7 ms·

> If i knew myself, the only thing i would be able to tell myself is, it's going to suck until you're halfway through college. If I may just highlight this. Ch

by Joeboy 12y ago

> If i knew myself, the only thing i would be able to tell myself is, it's going to suck until you're halfway through college. If I may just highlight this. Children should be told that being a schoolkid is a weird kind of environment, the like of which they probably won't experience as an adult. Most workplaces don't involve customary physical violence, or even frequent overt verbal abuse. Glibly telling them that their life is horrible because they're not doing it right is a fucking awful thing to do to them.

pjc50 12y ago
You can't tell people things like that because they might ask "what are you going to do about this awful situation?" or "why do I have to go to school if it's so bad?". To which we have no answer.
- Joeboy 12y ago
  Exactly. I assume this is why people feel the need to construct narratives where it's within the bullied child's power to fix the problem.
  - aragot 12y ago
    What's wrong with the American society? You can be the country of awesomeness and freedom and entrepreneurship, and at times you also have those weird customs like bullying at school. So beware game creators: This topic will be "understood" by other European cultures but it will not match what they live at school. For example we keep watching movies like Back to the Future where Marty gets bullied, or others with baby showers and popular girls dressed in pink, but it doesn't match any experience we live here. About bullying in France: I didn't have any. No physical violence, except once on the beach, so pretty much out of school. I'm pretty sure most French people have never seen a wedgie or a swirlie. I don't even know how to translate those into French. We probably don't have a word for "bully". Ok, we do have the word "racket". But this is only about stealing. And even in this instance... we use the English word. So I'd say: Don't lose hope. Society doesn't have to be tough on children. You can change it somehow.
    - protester 12y ago
      In my opinion, this is key to all of this. I don't have those bad experiences and can't understand where all these problems come from. In my experience, from a country which is not usa, kids and teenagers are perfectly capable of making new friends constantly, sometimes they slowly stop hanging around with some of them, occasionally they get into a fight about some specific situation but they forget the day after, maybe they don't get along with somebody or whatever, some friendships last for less than a year and some last forever. But all of this without the drama and the suffering everybody is mentioning here. So I can't understand when some say "that's life", because that's not life and saying so stops everybody from looking for an alternative. When I was a kid and later a teenager everybody used to tell me "enjoy your time in school (and later in college), cause once you are out of college your happiest days are behind". That was, in essence, wrong. But it was true in many senses. And that's how it should be everywhere. We should put every effort needed to make it so.
    - roel_v 12y ago
      Well, that was certainly from 'I was never bullied' to 'bullying doesn't exist in Europe' in less than 2.8 seconds. If you'll pardon me for being rather blunt, it's exactly this sort of snooty French uninformed bullshit that gives your country its reputation of arrogant holier than thou know-it-alls. Bullying is a major problem across Europe, as recognized by the European Commission (and most everybody else in 2014), and a lot of effort has been spend the last 20 years to combat it. Estimates range from 10 to 30 percent of children being bullied at some point in their initial education (that's roughly 'anything before university'). But don't take my word for it, obviously - just 2 minutes of googling could have told you so. And while you're at it, just 20 more minutes will give you not only a much deeper consideration for the problem, but also some chilling examples of lives across the world being ruined by a, for all intents and purposes, emerging behaviour. What is true though, is France's reputation for its denial of the existence of it (because well, you guys buried all social inequalities after you chopped off the heads of your last kings, right?) and the resulting cognitive dissonance regarding all things bullying. To be fair though, your governments have started recognizing and acting on it a number of years ago (even if it was years after most other member states, but hey, there are plenty of other things that other members states were later than France to adopt, so I'm not harping on that). But apparently not everybody has gotten 'le memo' yet - because well, you were never bullied, so it doesn't exist in Europe, right? Oh, and because apparently I need to teach you your own language, the word is 'harcelement'. (for context, I'm not an American, and also this comment is probably more vitriolic than it should be, but hey - I've reached the breaking point for nationalistic nonsense and 'my experience is x, therefore x is universal' idiocy on HN, and this post happened to combine them in the most obnoxious way possible).
