fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2532 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2532 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In elementary school and early junior high, fighting back worked (of course, it only works if you can actually win - or at least hold your own enough to make them think twice in the future). Later though, bullies got wise to that and would just gather up all their friends and kick the shit out of you in a group, or use weapons. So from that point on there was only safety in numbers. Never walk home alone, always eat lunch in a group, etc. Worked okay, because altogether there were about 30 of us nerds and when we were all together no one would ever try anything because most other social cliques were smaller than that, but if you ever needed to be alone for any reason, even just walking between classes... The teachers were fucking useless, too. They would literally just watch kid getting beaten up, or look the other way when it was happening right in front of them. If you reported it, well, "kids will be kids".

What worked? Well, one my buddies got put in the hospital by one of his bullies, so he'd finally had enough - he called the cops and got him charged with assault and sent to juvie. The kid's parents harassed and threatened the teachers and the principal over it, though, so they in turn harassed and threatened us not to get the police involved, and to handle it "internally" - i.e. not at all - and they treated my buddy like shit from then on.

What actually worked was going to a high school with a zero tolerance policy. I.e., a single fight or act of bullying and you are expelled. No exceptions. Within the first few months everyone who did that shit was either given the boot or shaped up. I actually found myself laughing when one of my old bullies from junior high and its useless, moronic teaching staff started in on me because really? Getting in some digs is worth getting expelled from the best school in the district? If you say so. I didn't even have to report it - one of the counsellors was walking by and heard her, and she was taken back to the office and kicked out on the spot.

God yes, I honestly roll my eyes so hard at the whole "fight back". Maybe that does work some tiny country schools, or if you're in a decent public school.

At mine the bullies were generally from shitty council estates, and grew up fighting other kids on the estate and being beaten by their dads. They were tremendously more au fait with violence then some middleclass nerd was, and even if you had the edge and did win, their mates who had nothing better to do than skip school and engage in ASB would be waiting after school to give you a proper kicking. And repeat that every time they saw you because they had a very simplistic masculine view of the world.

Teachers were useful for fuck and all. I considered myself pretty lucky because being 6’6” by sixteen and generally a withdrawn guy I mostly got left alone and didn’t catch half the shit some of my mates did, but the sense of menace and low scale bullshit was always there. The solution was pretty much wait until they all joined gangs and stopped turning up entirely.

Your experience sounds remarkably similar to mine. The teachers felt like they were coming from a different era if not a different universe from the rest of us. I was adult sized by 12 and an athlete so "fight back" worked against pretty much all girls and boys my own age, but once they hit junior high school and started dating boys in high school, what was I supposed to do against a 17-year-old boy, let alone a group of them? The teachers would just balk in disbelief that they would hit a girl, but yes, yes they fucking would if I laid a hand on their girlfriends. And the guy who put my buddy in the hospital was a boxer, whose dad was pretty clearly beating him. Just stand up for yourself, scrawny bookworm! It'll work just like it does in the movies! He's just afraid!

Luckily high school isn't compulsory here (I don't know if it is in the UK), hence the high school I went to was allow to adopt a zero tolerance policy and became (SHOCKINGLY) the top school in the district a few years after they did so.

Yeah, our equivalent is entirely voluntary and the change from secondary school to college (16-18) night and day. All the bullying literally just dissapeared over a single summer. Which was probably for the best, because people were getting to the point where they could seriously hurt each other, and we'd already had two kids put in hospital.

Which in retrospect is sort of insane, and it wasn't close to as bad as most of the other local schools. Some of them had multiple cases of kids getting nicked for fairly serious offences, and frequent cases of knives being brought into school.

Hi5 for an 'interesting' school history I guess, does make you wonder how different you'd be as a person without it.

[ SECRET POST #2532 ]

Re: Bullying (tw?)

Re: Bullying (tw?)

Re: Bullying (tw?)

Re: Bullying (tw?)