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I've had to change school a few times due to bullying. Thus my experience was the opposite: the worst bullying I endured was when I was between 9 and 12 years o

by Zababa 5y ago

I've had to change school a few times due to bullying. Thus my experience was the opposite: the worst bullying I endured was when I was between 9 and 12 years old. High school was mostly fine, and most of the people that I met were fine, although I had to deal with a bit of homophobia. It's impressive how adults reject the fault of bullying on the victim. I had to not react, to learn to ignore the bullies, as if they were some hurricane and had no control over their own actions. Compared to this, university was a breath of fresh air. I could mostly choose to not go to class, the site was completely open to the exterior, teachers were ready to help people in need and left alone people that wanted to be left alone. I've preferred talking to older people most of my life, so I find the idea of the author of multi-generational groups appealing. Maybe don't remove high school, but at least leave the option for people that don't work like most other people that seem to enjoy high school. Also, have zero tolerance for bullying. When the thing you learn in school is that there's no justice and you can't count on people supposed to protect you, it's a bit hard to be mentally healthy after.

kart23 5y ago
yeah, middle school sucks way more. It wasn't that bad for me, but looking back some people were just treated awfully by everyone. Bullying can really mess with your head at that age, people with self-esteem issues are really badly affected by it, and I've seen those effects last well into high school too.
- handrous 5y ago
  Talk to some teachers who've been around for a while, and they'll give you an ear-full about how much middle school sucks. Something happens to kids around 6th grade, probably to do with starting to value peer-approval over authority-approval, and they start getting wilder. The work gets harder. Class-switching may start that early, depending on the school. Puberty. Kids from several elementary schools are thrown in with one another, in an abruptly-much-larger class with tons of strangers. A bunch of the kids develop mental health issues. A bunch start hurting themselves or get suicidal, and attempts may be made, some with, uh, "success". Drug use begins to enter the picture. All forms of bullying, including the "mean girl" type, get way worse in a hurry. It is obviously hell for the kids. There's a consistent and widely-observed school performance dip in about 6-8th grade. I have a feeling our usual structure for schools for those age ranges, in the US at least, is in some way fundamentally and seriously wrong.
  - steinuil 5y ago
    Middle school is bad just about everywhere, not just in the US. All the teachers I've talked with (mostly in Europe) also observed the same thing. Keeping kids in school at that age is just a bad idea, and if anything that's what should be abolished completely. High school in Europe, where there's no extracurricular activities added into the mix, is mostly fine, and kids that have a bad time there are usually just carrying mental scars from middle school.
noobermin 5y ago
It really is interesting how bullying as a thing seems much less prominent in College. You still have things like hazing in frats and such but the frats are optional, of course. It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so.
- Zababa 5y ago
  Another thing is that I'm in France. Where I went to college, there were no frats. We had a small association but it was like 50 people out of the thousand in CS that went to their events, and they were pretty tame. On the other hand, the equivalent of frat culture is very present in medical school. > It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so. I totally agree. Maybe that's just psychological, but as I mentionned my college was "open", at any point I could just walk away. In high school, and before, there always were big wall between me and the exterior, and every exit had people making sure we didn't go outside. You really feel trapped inside with no escape. Anecdotally, the last high school I went to had a large park with lots of place to "hide", and I was often hanging out with a few friends in some "remote" places.
- asdff 5y ago
  Hazing is pretty common among student organizations in general in college. During undergrad, my friends in club rugby or marching band got hazed way harder than anyone I knew in any fraternity.
- nearbuy 5y ago
  Yeah, I think adults bully too under the right conditions, but we don't often call it that. Instead, we call the same behaviours harassment, abuse, or assault. Perhaps the worst bullying involves many people ganging up on a victim. You see this in adults too, from the literal witch hunts, to campaigns to make someone socially untouchable (or perhaps get them fired) for expressing views a group of people dislike. College just seems less conducive to bullying than high school or middle school.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Yeah, it's interesting that the author DIDN'T go to high school, but talks about how bad bullying is in high school. I was fortunate to not really be bullied much ever, but my anecdata from myself and asking friends is that bullying was MUCH worse in Middle School. From some Googling, I couldn't find any studies, but everything I saw seemed to say the same. My only major bullying was by a kid who got bullied a lot - randomly just kicked me down a flight of stairs one day. I'm not sure if that even counts as bullying, and it's hard to blame him too much as a major victim of bullying himself... But getting kicked down a flight of stairs sucks! I don't recommend it.
- Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
  Another piece of anecdata here that middle school was far worse for bullying in my life than high school. However, I may be a bit of a special case because I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a single-sex prep high school (male in my case). Having only boys in my high school meant there were essentially zero cliques, zero drama, and very little reason for bullying. There was no standing with the opposite gender at risk, and thus very little reason to have the standard sort of extreme pecking orders you tend to find in kids of that age. In all the years I was there, there were literally only two fights (in all four years, not just in my class). One amounted to a guy shoving another guy into a trophy case, so it's stretching to even label that a fight. Single-sex high schools sounds like an antiquated concept, and I was kind of leery of the idea going into it, but my god, I am a huge advocate now. There was an all-girl's school close by, so things like football games still gave you an opportunity for co-ed interactions, but the days themselves were almost entirely distraction free. By comparison, my mixed-sex middle school was a nightmare. Interestingly, since they were Catholic schools, many of the same kids from my middle school followed me to the high school, so you can't even simply attribute it to there being a different slate of kids. Some of the kids that were nasty bullies in middle school ended up turning into friends of mine by the end of high school.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Middle school sucks. It’s kinda like kindergarten, people are at very different mental and developmental states.
KMag 5y ago
Growing up in Minnesota in the late 1990s, we had Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO), where public high school students could go part or fill-time to college or university in-state for their jr. and/or sr. year of high school. As long as the college or university accepted the high school student, the student would get both college and high school credit for the courses. The course balance needed to meet high school requirements (English, History, Math, etc.), and the state wouldn't pay for more than a full-time course load. As I remember, at that time running a high school actually cost more per student than either public or private full-time tuition, so the school district actually saved money. As I remember, some of my friends went to private institutions (Carlton and University of St. Thomas, IIRC). I went to the University of Minnesota my sr. year of high school. I wish I also would have gone my jr. year. One of my buddies was also going to a local community college full-time while HS-aged through PSEA, and I remember one day that there was a snow storm and both of us only had 9 a.m. classes. I swung by his school right after my class ended, and we went skiing for the rest of the day while many of our friends were stuck in high school. Schedule flexibility was really nice.

