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The point of the article is to say that this is a bad thing, but to someone who was bullied as a child, the idea of being “sedentary, scrolling and alone” sound

by ryao 1y ago

The point of the article is to say that this is a bad thing, but to someone who was bullied as a child, the idea of being “sedentary, scrolling and alone” sounds like the ideal childhood. I remember adults saying socialization was a good thing when I was a child, and to me, that effectively claimed that my daily beating from 5 to 6 of my classmates was a good thing. It does not matter how much time passes; nothing will convince me that was a good thing.

refulgentis 1y ago
Getting beaten by a gang of classmates daily is genuinely awful & would leave some deep scars, I'm very sorry to hear that and wish you the best.
- ryao 1y ago
  Thanks. 8 years of being bullied (with the first 3 years consisting of beatings and the latter 5 years consisting of psychological bullying) certainly did leave scars. The most obvious were regular nightmares. The less obvious was a coping mechanism where I would pretend that anything bad did not actually happen to avoid facing it. I do not think I ever fully grew out of that one. There are probably others, but I am not fully cognizant of them.
jonnybgood 1y ago
I don't follow. How does claiming socializing is good effectively claiming bullying is good?
- ryao 1y ago
  Whenever I complained that recess was unnecessary, I was told that it was good for me, sent outside and promptly beaten. Being sent outside and beaten happened regardless of whether I complained it was unnecessary. What I learned from that was that being beaten was considered good for me, since that is what happened when I was forced to “socialize”.
bobxmax 1y ago
The public school system is absurd and the biggest culprit in the vast majority of our modern problems. The idea that we would take children and put them in an environment that is essentially the same as a prison for 18 years, is ABSURD. When in human history would teenagers spend most of their time surrounded by other teenagers? Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. We have never put our kids in school- no bullying, just balanced happy healthy kiddos.
- skissane 1y ago
  > Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. Yeshivahs and madrassas are nothing new; in Bhutan, there monasteries brimming with young boys spending their days studying voluminous Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. The biggest factor in the growth of schooling in modern period hasn't been any religion – it is the idea that education is a universal right for every child, as opposed to a privilege for the children of the elite.
  - bobxmax 1y ago
    That's incorrect. Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants - the idea of state-wide mandated education was to ensure the Bible was taught and spread. Education and public schooling are different things.
    - skissane 1y ago
      I don't know why all this focus on "public schools". Of my 13 years of K-12 education, I spent 2 years in a public school, the other 11 in three different Catholic schools. Whatever the merits of your complaints about school systems, I think many of them would apply to many private schools too There are at least four countries/territories worldwide (Aruba, Bangladesh, Sint Maarten, and Macau) where over 90% of secondary students attend private schools, public schools enrol less than 10% of secondary students – you think none of the private school students in those countries would sympathise with any of your criticisms? > Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants You think Catholic majority countries don't have public education systems? In Brazil 86% of secondary students attend public school; in Portugal, 81%; in Argentina and France it is 74%; in Spain 69%; by contrast, Australia, a country in which historically Protestants have outnumbered Catholics by as much as 3:1, the percent of secondary students in public education is only 53%. Sources: - Public education rates worldwide: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_rec... (okay, that's percent private, but subtract from 100 to get percent public) - Australia historical religious affiliation statistics: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/10072ec3ffc4f7b4ca2570ec00787c40!OpenDocument https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca2... As an aside, although Australia's Protestant:Catholic ratio was around 3:1 in the first half of the 20th century (and I believe through the 19th century too, although I don't have hard figures handy on that), nowadays there are only slightly more Protestants in Australia than Catholics – this is because, while both branches of Christianity have lost huge numbers of followers to secularisation, Catholicism has always partly compensated for that by immigration from Catholic majority countries (most recently the Philippines), Australia's post-1950 immigration patterns have left Protestants at a comparative demographic disadvantage – which I believe is true of the rest of the Anglosphere too
lanfeust6 1y ago
Let's be clear: these kids still attend school, like you did. Susceptibility to bullying has not disappeared. What the article is discussing specifically is leisure time, and it was just as possible to spend that sedentary and alone 30 years ago. Having a social life vs not being bullied is a false dichotomy.
- riehwvfbk 1y ago
  Let's be clear: invalidating someone's life experience based on your misrepresentation of something they said is not cool. Even if bullying remains a fixture in one's life, having something to look forward to after the hell they call school is much better than having nothing. And the "something" can be learning to program, tinkering with Linux, or talking to friends from around the world online. Having screen time vs having a social or intellectual life is a false dichotomy.
  - lanfeust6 1y ago
    Don't project things I never conveyed in any way shape or form.
- ryao 1y ago
  I was beaten during “leisure time” (it was called recess). As far as I was told, this was good for me because to use your words, it gave me a social life. That social life was one where I was a punching bag, but none of the school employees cared. They blindly thought leaving children to their own devices was good for them and while there was supposedly oversight, the teachers had no idea what a student being beaten by his peers on a day to day basis looked like and apparently thought there was nothing wrong while I was being stuck by several others. They only recognized it the few times I fought back, and then disciplined me for having the audacity to defend myself, while my bullies were exempt from discipline through the intervention of their parents. Having leisure time in school be spent with zero interactions with other students would have prevented the beatings. As per my recollection, when my mother discovered this after it had been on-going for 3 years, she asked me why I did not ever say anything. At the time, I simply thought that was normal, since I had no recollection of a recess period where I had not been beaten. I also was not very good at explaining that, since not only had I had no idea that this was abnormal, but I had also repressed the memories to be able to function during the day. It did not stop me from having horrific nightmares seemingly every night from which I would often awaken screaming for years, but how was a young child supposed to know that any of this was not normal when it was all that he had ever known?
fatata123 1y ago
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by ryao 1y ago

refulgentis 1y ago

Getting beaten by a gang of classmates daily is genuinely awful & would leave some deep scars, I'm very sorry to hear that and wish you the best.

