoever had somewhere to air their views and get advice, but this forum is not the place, there are some very sympathetic and reassuring people here, but also some real burks who would take great pleasure in attempting to make fun of whoever the unfortunate person seeking advice/guidance was.
Hello all,
I think that this wouldn't be a good place to expose one-self. As it has been said before,you are not anonymous and it' a very small place, making it easy to work out who is whome. Also when you read about a subject that affects you in anway, even when you are not vulnerable, it is difficult to read a post and not feel it is personally directed to you. It can be frustrating, anguishing and, sometimes, hurtful to read some things. All from people you do't know and you should'nt allow it to have the effect tat it does. Imagine what a vulnerable young person would feel, especially if his bully logged on as well to bully him/her on here.
Lindarabbet, that poem was almost too difficult to read! How moving. I hope that many bullies read this and think about what they are doing. Thank you or sharing that poem with us.
I'm sorry Fred but I don't agree with you on that last post.
I am neither a bully or a victim so it seems a bit presumptious of you to generalise in that way.
I actually find that quite a strange statement and would be interested to hear why you feel that way. Of course, it's none of my business and you're entitled to think what you like it's just that it seemed very black and white.
Ju was right in saying that that poem was almost too hard to read. It's a sobering thought knowing that sort of thing goes on in our schools today and results in such awful drastic action.
Thankyou Lindabarret for the poem though, it makes one stop and think.
It seems that most of you are against such a thread and I completely understand that. Looking at it logically rather than wishing I could put right the wrongs in this world, I can see that this forum wouldn't be the best place for it. You're right in what you say about the dangers of some of the less 'thoughtful' people on this forum posting remarks that could make things worse, and maybe I was being a tad unresponsible to think that something so serious could just be put on here.
Personally i dont think its a good idea to have victims of bulllys seeking advice on messageboards because the people giving out advice might give the person incorrect advice and might make thinks worse.Its the schools responsibility to stamp out bullying.If that person is getting bullied they should talk to there parents first and also tell a teacher if they are getting bullied.Unfortanatley bullying is something that always happens in schools and i dont think you will ever stamp the problem out completly thats why its important for the victim of bullying not to tolerate it and tell a teacher and parents about it to expose the bully thats the only way you can deal with a bully and his or her mates.
I'm sorry Fred but I don't agree with you on that last post.
I am neither a bully or a victim so it seems a bit presumptious of you to generalise in that way.
I actually find that quite a strange statement and would be interested to hear why you feel that way. Of course, it's none of my business and you're entitled to think what you like it's just that it seemed very black and white.
Everyone bullies and is bullied to some extent, parents and children bully each other, wives and husbands, bosses and employees. Bullying takes many forms but they all have the one thing in common, "either you do as I say or I do something you don't like". Whether it's a kid in the playground handing over his dinner money to save being beaten or a husband mowing the lawn to save being nagged, the principle is the same.
Unfortanatley bullying is something that always happens in schools and i dont think you will ever stamp the problem out completly .......
I don't know that I agree tha bullying is inevitable, Eddie:
I think I have interesting food for thought.I was schooled in two countries, South Africa and Portugal. In South Africa I was younger, but I do remember perceving a certain group of youngsters as being "in charge", and if you were'nt with them,you avoided them not to be hassled. In Portugal, however, I had no knowledge of bullying on the scale that seems to happen here.
If you had a problem, you went to a teacher and it was sorted out by him/her. The punishment system consisted on marking faults against the pupil. These could be pesencial faults (being removed from class because of your behaviour and thus being marked as absent), behavioral faults and, in serious problems, red faults. These were marked in a day book that accompanied each class. Your faults were regulary tallied, and if you accumulated a certain ammountyou could even be retained a year. If you had o many red faults, you coul be expelled. And, honestly, I don't remember any bullying in school at all. Do you think it is a cultural difference or this system is more effective than what is being done in schools here ???
I think it's basically cultural. Being held back at school was horrible and our parents would "kill" us! I get a feelin that the kind of person that would bully, wouldn't be bothered one way or the other by this type of punishment. Also I do believe that teacher and schools are very limited in what they an effectively do to discipline a child. Is it true that even grading pupils is controversial: you cannot remark on a need to improve, etc???
Fred, thats a rather convoluted way of looking at it, but I can see where you've arrived at that train of thought.
Eddie, it is not just the schools responsibility to stamp out bullying. A school can only attempt to control what goes on within its grounds, it has no control on what happens outside of school, and unfortunately bullying does not begin and end within the confines of the school gates.