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Telling one truth just has to lead to telling other truths until the worldview is consistent. We do have the answer. Most kids have to go to school because the actual and opportunity cost of homeschooling is usually too expensive or often neither parent is qualified to provide a better or even acceptable education. When homeschooling is workable, going to school is often still a better aspect exactly because having a huge amount of experience with both the good and the bad of social settings is incredibly valuable as an adult (and that most adults have such experience is one of the main reasons adult society does tend to be less nasty IMO - people get fed up with it). If you can be honest and tell kids "the real world isn't like school", why can't you be honest and tell them the real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it?
  - heironimus 12y ago
    Just curious, but what are the "real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it"? If your child says "I'm being bullied at school and no one is doing anything about it. My teacher ridicules me because I don't understand Algebra. I'm not learning anything in literature class except how to fill out worksheets. Can't we figure out something better?" what do you say?
    - gizmo 12y ago
      The truth is kids get bullied because adults don't care and look the other way. If an adults hit another adult the police will get involved. When an adult hits a kid or a kid hits a another kid they've got practically no recourse. It's just grossly unfair, and there is no solution. So you tell them that. And you repeat that if they don't go to school they won't be able to get into higher education, which in turn won't allow them to get a good job. So their current situation sucks but the alternatives they have are even worse. It's a truthful description of a shitty situation. Adults don't have to have a solution to everything. But kids should expect us to talk to them in a forthright manner. Spare them one-liners like "you'll understand when you get older" and other condescending nonsense.
      - nsajko 12y ago
- Xenmen 12y ago
  Well, it's funny you mention that, because I think kids are right to question compulsory pedagogy: http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
- vacri 12y ago
  To which we have no answer We do have the answer, it's just unfashionable: "Who said life was fair?". There are plenty of things we experience as humans that aren't good, but the tradeoff is generally worth it. Having a job is one example.
CodeMage 12y ago
I agree with your last sentence. Unfortunately, I don't think it's that much better to tell them "It's okay, it will be better when you grow up." While it's true that they won't experience customary physical violence or frequent overt verbal abuse in an adult workplace, they most likely will run into bullies. Those bullies will have the same motivations as school bullies and the solution should be much the same: find a way to either fight them or avoid them.
- cyorir 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. If a child is bullied for a specific reason (not conforming to society's perceptions or expectations) then there is no guarantee that that reason will go away unless society changes (which tends to happen slowly, if at all). Unfortunately, you may find situations were it is hard to either fight or avoid, and you need a more subtle solution. This has happened to me in college and in my internship.
- mikeash 12y ago
  The main difference, I think, is that it's way easier to avoid bullies as an adult. If there's a bully among your friends, find new friends. If there's a workplace bully, find a new job, or better yet take it up with HR and make him find a new job. If there's a bully who works at a store, don't go to that store. Even in a really bad case, like the bully is on the local police force, you can move to a new city. There's no adult situation comparable to being forced to spend every weekday in the same building as hundreds of people whose company you don't choose. Except joining the military, I suppose, but that just reinforces how different it is from regular adult life.
  - vacri 12y ago
    There are plenty of people without in-demand skills who are locked-in to their shitty jobs because they need the money.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      That's true, and adults can get trapped. But it's not the norm, and even then, there's always the option of quitting your job and going out to live in the woods or something. It's not necessarily a good option, but even having a potential out that's a bad option can make a big difference, mentally.
trhway 12y ago
>Children should be told that being a schoolkid is a weird kind of environment, the like of which they probably won't experience as an adult. Most workplaces don't involve customary physical violence, or even frequent overt verbal abuse. on the other side, if school wasn't that hard than college/workplace wouldn't feel that easy by comparison. It it like taking very tight shoes off ...

