School bullying (how should it be combated?)

So much has been in the news lately about school bullies; how do you think bullies and bullying–in general–should be dealt with? So many complain about how teachers and administrators do little to combat the situation, but is it really that easy a fix? You have a posse/clique of arrogant kids bent on being a-holes to certain other kids; aside from kicking them all out at the same time, is there much that can be done by admin. to stop the wheels of it?

Give the kids less opportunity to it. That's one solution.

Punish the bullies. These bullies get off scott free most of the time. Punish them when they're found out.

Train victims in self defense.

Be watchful. Have teachers learn to notice the targets of bullying and do something about it.

There's a whole myriad of things to do. But all I've seen done is excuses made for the bullies. (Unless the victim is a minority, then we just get fed a preachy "tolerance" soapbox that ignores the fundamental motive of bullying, power.) Bullying would be easily defeated if it was actually fought against by everyone.

One big problem is like FM said, bullies are NOT the ones punished, if a bullied student fights back, THEY get the mark on their permanent record, but nobody's going to do anything about the bully because usually the popular kids make up a lot of the bullies and the teachers and principal and whatever, want to be friends with the popular kids so they pretend the victims are just whiners and gripers, and then next thing you know boom boom, somebody's dead and they're all moaning 'what could we have done to stop this?'

I've pointed this out before, and I find it VERY odd that TODAY, when you can NOT hit another student or else you go to jail for assault, TODAY is when the students are bringing guns to school to settle disputes when they can't hit their attackers back. Coincidence? I wonder. But in the 60s when you COULD hit another kid, how many of them were bringing guns to school to blow people away? A couple years ago I found a study listing most school shootings in American history and they only seemed to start towards the late 70s, why?

I agree Supernova.

When I was in high school, there was this plain clothes cop who used to circulate through the halls making sure everything was moving as it should. He was friendly and outgoing, but quickly defused any fights and BS he saw happening. I think more schools should do that....hire some watchful eyes to help keep the BS to a minimum.

lot of times, the parents of the bullies are in total denial and can make a huge stink about things. we had this one kid who was a bully in this one school I was at but if you thought the kid was bad, wait until you met the Mom, who was a total and absolute bitch. She was mean and nasty and thought her son was perfect and could do no wrong. It was always everyone's fault. The principal was a spineless coward who catered to the Mom and never stood up for her staff, just let them get bullied.

It takes a lot to stand up to a bully and most schools just aren't equipped to deal with it.

In one school I was at, we had a kid who was a sociopath. He was a VERY scary kid - eyes that looked dead. He lacked any empathy and he was nasty and cruel - one of those kids you could see murdering his sister and coming to school and bragging about it. The parents were actually separated because the kid couldn't be around his little sister, who had Downs Syndrome. Mom lived with the sister and Dad with the boy. He was only 11 years old at the time. Dad was in total denial about his son and they'd raised the boy to think he was perfect. He harassed staff and students alike. His resource teacher banded together with her union rep and the kid's school assistant and finally got him kicked out. Her doctor had said that things were so bad that he did not want her on the property if this kid was there. If he showed up, she was to leave, as his being there was causing her so much psychological stress. He was bullying the kids we all worked with and harassing everyone and little was done. The principal and VP caved to the abusive father. This is a kid that I will call the cops on if he so much as breathes in my direction. He stalked me at a store once, following me around and harassing me loudly. I should have called the cops but instead, left the store, though if it ever happens again, I'll complain to the manager and get him kicked out of the store, and then file a police report.