by Zababa 5y ago

kart23 5y ago

yeah, middle school sucks way more. It wasn't that bad for me, but looking back some people were just treated awfully by everyone. Bullying can really mess with your head at that age, people with self-esteem issues are really badly affected by it, and I've seen those effects last well into high school too.

handrous 5y ago
Talk to some teachers who've been around for a while, and they'll give you an ear-full about how much middle school sucks. Something happens to kids around 6th grade, probably to do with starting to value peer-approval over authority-approval, and they start getting wilder. The work gets harder. Class-switching may start that early, depending on the school. Puberty. Kids from several elementary schools are thrown in with one another, in an abruptly-much-larger class with tons of strangers. A bunch of the kids develop mental health issues. A bunch start hurting themselves or get suicidal, and attempts may be made, some with, uh, "success". Drug use begins to enter the picture. All forms of bullying, including the "mean girl" type, get way worse in a hurry. It is obviously hell for the kids. There's a consistent and widely-observed school performance dip in about 6-8th grade. I have a feeling our usual structure for schools for those age ranges, in the US at least, is in some way fundamentally and seriously wrong.
- steinuil 5y ago
  Middle school is bad just about everywhere, not just in the US. All the teachers I've talked with (mostly in Europe) also observed the same thing. Keeping kids in school at that age is just a bad idea, and if anything that's what should be abolished completely. High school in Europe, where there's no extracurricular activities added into the mix, is mostly fine, and kids that have a bad time there are usually just carrying mental scars from middle school.

noobermin 5y ago

It really is interesting how bullying as a thing seems much less prominent in College. You still have things like hazing in frats and such but the frats are optional, of course. It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so.

