is bullying a necessary evil?

[supermoron]

some real good answers so far

[Arathorn]

playtime should be better engaged and supervised as well. this wouldnt stop all bullying, but would give kids more focus. Imo, bullying in school is due to a failure of good schooling -having to deal with bullying in day to day life outside of school provides much more wisdom than bullying in schools, which are from the ground up built to accomodate bullying either because it is beat into society that is a neccesary evil or because teachers are just too busy and important to engage their students.

[valtterieranen]

Teachers are mostly helpless against bullying, at least in my country. The anti-bullying campaigns were insulting and a waste of taxpayer money. When I fought back, I was usually persecuted along with the bully. Teachers can't act against anyone without evidence and they usually only started to pay attention when the fists started swinging, at which point both kids were troublemakers in their eyes.

I think whether someone becomes a bully depends on their upbringing, not school. I talk to my niece about bullying. I try to explain her the damage it can do.

But in my experience bullies are not bad people. I think it's much about belonging to a group. A "cool" group of kids bully some meek kid and people join in on the bullying to belong. Every bully I've met years after have apologized to me and I never even brought it up; they do. I think they're just unaware of the real harm they're doing, beyond the simple trolling for reactions, at that age.

I've never met an adult bully. I know they exist, but they must be a rare breed of stupid.

[dangermoose]

Having been bullied through jr. high, I'd say yes it builds character but I'd rather have enjoyed those years instead of being depressed about going to school. It's not worth whatever good it might do in the long run and there's long term harm as well.

I'd just like to make it clear that I don't advocate that level of bullying.

--- Post Update ---

I've never met an adult bully. I know they exist, but they must be a rare breed of stupid.

I know a few, they are not as obvious when they are older but you can spot them a mile off. We have one in the office and I'm getting bored of telling him to **** off but the alternative is to give in to him.

[RainWind]

Bullying is just a way to build up your trolling skills.

[twonha]

Since you mentioned school ill take it you meant bullying in school. Bullying isnt neccesary in school, good schooling is. If a bully has time to bully a kid - then the teachers are fail. If teachers engaged the classroom bullying wouldnt be near the issue it is, this is why Americas school systems are fail. The teachers no longer engage, they recite lessons.

I think it's nonsense to blame bullying on the teachers. Bullying stems from the social interaction within a class, you cannot control that fully no matter what your status is. Especially these days, it's incredibly easy to bully using social media (twitter, messenger, What's App, ping etc.), and with the smartphone addiction that most kids suffer from the whole thing drags on 24 hours a day.

It's got very little to do with the teachers, in my opinion, who can try to discuss it with the class as much as they want, in the end they're very much powerless to actually make it stop. Afterall, you'd need proof that it's a one-way-attack rather than a fight between two students. And even if you have proof of bullying, what's a teacher allowed to do? He can tell the student off, but that's about as far as a teacher can go.

I think open communication and upbringing are much more influential than whoever is standing in front of the class.

[Horrorwood]

Getting bullied is for the weak, beat up one "tough guy" at school and nobody bully's you anymore.

[CorrupT88]

Getting bullied is for the weak, beat up one "tough guy" at school and nobody bully's you anymore.

But in that situation surely the "tough guy" would likely be twice the size of the other person?

[valtterieranen]

And if you're either mentally or physically too weak to do so you deserve your years of misery.

[Arathorn]

Teachers are not hopeless against bullying, wow - the fact that any of you even cater to the idea just proves school is built from the ground up to accommodate bullies. If you don’t want to genuinely teach and care about every single one of your students you shouldn’t be a teacher.

If a teacher is not engaging the classroom as a friend as much as a teacher and role model they will not pick up on bantering back and forth, if teachers don’t pick up on students bantering back and forth they aren’t going to be able to quickly separate the problem students by splitting them up. It’s simple to stop bullying it just takes engagement. Make the problem kids sit front row after they are determined to be **** starters - escalate the issue to the parents. Have parent teacher conferences.

Teachers typically ignore most bullying because they simply want the issue to fix itself.

I have this stance after being put in court for handling a bully, after having alerted my teacher on multiple occassions during class that I was having problems with a particular student. Nothing came of it, in fact during one instance the teacher laughed. When he was subpoened to court for the case he even admitted I alerted him but "thought we were friends" after I alerted him for the 4th time - which ended up getting my case dismissed after the judge assigned me to write a 10 page paper on why its not acceptable to fight in class.