America's bullying crisis...??? It's a crisis?Directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, Bully is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each represent a different facet of America's bullying crisis. Bully follows five kids and families over the course of a school year. Stories include two families who have lost children to suicide and a mother awaiting the fate of her 14-year-old daughter who has been incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus. With an intimate glimpse into homes, classrooms, cafeterias and principals' offices, the film offers insight into the often cruel world of the lives of bullied children.
Across the United States and around the world, the anti-bullying movement has become a rallying force. From celebrities telling gay teens that “It Gets Better” to the world-wide attention paid to a bullying incident in Australia captured on video, the problem of bullying in schools has garnered heightened media attention and is being tackled with increasingly stronger laws by communities.There are anti-bullying laws of varying strength in at least 40 states. Last week (September 1, 2011), New Jersey enacted the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights, the nation’s toughest anti-bullying state law yet; it received both cheers and criticism. The law includes a requirement that teachers and administrators report incidents of bullying to the police, and has raised questions about who should be held accountable for protecting students. It has also sparked debate around the potential implications of criminalizing bullying, as well as how schools are going to pay for anti-bullying programs, given already-slashed budgets and overworked teachers.But schools and communities agree on the critical nature of the problem. Studies have shown that bullying leads to increased incidence of mental health issues later in life and lower achievement levels, especially for minority students.
“We should call bullying what it actually is — social violence,” said Erin Weed, founder of Girls Fight Back, an organization that provides empowerment and self-defense workshops at schools and college campuses around the country.The need to end peer harassment is clear. But it isn’t clear how much change is actually happening. Are laws that vigilantly punish bullies like the Anti-bullying Bill of Rights exactly what we need — or putting us down the wrong path? Resolving a case of bullying will take more than just a hotline. It will take squadrons of counselors, legal teams, and school administrators. So what are the most effective ways to spend school districts’ already-limited resources?
This is sweet: "The law includes a requirement that teachers and administrators report incidents of bullying to the police, and has raised questions about who should be held accountable for protecting students."
No. You don't stop bullying by MAKING IT ILLEGAL, for
Godsake.
You don't OUTLAW human behavior that is millions of years old.
Rather,
you TEACH YOUR KIDS TO FIGHT, to DEFEND themselves. It'll make them better people, much better than if they are surrounded by an impenetrable wall of
Socialist feel-good-about-yourself LAWS designed to turn OTHER citizens into
OUTLAWS.
About 40 years ago, when I was fresh out of grade school, I entered the entirely new and unexpected social environment of junior high school. I say "entirely new and unexpected" because nobody EVER told me about Physical Education in the higher grade levels, wherein you are introduced to the horrifying experience of stripping naked in front of complete strangers and donning these ridiculously primitive and ill-fitting gym shorts, okay, which is all you wore for the next hour and a half, indoors and out.
This experience was distressing in that we frequently confronted and jogged past the girls' P.E. class out on the ball field; and several guys, predictably, decided to show off in front of the girls. This showing off usually manifested as bullying the other guys around them.
Well, bullying the guys that COULD be bullied, that is.
I think it was the second week of 7th Grade — when I had finally acclimatized to the routine — that this buck-toothed redneck named Kelly Donaldson decided to try his hand at bullying me. This was an unfortunate decision for him, I can assure you.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, I took an aluminum baseball bat and smacked the stupid hillbilly bastard in the mouth with it, which knocked out three of his permanent front teeth and left him bleeding and blubbering in the red dust of the baseball field.
I'm sure it changed his life for the better. Well, except for having to wear false teeth from a very early age.
It never occurred to me until that moment that I would have to defend myself in such a manner on public school property. However, if Kelly Donaldson had taken the trouble to research the data on his intended victim (always advisable), he would have known that I had a childhood history of seeing red and hammering guys much larger and much older than myself.
That runs in our family, by the way. I think it's scientifically termed the berserker gene.
Point is, the very first time Kelly tried his Level One Assault on me, I came back on him with a Level 10 Response. As a result, nobody EVER tried to bully me for the remainder of junior high or high school.
Oh, sure, there were a few scuffles, including one fight in which I stomped two guys simultaneously for stealing my hat; but there were never any other cases of bullying in my public school experience.
It's like going to prison, you know? Not that I've ever been to prison, but I know people who have done some time. If you demonstrate from Day One that you're a hard target in prison, the guys in the rest home respect that, and you won't end up as somebody's bitch.
And it's like that all throughout your life, as well.
Lemmy tell you something, if you allow somebody to push you around ONCE, they'll do it again. More than that, if you allow somebody to push you around in public, the public won't respect you.
Hey, that's human nature, millions of years in the making.
Now, there is NO CASE on record of humankind LEGISLATING barbarism into obsolescence. Barbarism is here to stay, for as long as we're human beings. It's what MAKES US human beings, it's what DEFINES our civilization.
I mean, what is civilization except a cumulative response to barbarism?
We're not going to CHANGE human nature in a few generations or even a few centuries through Hate Crime Laws. All we're going to do is establish a new class of outlaws who will revel in their barbarity, as the victims whine from within the cage of Socialist lawmaking they have wrought.
The only way to answer bullying is with a fearsome self-defense, one that sends the bully reeling. That's what bullies respect.
Defensive response is common sense, and it's the first thing that springs to mind.
But, then, you may ask, where is the compassion, where is the Christianity and all that turn thy cheek mentality? Look, I know people often cite Christ's eternal patience, his infinite tolerance for abuse with a citation from the New Testament: Luke 6:29, “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek
offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy
coat also.”
Yeah, just keep poking and prodding me and punching me, and keep stealing my property and I'm okay with all that, right?
NOT. An examination of the original extended scripture reveals that Jesus was admonishing people to SETTLE OUT OF COURT.
People who try to characterize Jesus as eternally tolerant are sorely mistaken. Christ had his limits. I mean, in John 18:23, one of Caiaphas' officers smacked Jesus, who exclaimed “Why smitest thou me?”
Christ said, "Why'd you hit me, man?" That's NOT turning the other cheek. That's called confrontation. We're talking about God in the flesh here, right? He could've turned Caiaphas and his entourage into frogs at a glance.
Christ walked the walk. He was all about confrontation.
Christ didn't strike back, but he definitely confronted his assailant. And THAT is what these victims-in-training SHOULD be doing in the Anti-Bully Movement, rather than pursuing national and global legislation to build a wall around their kids to protect them from LIFE.
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