Children going to teachers or parents is all well and good, but only iff something is then done about it otherwise kids will learn pretty quickly that theres no point in doing so.
Teachers have had a lot of power (for want of a better word) taken away from them in the form of metering out punishment. Now I don't believe in physical punishment, in any shape or form, ever! but teachers nowadays aren't even able to restrain. Yes, kids can be expelled or suspended etc but is that really the answer? I understand it takes the bully out of school and away from innocent victims, but unless that bully has some kind of counselling back up then I feel that that they have been as let down as the victim.
My only point to this was that maybe if there was somewhere that bullies and victims alike can both air their views, their experiences and perhaps begin to understand the impact of their actions, then maybe that could help.
Like I've said already I do understand now that this forum is not the place for that.
I blame the system, whatever that may be.
The system gets a hold of us when we're as yuong as 4 and a half and imposes national service on us until the time we are 16. If theres a problem with kids at school the system has to find out what its bit of failing may be?
Sure, parents have a fair bit of responsibiblty in the equation but if the system is going to impose its values on us during the most important part of our lives, it needs to find a different way of doing things for many kids. I know theyre trying and theres millions of dedicated professionals out there doing their best but somehow the system is still failing as many children.
Even adults are feeling the heat. Stress, depression, suicide are high runners in the human stakes.
I think more could be done by the system from a much earlier age to make children more aware of how they work, before they teach them how the system works.
I understand what you're saying about the system letting kids down, as well as adults, but personally I think thats a cop out.
As parents we are so fearful of saying 'pehaps I let my kids down', that we hide behind the first available rock, and that happens to be in the guise of a school and a 'system'.
We can only be taught so much by a school in our education years and while that plays a large part in determining some of our morals, our values we tend to pick up from our entire enviroment, home being the main one.
Kids can go to school all day and behave perfectly well, be polite etc and then as soon as they get home become kids from hell. In that situation it's the home enviroment and parenting skills that have to be bought into the equation.
I am not trying to lay the blame of all school bullying at the doors of a poor home life, please don't think that, but I do believe that the way we interact with spouses and each other has an enormous impact on the way our kids learn to interact with each other.
Schools can only do so much, we need to then learn the skills to carry it on at home thereafter.
IMO stamping out bullying cannot be done only in school, it's a start granted but has to be backed up at home, and I also don't think enough effort is put into finding out why bullies feel the need to victimise other kids. Is it because they're being victimised themselves? We have to remember that the behaviour they are showing is learnt behaviour, nine times out of ten it doesn't come naturally.
IMO stamping out bullying cannot be done only in school, it's a start granted but has to be backed up at home, and I also don't think enough effort is put into finding out why bullies feel the need to victimise other kids. Is it because they're being victimised themselves? We have to remember that the behaviour they are showing is learnt behaviour, nine times out of ten it doesn't come naturally.
Bullying isn't just a problem in schools, it is a problem anywhere you get a group of people together. It isn't something humans invented, it's very common in the animal kingdom. Put a new horse in with the herd and it will be victimised, some horses are just natural born bullies while others arnt. All the way from a herd of horses to the government of the most powerful country in the world the system is the same.
Equality is not natural, it is a human invention, you can try and impose equality but some always make themselves more equal than others one way or another.
Bullying isn't just a problem in schools, it is a problem anywhere you get a group of people together. It isn't something humans invented, it's very common in the animal kingdom. Put a new horse in with the herd and it will be victimised, some horses are just natural born bullies while others arnt. All the way from a herd of horses to the government of the most powerful country in the world the system is the same.
Equality is not natural, it is a human invention, you can try and impose equality but some always make themselves more equal than others one way or another.
I agree with some of that Fred, but just so you know, if you put a horse in with a herd it WONT be victimised. What is happening there is natures way of asserting a hierarchy, which there has to be with all species.
The horse doesn't get picked on by all other members of that herd, if it's a mare then the alpha mare will probably assert her dominance just to establish that hierarchy. Somethimes the new mare will try to gain dominance, sometimes not, but it's not about 'do this or else', it's instinct saying that 'if we don't have these rules in place, we may not survive in the wild as a herd / species'. The same with stallions, they have to keep the pecking order. It's not bullying, it's herd / family rules.
