School removes bullying

[GMTV]

Football was banned at my primary school for a while, so it became Bottle football. Plastic irn bru bottle. Then eventually the head teacher got wind of the bottle football concept and it got banned too. Those were some bleak times.

[Blue Jam]

I remember when Remembrance Sunday rolled around and my primary school would sell poppies, but had to stop selling the wooden stake things...



...because the boys would flip them round and have sword fights with them. Inventive. Couldn't do it these days, Captain Tom would come and haunt your pencil case.

[Jockice]

But everybody gets bullied at school! A phrase that appears at some point in every discussion about bullying ever. And to which I give my usual response of 'everybody does not fucking get bullied at school. Vast swathes of pupils at every school I went to never even got remotely bullied.'

I know I've brought this up before but as someone who did get bullied (not constantly but enough to leave a mark on me) and was an outsider (not through choice but because I stood out in ways I could do nothing about) I'm jealous of all the kids who could just fade into the background and be left alone. Hundreds of them.

[Jockice]

At my schools we were always encouraged to report bullying, then if you did you were told "just ignore them"

That was my mum's stock phrase. And all it engendered in me was a desire to actually physically kill anyone who picks on me. I haven't done it yet though.

At my secondary school I once annoyed the hardest kid in my year (not really a bully, but someone who was having to shave every day before he'd even got to his teens. He was - literally - about twice the size of me) and he punched me in the stomach. I was slumped against a wall gasping for breath and one of the teaching assistants came up and asked me what was wrong. 'Philip ******* hit me,'' I said. Her advice: "Well, hit him back." Thanks for that Mrs Brannan. I'm sure I could really do some serious damage to his kneecap

[Paul Calf]

A certain type of teacher appreciates and encourages bullies because they serve the same function as trustees in prison camps and prisons in the developing world: they keep a kind of order without costing anything in terms of time, effort or money.

Some are just afraid that the bullies will humiliate them and undermine their authoritas.

[Paul Calf]

Who the fuck would teach Secondary?

[idunnosomename]

Gove's desolate legacy. That man must never be PM. He might actually do something, and ruin everything.

[Better Midlands]

Couldn't do it these days, Captain Tom would come and haunt your pencil case.

I just shuddered at the thought of a 12 your child scrawling the Captain Tom logo on their pencil case absentmindedly during a dull geography lesson.

[sevendaughters]

Particularly surprising given that it's just 18 months since this article about the same school.

oh and it's a free school, so BBC just basically doing another mouthpiece article. fucking hell.

[dissolute ocelot]

Yeah I got bullied quite extensively at school but I don't like the idea of this. I liked break times and it's not as if bullies confined their activities to then, in fact a large proportion was during lessons. German was particularly bad, when two of the worst offenders sat behind me. Music lessons, with their "grab a keyboard and everyone go off to different areas unsupervised" was great for bullies. P.E had various games that gave perfect cover, with Australian Rugby being the worst - basically normal rugby only you could be tackled whether in possession of the ball or not, so was just a license for wanker kids to follow me round kicking the shit out of me.

Yeah, the idea that bullying only happens on breaktimes is ridiculous. For some pupils breaktime may be the only escape from bullying. Or at least an opportunity to go hide in the computer lab, music room, etc.

When I was at school bullying often happened in classrooms, with the really adept bullies doing the trick of hitting people when the teacher's back was turned and then anyone who tried to retaliate would be seen and disciplined by the teacher. Plus changing rooms, school trips, buses, going to and from school.

Maybe the headteachers will now focus on eliminating workplace bullying by cancelling all breaks for teachers.

[Sebastian Cobb]

If your break activity is structured, then it isn't really a break at all. Fair enough if you enjoy reciting Tennyson, but I'd rather have a bit of time to myself to read in private rather than have my free time structured.

Good way to get the school kids accustomed to bullshit workplace breaks you know the sort... lunchtime seminars, meetings that span lunch but it's ok because we got some sandwiches etc etc.

[Kankurette]

Are there still people who claim that bullying at school "toughens people up for the real world"? In my experience it just traumatises people and makes them struggle even more in the real world.

Still, I'm sure a few retirees will write into the Telegraph or Mail claiming that bullying at school is an important part of life, or some such utter rubbish.

Yes, and it's bullshit. It left me with massive trust issues and while I'm not a misandrist, I'm wary around large groups of men because of how boys treated me in school.

[JaDanketies]

can't really imagine the hard nuts in my high school reciting Ozymandias

[All Surrogate]

I keep thinking, are schools themselves the problem? As in, having a lot of children basically surrounded by each other, with only a few adults about. Isn't that a situation that's likely to go bad? Maybe children should spend most of their time around adults, rather than their peers.