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From my limited experience - bullying is prevented by having friends. Groups of people don't get bullied, loners get bullied. Once you develop a little circle

From my limited experience - bullying is prevented by having friends. Groups of people don't get bullied, loners get bullied. Once you develop a little circle of friends, you'll largely be left alone. So the key is to give people enough time to develop friendships - in Russia, I had the same classmates, give or take, for years. The students were separated into gradations of capacity where those who got straight As (in Russia it's a 2-5 gradation, for F-A) were put into the same class after a couple of years. This way, smart kids end up with smart kids and those who don't do so well, end up with those who don't do so well, but then their curriculum is made a bit easier so everyone is happy. What I experienced in Canada is that you are thrown from one set of kids to another every year and as a result, you know everyone but you don't know anyone. The 'cool' kids here were determined by looks and clothes largely because most classes were a complete waste of time. If you made school challenging enough that those who did well were respected and those struggling, made to feel like they need to keep up and give kids enough time to get to know the same people (5+ years) - a lot of these problems would go away. Russia is far more aggressive than Canada and violence much more common - and yet everyone I knew was ok. You come to Canada, everyone is babysat their entire lives to a point where people remain infantile in their actions and worldview - to a point where you need to implement rules of conduct in a workplace. Do you really not know how to act by the time you're 25? Should've gotten beat up a few times as a kid...

yakult 11y ago
From what I recall of highschool here in Australia, students are deliberately rotated and mixed up as much as possible to prevent cliques and long-term rivalries from forming. A teacher once told me this makes it easier to assert control. While I would have preferred the other way back then as a student, I wonder what the statistics say, in terms of outcomes. My gut feeling is that it reduces the outliers in student relationships (long-term sexual relationships, cycles of revenge, etc) that cause the school expensive problems.
- alexashka 11y ago
  What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. When you keep having to make new friends every year - you only learn to develop shallow relationships. This is a huge problem with consequences no anti-bullying campaign or work-etiquette pamphlet is ever going to solve. As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either.
  - yakult 11y ago
    >What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. While I don't disagree, the effect is the same from the school's perspective: 1. they are hostile to group outsiders 2. punishing any member makes the whole group hostile to the teacher 3. they're a basis to spread peer pressure 4. they can form rivalries with other cliques What I'm saying is, the positive effects do not benefit the school directly, while the negative effects do, and are difficult to deal with. >As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either. Neither have I - possibly because of the mash up system - but I can see a failure mode like this: student X quarrels with student Y; Student Y gets his friends together and beats up student X; student X gets his friends together and beats up a friend of student Y; etc. Now you have the start of a gang problem.
ticviking 11y ago
This is largely untrue. It is prevented by having "ingroup" friends. I had a circle of 5-8 fellow "weirdos" who I had a grand time playing with. Collectively we were the target of bullying. Our academic excellence (and thus copious free time) was the direct cause of being targeted. When you pound out the 50 problem worksheet in 20 minutes, and have the remaining 30 min to draw, imagine stories, and live in a shared fantasy world with that small group it's REALLY easy to be targeted.
- alexashka 11y ago
  I hear you. Where I grew up (Russia), those who excelled were put into classes where you were challenged. To give a simple example: when I came to Canada, I was in grade 7. I didn't learn a single new math concept until grade 9, where we spent the entire semester learning 'slope' which I got the hang of within a week. That's the Canadian school program being 3 years behind in 5 years. A disaster, and I'm not that smart. Furthermore, I was sent to math competitions twice a year where I couldn't solve a single problem - those who could solve those problems, were sent to special schools where the brightest were again, challenged. That's a systemic solution Russia had that I'm in favor of. In terms of making it work within the system you grew up in - it sounds like you found a group of friends. You make it sound like the reason you were targeted is because you had free time. If you had been part of the soccer team for instance, would that have also been the case? When smart kids complain about getting bullied solely for being so smart, I have to wonder. I am the smartest of the dummies or the dumbest of the smartest but I was also quite alright at sports, so I had that going for me. I'd say the problem with smart kids who do find a group to be a part of and still feel like they were in a tough spot - your parents should've put you into a sports team or some form of athletics and that would've likely alleviated a lot of the problems.
  - ticviking 11y ago
    So I think you're onto something with moving kids to where they will be challenged in school. Systemically it keeps everyone engaged in the task of learning and I wish we would adopt it in the states. I don't think that would stop bullying, only reduce particular kinds of it. Bullying serves the purpose of enforcing social norms. Putting people in a situation where ability is less of a way to break norms will reduce the bullying, but it won't eliminate it. Quick clarification I'm not claiming I was bullied for being smart. I was bullied for being weird. Being challenged, or joining sports would have reduced that weirdness, and spare individual children some pain, but doesn't really change the problem of students electing to enforce social norms by humiliation and violence. RE: Sports teams. We couldn't afford any of the organized sports available in my area(all of them had a few hundred dollars of gear and annual fees to participate in). By the time I was in middle school and had "free" access to sports I was so behind in developing the basic play skills that it simply marked me out as a newb