The same goes with dogs and most other species. They don't carry on the fighting once the hierarchy is established. You can hardly compare that to school bullying. Bullies will pick on others no matter what the terms and thats usually because they don't really understand what outcome they want from their actions anyway, they're simply feeding whatever it is inside that is driving them to make others feel the way that they probably feel themselves.
Equality is a human invention as you say and you contradict yourself in your last sentence where you say you can impose an action of equality. What is imposing something on a person if it's not bullying?
Bullying takes many forms as we all know but my concern was with the bullying that seems to go on in more regularity in todays school system with worsening consequences all the time, and once these kids that do bully leave school, they just take it to the streets because they have not had the resources to deal with cause. When kids are expelled for this behaviour, it's just another case of treating the symptom and not the cause.
It's often painful for everyone involved but if we want to decrease the amount of bullying anywhere in todays society we have to deal with it from the earliest age possible when the symptoms first appear. Maybe then we'd have a lot more healthier minded adults in the world today!
Perhaps we should send the Bullies to Knight School and give them 10 lessons from the medieval knights (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4424496.stm) like wot they do doon sooth.
I've seen dafter ideas.
Good grief! is all that for real?
I don't know anything about how it works as I've never heard of it before but I'm not so sure as I agree to it. It must work obviously but all the same it's a bit ... violent?
The knights generosity part, are they telling bullies who go on this programme that they are a cut above the rest but must show them generosity?
The loyalty part to the elders is all well and good but that in itself can be a bad thing to teach if a child comes into contact with abuse.
Limiting violence to justified causes? Really! Who decides what is just?
I would imagine as well that this is based on male bullies? I can't imagine they would take the female bullies and expect them to act like Guinevere? So what are they suggesting there?- that all bullies are male?
I whole heartedly go along with programmes that help to eradicate bullying but it's not just kids.
Take a kid that bullies at school for example. What if that kid is bullied / abused at home? Sending he/ she off to this type of programme will not help them to deal with their life.
And it's all well and good that these very good programmes help kids to understand right from wrong, but then are they supposed to go home and teach it to their parents? Or to the other kids they come into contact with?
I just personally feel that the causes behind child bullies are not necessarily out of vindictiveness. Don't get me wrong I know that not every child bully is a bullied child, but a good deal of them are, and I don't necessarily mean in a physical way. Mental and emotional abuse is just as prevalent and destroying as physical abuse and all forms tend to follow that child into adulthood where the pattern begins again. behind alot of child bullies there a high chance that you'll find a bullied parent!
What the answer is, I don't know!
I agree with some of that Fred, but just so you know, if you put a horse in with a herd it WONT be victimised. What is happening there is natures way of asserting a hierarchy, which there has to be with all species.
The horse doesn't get picked on by all other members of that herd, if it's a mare then the alpha mare will probably assert her dominance just to establish that hierarchy. Somethimes the new mare will try to gain dominance, sometimes not, but it's not about 'do this or else', it's instinct saying that 'if we don't have these rules in place, we may not survive in the wild as a herd / species'. The same with stallions, they have to keep the pecking order. It's not bullying, it's herd / family rules.
Wish you'd tell that to my horses, I've just got to walk into the field with a bucket of corn and them rear ends are swinging round and taking aim. Same with the goats, they have their pecking order well and truly established but horns keep meeting ribs, that head nanny knows she's boss but she has to make sure no one else forgets it, specially at meal times. It isn't just a matter of creating an order it's a matter of maintaining it as well, any goat percieved as a threat is kept well and truly in its place just in case it starts getting any fancy ideas, especially if the head isn't the youngest and fittest any more.
Herd / family rules, bullying, aint much difference.
Hahaha,
Hope you got out there without any bruising fred!
You're right it is about fittest first with animals, it has to be. I still wouldn't say they're the same as us though, the dynamics of it are subtly different.
So what do you think the Knights piece? :)
Hahaha,
Hope you got out there without any bruising fred!
You're right it is about fittest first with animals, it has to be. I still wouldn't say they're the same as us though, the dynamics of it are subtly different.
So what do you think the Knights piece? :)
Yes it is different with humans. There was a time, not long ago, when the strongest and fittest could work hardest and put most food on the table and was a perfect future husband. Nowadays all you need is a few brains to have prospects over 50 grand a year and without those brains you'll end up asking people if they want fries. The pecking order changes between classroom and playground several times a day, someone doesn't need to be strong to be a threat.
The knights piece I seem to remember is a horses head and to my mind that's my favourite end of a horse.
Very droll Fred, very droll
So what exactly do you think is the way forward with regards to bullies?
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