by Joeboy 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago

You can't tell people things like that because they might ask "what are you going to do about this awful situation?" or "why do I have to go to school if it's so bad?". To which we have no answer.

Joeboy 12y ago
Exactly. I assume this is why people feel the need to construct narratives where it's within the bullied child's power to fix the problem.
- aragot 12y ago
  What's wrong with the American society? You can be the country of awesomeness and freedom and entrepreneurship, and at times you also have those weird customs like bullying at school. So beware game creators: This topic will be "understood" by other European cultures but it will not match what they live at school. For example we keep watching movies like Back to the Future where Marty gets bullied, or others with baby showers and popular girls dressed in pink, but it doesn't match any experience we live here. About bullying in France: I didn't have any. No physical violence, except once on the beach, so pretty much out of school. I'm pretty sure most French people have never seen a wedgie or a swirlie. I don't even know how to translate those into French. We probably don't have a word for "bully". Ok, we do have the word "racket". But this is only about stealing. And even in this instance... we use the English word. So I'd say: Don't lose hope. Society doesn't have to be tough on children. You can change it somehow.
  - protester 12y ago
    In my opinion, this is key to all of this. I don't have those bad experiences and can't understand where all these problems come from. In my experience, from a country which is not usa, kids and teenagers are perfectly capable of making new friends constantly, sometimes they slowly stop hanging around with some of them, occasionally they get into a fight about some specific situation but they forget the day after, maybe they don't get along with somebody or whatever, some friendships last for less than a year and some last forever. But all of this without the drama and the suffering everybody is mentioning here. So I can't understand when some say "that's life", because that's not life and saying so stops everybody from looking for an alternative. When I was a kid and later a teenager everybody used to tell me "enjoy your time in school (and later in college), cause once you are out of college your happiest days are behind". That was, in essence, wrong. But it was true in many senses. And that's how it should be everywhere. We should put every effort needed to make it so.
  - roel_v 12y ago
    Well, that was certainly from 'I was never bullied' to 'bullying doesn't exist in Europe' in less than 2.8 seconds. If you'll pardon me for being rather blunt, it's exactly this sort of snooty French uninformed bullshit that gives your country its reputation of arrogant holier than thou know-it-alls. Bullying is a major problem across Europe, as recognized by the European Commission (and most everybody else in 2014), and a lot of effort has been spend the last 20 years to combat it. Estimates range from 10 to 30 percent of children being bullied at some point in their initial education (that's roughly 'anything before university'). But don't take my word for it, obviously - just 2 minutes of googling could have told you so. And while you're at it, just 20 more minutes will give you not only a much deeper consideration for the problem, but also some chilling examples of lives across the world being ruined by a, for all intents and purposes, emerging behaviour. What is true though, is France's reputation for its denial of the existence of it (because well, you guys buried all social inequalities after you chopped off the heads of your last kings, right?) and the resulting cognitive dissonance regarding all things bullying. To be fair though, your governments have started recognizing and acting on it a number of years ago (even if it was years after most other member states, but hey, there are plenty of other things that other members states were later than France to adopt, so I'm not harping on that). But apparently not everybody has gotten 'le memo' yet - because well, you were never bullied, so it doesn't exist in Europe, right? Oh, and because apparently I need to teach you your own language, the word is 'harcelement'. (for context, I'm not an American, and also this comment is probably more vitriolic than it should be, but hey - I've reached the breaking point for nationalistic nonsense and 'my experience is x, therefore x is universal' idiocy on HN, and this post happened to combine them in the most obnoxious way possible).
sanderjd 12y ago
Telling one truth just has to lead to telling other truths until the worldview is consistent. We do have the answer. Most kids have to go to school because the actual and opportunity cost of homeschooling is usually too expensive or often neither parent is qualified to provide a better or even acceptable education. When homeschooling is workable, going to school is often still a better aspect exactly because having a huge amount of experience with both the good and the bad of social settings is incredibly valuable as an adult (and that most adults have such experience is one of the main reasons adult society does tend to be less nasty IMO - people get fed up with it). If you can be honest and tell kids "the real world isn't like school", why can't you be honest and tell them the real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it?
- heironimus 12y ago
  Just curious, but what are the "real reasons they are nonetheless made to put up with it"? If your child says "I'm being bullied at school and no one is doing anything about it. My teacher ridicules me because I don't understand Algebra. I'm not learning anything in literature class except how to fill out worksheets. Can't we figure out something better?" what do you say?
  - gizmo 12y ago
    The truth is kids get bullied because adults don't care and look the other way. If an adults hit another adult the police will get involved. When an adult hits a kid or a kid hits a another kid they've got practically no recourse. It's just grossly unfair, and there is no solution. So you tell them that. And you repeat that if they don't go to school they won't be able to get into higher education, which in turn won't allow them to get a good job. So their current situation sucks but the alternatives they have are even worse. It's a truthful description of a shitty situation. Adults don't have to have a solution to everything. But kids should expect us to talk to them in a forthright manner. Spare them one-liners like "you'll understand when you get older" and other condescending nonsense.
    - nsajko 12y ago
Xenmen 12y ago
Well, it's funny you mention that, because I think kids are right to question compulsory pedagogy: http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm
vacri 12y ago
To which we have no answer We do have the answer, it's just unfashionable: "Who said life was fair?". There are plenty of things we experience as humans that aren't good, but the tradeoff is generally worth it. Having a job is one example.

CodeMage 12y ago

I agree with your last sentence. Unfortunately, I don't think it's that much better to tell them "It's okay, it will be better when you grow up." While it's true that they won't experience customary physical violence or frequent overt verbal abuse in an adult workplace, they most likely will run into bullies. Those bullies will have the same motivations as school bullies and the solution should be much the same: find a way to either fight them or avoid them.

cyorir 12y ago
I couldn't agree more. If a child is bullied for a specific reason (not conforming to society's perceptions or expectations) then there is no guarantee that that reason will go away unless society changes (which tends to happen slowly, if at all). Unfortunately, you may find situations were it is hard to either fight or avoid, and you need a more subtle solution. This has happened to me in college and in my internship.
mikeash 12y ago
The main difference, I think, is that it's way easier to avoid bullies as an adult. If there's a bully among your friends, find new friends. If there's a workplace bully, find a new job, or better yet take it up with HR and make him find a new job. If there's a bully who works at a store, don't go to that store. Even in a really bad case, like the bully is on the local police force, you can move to a new city. There's no adult situation comparable to being forced to spend every weekday in the same building as hundreds of people whose company you don't choose. Except joining the military, I suppose, but that just reinforces how different it is from regular adult life.
- vacri 12y ago
  There are plenty of people without in-demand skills who are locked-in to their shitty jobs because they need the money.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    That's true, and adults can get trapped. But it's not the norm, and even then, there's always the option of quitting your job and going out to live in the woods or something. It's not necessarily a good option, but even having a potential out that's a bad option can make a big difference, mentally.

trhway 12y ago

>Children should be told that being a schoolkid is a weird kind of environment, the like of which they probably won't experience as an adult. Most workplaces don't involve customary physical violence, or even frequent overt verbal abuse. on the other side, if school wasn't that hard than college/workplace wouldn't feel that easy by comparison. It it like taking very tight shoes off ...