yakult 11y ago

From what I recall of highschool here in Australia, students are deliberately rotated and mixed up as much as possible to prevent cliques and long-term rivalries from forming. A teacher once told me this makes it easier to assert control. While I would have preferred the other way back then as a student, I wonder what the statistics say, in terms of outcomes. My gut feeling is that it reduces the outliers in student relationships (long-term sexual relationships, cycles of revenge, etc) that cause the school expensive problems.

alexashka 11y ago
What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. When you keep having to make new friends every year - you only learn to develop shallow relationships. This is a huge problem with consequences no anti-bullying campaign or work-etiquette pamphlet is ever going to solve. As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either.
- yakult 11y ago
  >What you refer to as cliques - are actually friendships. Friendships and socializing, are hugely important. While I don't disagree, the effect is the same from the school's perspective: 1. they are hostile to group outsiders 2. punishing any member makes the whole group hostile to the teacher 3. they're a basis to spread peer pressure 4. they can form rivalries with other cliques What I'm saying is, the positive effects do not benefit the school directly, while the negative effects do, and are difficult to deal with. >As for rivalries and cycles of revenge - can you give an example of what that'd look like? I personally haven't experienced either. Neither have I - possibly because of the mash up system - but I can see a failure mode like this: student X quarrels with student Y; Student Y gets his friends together and beats up student X; student X gets his friends together and beats up a friend of student Y; etc. Now you have the start of a gang problem.

ticviking 11y ago

This is largely untrue. It is prevented by having "ingroup" friends. I had a circle of 5-8 fellow "weirdos" who I had a grand time playing with. Collectively we were the target of bullying. Our academic excellence (and thus copious free time) was the direct cause of being targeted. When you pound out the 50 problem worksheet in 20 minutes, and have the remaining 30 min to draw, imagine stories, and live in a shared fantasy world with that small group it's REALLY easy to be targeted.

alexashka 11y ago
I hear you. Where I grew up (Russia), those who excelled were put into classes where you were challenged. To give a simple example: when I came to Canada, I was in grade 7. I didn't learn a single new math concept until grade 9, where we spent the entire semester learning 'slope' which I got the hang of within a week. That's the Canadian school program being 3 years behind in 5 years. A disaster, and I'm not that smart. Furthermore, I was sent to math competitions twice a year where I couldn't solve a single problem - those who could solve those problems, were sent to special schools where the brightest were again, challenged. That's a systemic solution Russia had that I'm in favor of. In terms of making it work within the system you grew up in - it sounds like you found a group of friends. You make it sound like the reason you were targeted is because you had free time. If you had been part of the soccer team for instance, would that have also been the case? When smart kids complain about getting bullied solely for being so smart, I have to wonder. I am the smartest of the dummies or the dumbest of the smartest but I was also quite alright at sports, so I had that going for me. I'd say the problem with smart kids who do find a group to be a part of and still feel like they were in a tough spot - your parents should've put you into a sports team or some form of athletics and that would've likely alleviated a lot of the problems.
- ticviking 11y ago
  So I think you're onto something with moving kids to where they will be challenged in school. Systemically it keeps everyone engaged in the task of learning and I wish we would adopt it in the states. I don't think that would stop bullying, only reduce particular kinds of it. Bullying serves the purpose of enforcing social norms. Putting people in a situation where ability is less of a way to break norms will reduce the bullying, but it won't eliminate it. Quick clarification I'm not claiming I was bullied for being smart. I was bullied for being weird. Being challenged, or joining sports would have reduced that weirdness, and spare individual children some pain, but doesn't really change the problem of students electing to enforce social norms by humiliation and violence. RE: Sports teams. We couldn't afford any of the organized sports available in my area(all of them had a few hundred dollars of gear and annual fees to participate in). By the time I was in middle school and had "free" access to sports I was so behind in developing the basic play skills that it simply marked me out as a newb