PRONOUNSThe Progressive Stasi or How yet again the #bekind crew show they aren’t.

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[–]Datachost 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

Safe from what exactly?

A question we all need to be asking more often. It seems like all you have to do nowadays to get your way is say some variation of "That offends me/That makes me feel unsafe/That causes harm" and nobody ever questions how or why. People need to learn to not instantly give in, just because someone says they feel unsafe. Sometimes it's fucking ridiculous for something to make you feel unsafe. When someone says they feel unsafe, simply from being in the same room as someone who maybe once said something not 100% supportive, the response needs to be a shrug and a "Sounds like a you problem"

[–]ClassroomPast6178[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Stephen Fry, of old, would have replied “well, so fucking what!”, but I fear he is lost to the woke after seeing him talk recently.

People have been brainwashed by anti bullying education in schools that they are somehow responsible for the way others feel. I’ve been guilty of teaching this in my earlier teaching days, but I quickly realised that the lessons were actually awful and were setting children up to view themselves as victims and permanently damaged.

Thankfully the messaging on anti bullying has changed, but until recently it was fucking awful and we still have a long way to go with stuff like self-esteem/confidence in education, the focus on these does seem to produce entitled, insufferable young adults.

[–]FlyingKangaroo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Just to clarify, I hope you don’t find the essential concept of anti-bullying bad, just the way it was delivered, right? Because I think it’s clear that bullying is also gross, however, no one should perpetuate the idea that being a victim or feeling like one makes anyone better than others, etc. like the woke stuff is promoting this.

I can say I live in a country where there wasn’t really any ‘anti-bullying education’, better or worse, however that concept resurfaced at some occasions. It’s like most people don’t react to it appropriately anyway. But the bad thing is that woke stuff also gets transported to other places because it’s trendy and people want to get the victim status to be praised anyway - it’s scary to see that emerging more and more online, after what has already happened online and irl in the US.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It depends on if the thing we are calling bullying is actually bullying. Going around harassing the gay kid incessantly, beating him up, assaulting him in the bathroom and dunking him in the toilet, that's bullying and shouldn't and cannot be tolerated.

Laughing at the gay kid because he's done some histeronic display in front of the class and demands that he be called they while crying. That's not bullying, that's mockery.

Mockery only crosses the line into bullying if you go following the person around harassing them with it. If they come to you and you say laugh at their bs and make fun of them after that's not bullying.

You can't control what other people think of you. And this anti-bullying shit comes to "saying anything bad about anyone or not going along with their ideas is bullying" which is just damn wrong. Ripping on people is basically how males socialize and if you're not getting ripped on in some way you aren't accepted. This is an evolutionary development where groups essentially ostracize the emotionally weak that can harm the group as a whole, as well as attempts to, shall we say humorously address problematic behavior to give the parties an attempt to save face. But when we've raised people who crumble into a crying mess because they have been called he instead of they perhaps they are beyond hope.

[–]ClassroomPast6178[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You can't control what other people think of you. And this anti-bullying shit comes to "saying anything bad about anyone or not going along with their ideas is bullying" which is just damn wrong.

Yes, which is why the current definition that we use includes the need for it to be persistent. Before, when I was a new teacher, it was literally just name calling and it was bullshit. I also make a point of telling children that you can’t expect to be friends with everyone and it’s perfectly normal for you to have disagreements amongst friends. Thankfully, we are seeing resilience start to work it’s way into curriculum but it’s early days.

Ripping on people is basically how males socialize and if you're not getting ripped on in some way you aren't accepted.

Yes, I can confirm having been to an all boys secondary school (11-18) ripping the piss out of your friends, enemies, teachers and passers-by was standard operating procedure. This is a fact that is lost on some of my female colleagues, particularly the younger ones, constant complaining about normal behaviours amongst boys. Some of my favourite days of supply teaching (being a substitute) was when I was in classes with boys who liked a bit of banter.

