BulliesBullies
TV3 was telling us tonight about bullying in schools.
I think they make two mistakes. Both of which rely in a fallacy of "good things only have good effects".
1) They argue that teaching kids social skills results in them not being bullies
In my experience the socially inept people were NOT bullies. The bullies were the socially competent people.
There are of course the low intelligent screwed up children who lash out violently and are dysfunctional and that is one type of child who will be a problem but there is a second type that to me is even worse - those who may be abused but if so have channeled this lashing out into being the leader of a group (clearly a sign of social competence). They control the social dynamic and that dynamic is domination.
2) They suggest that sport helps - in my experience sporty children bully non sporty children - not the other way around. I haven’t seen any video game kids go out and beat up the rugby players. So how did they manage to leap to that conclusion?
I wonder if any of them are really seriously trying to address the problem as opposed to just reading out how they wish it worked.
PS obviously I don’t suggest we stop having sports or teaching people social skills - that has other benefits - but I suggest we don’t expect it to solve bullying.
Its not rocket science but one good strategy to deal with bullying is to NOT TO TOLERATE BULLYING.
I think they make two mistakes. Both of which rely in a fallacy of "good things only have good effects".
1) They argue that teaching kids social skills results in them not being bullies
In my experience the socially inept people were NOT bullies. The bullies were the socially competent people.
There are of course the low intelligent screwed up children who lash out violently and are dysfunctional and that is one type of child who will be a problem but there is a second type that to me is even worse - those who may be abused but if so have channeled this lashing out into being the leader of a group (clearly a sign of social competence). They control the social dynamic and that dynamic is domination.
2) They suggest that sport helps - in my experience sporty children bully non sporty children - not the other way around. I haven’t seen any video game kids go out and beat up the rugby players. So how did they manage to leap to that conclusion?
I wonder if any of them are really seriously trying to address the problem as opposed to just reading out how they wish it worked.
PS obviously I don’t suggest we stop having sports or teaching people social skills - that has other benefits - but I suggest we don’t expect it to solve bullying.
Its not rocket science but one good strategy to deal with bullying is to NOT TO TOLERATE BULLYING.
posted by Genius at 1:11 AM
1 Comments:
I think you're dead on here. I'm ever frustrated with the way school systems and other systems try to solve these problems in the most ridiculous ways.
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