Zababa 5y ago
Another thing is that I'm in France. Where I went to college, there were no frats. We had a small association but it was like 50 people out of the thousand in CS that went to their events, and they were pretty tame. On the other hand, the equivalent of frat culture is very present in medical school. > It's easier to dismiss it as a maturity thing but it might have a little to do with how kids are crammed into the same spaces with the same people, good and toxic while in college somehow it seems less so. I totally agree. Maybe that's just psychological, but as I mentionned my college was "open", at any point I could just walk away. In high school, and before, there always were big wall between me and the exterior, and every exit had people making sure we didn't go outside. You really feel trapped inside with no escape. Anecdotally, the last high school I went to had a large park with lots of place to "hide", and I was often hanging out with a few friends in some "remote" places.
asdff 5y ago
Hazing is pretty common among student organizations in general in college. During undergrad, my friends in club rugby or marching band got hazed way harder than anyone I knew in any fraternity.
nearbuy 5y ago
Yeah, I think adults bully too under the right conditions, but we don't often call it that. Instead, we call the same behaviours harassment, abuse, or assault. Perhaps the worst bullying involves many people ganging up on a victim. You see this in adults too, from the literal witch hunts, to campaigns to make someone socially untouchable (or perhaps get them fired) for expressing views a group of people dislike. College just seems less conducive to bullying than high school or middle school.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

Yeah, it's interesting that the author DIDN'T go to high school, but talks about how bad bullying is in high school. I was fortunate to not really be bullied much ever, but my anecdata from myself and asking friends is that bullying was MUCH worse in Middle School. From some Googling, I couldn't find any studies, but everything I saw seemed to say the same. My only major bullying was by a kid who got bullied a lot - randomly just kicked me down a flight of stairs one day. I'm not sure if that even counts as bullying, and it's hard to blame him too much as a major victim of bullying himself... But getting kicked down a flight of stairs sucks! I don't recommend it.

Gene_Parmesan 5y ago
Another piece of anecdata here that middle school was far worse for bullying in my life than high school. However, I may be a bit of a special case because I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a single-sex prep high school (male in my case). Having only boys in my high school meant there were essentially zero cliques, zero drama, and very little reason for bullying. There was no standing with the opposite gender at risk, and thus very little reason to have the standard sort of extreme pecking orders you tend to find in kids of that age. In all the years I was there, there were literally only two fights (in all four years, not just in my class). One amounted to a guy shoving another guy into a trophy case, so it's stretching to even label that a fight. Single-sex high schools sounds like an antiquated concept, and I was kind of leery of the idea going into it, but my god, I am a huge advocate now. There was an all-girl's school close by, so things like football games still gave you an opportunity for co-ed interactions, but the days themselves were almost entirely distraction free. By comparison, my mixed-sex middle school was a nightmare. Interestingly, since they were Catholic schools, many of the same kids from my middle school followed me to the high school, so you can't even simply attribute it to there being a different slate of kids. Some of the kids that were nasty bullies in middle school ended up turning into friends of mine by the end of high school.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Middle school sucks. It’s kinda like kindergarten, people are at very different mental and developmental states.

KMag 5y ago

Growing up in Minnesota in the late 1990s, we had Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO), where public high school students could go part or fill-time to college or university in-state for their jr. and/or sr. year of high school. As long as the college or university accepted the high school student, the student would get both college and high school credit for the courses. The course balance needed to meet high school requirements (English, History, Math, etc.), and the state wouldn't pay for more than a full-time course load. As I remember, at that time running a high school actually cost more per student than either public or private full-time tuition, so the school district actually saved money. As I remember, some of my friends went to private institutions (Carlton and University of St. Thomas, IIRC). I went to the University of Minnesota my sr. year of high school. I wish I also would have gone my jr. year. One of my buddies was also going to a local community college full-time while HS-aged through PSEA, and I remember one day that there was a snow storm and both of us only had 9 a.m. classes. I swung by his school right after my class ended, and we went skiing for the rest of the day while many of our friends were stuck in high school. Schedule flexibility was really nice.