[–]Alienhunter糞大名 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What I've seen that is the most troublesome is the whole "not including people and ignoring them is bullying" as justification for pushing people who don't like each other together. There's some level where you've got to make kids used to working with people they don't like. But some seem to take it as a level of "you must be friends with the weird kid" and well, that depends, if the kids are going to harp on the kid for stupid bullshit like I'm not being friends with the black kid or whatever you can tell them off for being dumbasses and eventually the teacher has to step in to correct that, but if they're not wanting to include the weird nerdy kid in their sports game because he doesn't play well with the others cries about the game being unfair and starts shit, well that kid is not being included because he's being anti-social, and forcing the anti-social kid to socialize with the others before you correct the underlying anti-social behavior is a recipe for disaster and will make the other kids hate him more.

It's a very difficult issue to deal with but the problem with these kind of anti-bullying top down programmes is they are made by people trying to dictate generalized advice for idealized situation, when really it's a very complex issue that requires a lot of social insight into the situation and usually requires a different approach for each situation lest you exasperate the issues.

Schools absolutely need to be safe places for learning but you can't really maintain the facade of universal acceptance. If attention seeking behaviors aren't socialized out of the students in class well, that's how you get Karens. No you aren't the center of the universe, yes you have to learn to work with others, no that doesn't mean you have to put up with just anything and get pushed around, yes it does mean that we're playing dodgeball at PE even if you don't like it because you suck, play or sit over there bored.

[–]ClassroomPast6178[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

No the concept of anti-bullying is good, and the newer teaching materials are much better. The older stuff was dreadful, and for instance, categorised far too many normal, minor childhood “interactions” as bullying. It has improved in the last few years. Zero tolerance for racism and homophobia though, I’m fully onboard with having those in the school’s behaviour policies.

[–]LyingSpirit472 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The concept of anti-bullying works, but the answer has become: Sometimes there's people who aren't being bullied because of things they can't change, and that should be stopped for bullying.

However, this world has found that for every person bullying someone, there's also at least one annoying little shit who knows damn well you can't do anything to them and WILL exploit that you can't do anything to them in order to turn the tables on you, there's powertripping asshole bullies who'll use the threat of claiming you did something evil to them to get their way, etc...and those people are getting more and more power, first in schools, then in social media, and finally through institutionalized power as a whole.

[–]ClassroomPast6178[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I only teach primary school (4/5-11), and whilst even 7 year olds are capable of some heinous shit (I have witnessed some truly heinous, criminal, stuff from 7-11 year olds), for the most part, they’re generally retarded in how they go about their stupid shit and it’s easy to deal with; especially since they are usually more than willing to rat on their friends if they think they’re in trouble. I deliberately chose not to teach in secondary schools (11-18), despite being qualified, because I didn’t want to have to deal with the kinds of stuff you’re talking about - the pay just isn’t good enough to put up with that.

[–]LyingSpirit472 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, that also helps that, since "you can't do anything to me!" is a textbook younger sibling tool, the younger kids are the ones who are more likely to be extra-annoying when they know you can't do anything to them rather than be the ones to threaten people by claiming they did something heinous to them if they don't get their way yet. (This is even a positive for making sure kids get help; no matter how much of the nightmare claims of false accusations are said, we don't really see any stories of "the kid made a false accusation and claimed their parent abused them because they wouldn't get them the toy they wanted".)

[–]FlyingKangaroo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I see, thanks for clarification, I thought that was just the case. I guess, perhaps the materials used to be created by people wanting to push some stance but without doing much research?

[–]ClassroomPast6178[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think it was created by people who meant well but had little actual experience in the classroom (which seems to be something that is quite common, at least from my perspective).

They thought that if we just taught the children X then Y would stop/start and everything would be amazing.

X applies to lots of things, there’s an ever changing list. Self-esteem has been pushed fairly heavily over the past 15 year, I would say that this was a terrible mistake as it appears to have just made a population of self-entitled people who have elevated senses of their own capabilities and worth, and are therefore unbearable.

X has also been a variety of teaching and learning panaceas, “Mindset”, “Grit” and the most pernicious “Learning Styles”.

Y can be lots of things, attainment, achievement, bullying, racism, homophobia, you name it.

Teaching is plagued by the credulous, and the credulous seem to rise to positions of management from which they dispense the nonsense onto the rest of us.