cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4393803
We’ve already talked about school and how we can change it in the past. But today I want to discuss a specific topic related to school: bullying.
As a neurodivergent person, I’ve had my own share of bullies pick on me in the past, two of which I was lucky not to get into physical fights with. There are so, so many people who have had even worse experiences with bullying.
In school, children/adolescents pretty much have to be around each other, making it more difficult to deal with bullying.
How can socialism deal with this issue?
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i stand by my point about massively reducing class sizes so teachers have time to notice and aren’t too overworked to be assed about it, but somebody said death penalty and I find that compelling too.
This does sound like a good step in the right direction.
I think a more community focused ethos might help, too. If kids are encouraged to think about the well being of the group over seeing themselves as atomized individuals they might be able to better protect each other and intercede in bullying. but that could go the other way, with the group ostracizing someone.
Gulags for asshole kids
Put adults who care about this sort of thing in place as teachers, counselors, hall monitors, etc. It’s important, so throw a little too much labor at it; the consequences of over-staffing are just that some of those people get extra free time at work, oh no. Struggle with a shortage of caring adults as a generation poisoned by living under capitalism isn’t very good at this. Slowly get better as kids who grew up under communism qualify for that sort of job. Slowly get better as they take things seriously and argue with each other about it in their child care industry conferences. Receive a mixture of very sensible and completely baffling suggestions for improvement from that crowd; implement all of them because they’re closer to the problem and know it best.
Put adults who care about this sort of thing in place as teachers, counselors, hall monitors, etc.
A problem with this for whoever is responsible for such appointments is how does one determine if a person does care about that.
Also, another problem is that just caring is not enough. Bullies can only really be stopped if there are negative consequences for them when they do engage in bullying, and teachers and other relevant workers might not have any sort of tools to punish bullies.
There is also the issue of how does one determine whether somebody is a victim of bullying. This would, I do not doubt, be helped by having adults care about this stuff, though.
In Maoist China, students would call each other counter revolutionaries and ostracize them
In Vietnam, students would be disciplined physically, then some students would jump the teacher after school
Alternatively, you can have a culture similarly to Japan where being rude is probably the greatest sin. However, it’s a double edged sword because someone can abuse you and you would be too scared to speak up because rocking the boat is considered rude.
So I propose a mix of everything. A culture of respect where people get ostracized for abusing others, and allowing kids to duke it out among themselves. Getting beaten by an adult for misbehaving doesn’t make any sense. But another child going at you because you keep harassing them (in conjunction with more formal intervention)? I would say there’s more purpose and opportunity for growth there.
Another thing my elementary school did: the principal forced the boys in our class to hang out with the most hated kid lol. The results were terrible because it didn’t address any of the problems we had. Now I’m no social scientist so I can’t exactly articulate why this may be good, but it seems worth investigating. Cliques are also huge in school. Not all of them are bad, but maybe look into that.
But then you have your Klebolds and Harrises and Dahmers: people who not only bully others - or in the case of Dahmer, be very weird - but also at risk at committing catastrophic incidents. How would you intervene here? How would you tell the difference between them and band kid humor? And in some cases, the band kid becomes the murderer.
Another thing my elementary school did: the principal forced the boys in our class to hang out with the most hated kid lol
Wait, they forced bullies to ‘hang out’ with their victims?