ryao 1y ago
Thanks. 8 years of being bullied (with the first 3 years consisting of beatings and the latter 5 years consisting of psychological bullying) certainly did leave scars. The most obvious were regular nightmares. The less obvious was a coping mechanism where I would pretend that anything bad did not actually happen to avoid facing it. I do not think I ever fully grew out of that one. There are probably others, but I am not fully cognizant of them.

jonnybgood 1y ago

I don't follow. How does claiming socializing is good effectively claiming bullying is good?

ryao 1y ago
Whenever I complained that recess was unnecessary, I was told that it was good for me, sent outside and promptly beaten. Being sent outside and beaten happened regardless of whether I complained it was unnecessary. What I learned from that was that being beaten was considered good for me, since that is what happened when I was forced to “socialize”.

bobxmax 1y ago

The public school system is absurd and the biggest culprit in the vast majority of our modern problems. The idea that we would take children and put them in an environment that is essentially the same as a prison for 18 years, is ABSURD. When in human history would teenagers spend most of their time surrounded by other teenagers? Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. We have never put our kids in school- no bullying, just balanced happy healthy kiddos.

skissane 1y ago
> Yet another thing we can credit to Christian expansionism. Yeshivahs and madrassas are nothing new; in Bhutan, there monasteries brimming with young boys spending their days studying voluminous Tibetan Buddhist scriptures. The biggest factor in the growth of schooling in modern period hasn't been any religion – it is the idea that education is a universal right for every child, as opposed to a privilege for the children of the elite.
- bobxmax 1y ago
  That's incorrect. Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants - the idea of state-wide mandated education was to ensure the Bible was taught and spread. Education and public schooling are different things.
  - skissane 1y ago
    I don't know why all this focus on "public schools". Of my 13 years of K-12 education, I spent 2 years in a public school, the other 11 in three different Catholic schools. Whatever the merits of your complaints about school systems, I think many of them would apply to many private schools too There are at least four countries/territories worldwide (Aruba, Bangladesh, Sint Maarten, and Macau) where over 90% of secondary students attend private schools, public schools enrol less than 10% of secondary students – you think none of the private school students in those countries would sympathise with any of your criticisms? > Public schooling can be directly traced back to protestants You think Catholic majority countries don't have public education systems? In Brazil 86% of secondary students attend public school; in Portugal, 81%; in Argentina and France it is 74%; in Spain 69%; by contrast, Australia, a country in which historically Protestants have outnumbered Catholics by as much as 3:1, the percent of secondary students in public education is only 53%. Sources: - Public education rates worldwide: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.SEC.PRIV.ZS?most_rec... (okay, that's percent private, but subtract from 100 to get percent public) - Australia historical religious affiliation statistics: https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/10072ec3ffc4f7b4ca2570ec00787c40!OpenDocument https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca2... As an aside, although Australia's Protestant:Catholic ratio was around 3:1 in the first half of the 20th century (and I believe through the 19th century too, although I don't have hard figures handy on that), nowadays there are only slightly more Protestants in Australia than Catholics – this is because, while both branches of Christianity have lost huge numbers of followers to secularisation, Catholicism has always partly compensated for that by immigration from Catholic majority countries (most recently the Philippines), Australia's post-1950 immigration patterns have left Protestants at a comparative demographic disadvantage – which I believe is true of the rest of the Anglosphere too

lanfeust6 1y ago

Let's be clear: these kids still attend school, like you did. Susceptibility to bullying has not disappeared. What the article is discussing specifically is leisure time, and it was just as possible to spend that sedentary and alone 30 years ago. Having a social life vs not being bullied is a false dichotomy.

riehwvfbk 1y ago
Let's be clear: invalidating someone's life experience based on your misrepresentation of something they said is not cool. Even if bullying remains a fixture in one's life, having something to look forward to after the hell they call school is much better than having nothing. And the "something" can be learning to program, tinkering with Linux, or talking to friends from around the world online. Having screen time vs having a social or intellectual life is a false dichotomy.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  Don't project things I never conveyed in any way shape or form.
ryao 1y ago
I was beaten during “leisure time” (it was called recess). As far as I was told, this was good for me because to use your words, it gave me a social life. That social life was one where I was a punching bag, but none of the school employees cared. They blindly thought leaving children to their own devices was good for them and while there was supposedly oversight, the teachers had no idea what a student being beaten by his peers on a day to day basis looked like and apparently thought there was nothing wrong while I was being stuck by several others. They only recognized it the few times I fought back, and then disciplined me for having the audacity to defend myself, while my bullies were exempt from discipline through the intervention of their parents. Having leisure time in school be spent with zero interactions with other students would have prevented the beatings. As per my recollection, when my mother discovered this after it had been on-going for 3 years, she asked me why I did not ever say anything. At the time, I simply thought that was normal, since I had no recollection of a recess period where I had not been beaten. I also was not very good at explaining that, since not only had I had no idea that this was abnormal, but I had also repressed the memories to be able to function during the day. It did not stop me from having horrific nightmares seemingly every night from which I would often awaken screaming for years, but how was a young child supposed to know that any of this was not normal when it was all that he had ever known?

fatata123 1y ago

[dead]