Correctly placing responsibility for bullying

I doubt that anyone will deny that bullying is a problem, especially among today's youth. However, every time I see an anti-bullying thing, be it a news article, a school procedure, or government legislature it targets the school as being responsible. Obviously the schools should stop bullying and do everything that they can to prevent it, but growing up I was always told that school was for book learning and home was for learning how to be a person.

Given that, shouldn't somebody at least say something along the lines of "Hey, please teach your kid not to be a jerk" to the parents? Everyone is up in arms at the schools for letting bullying happen but how many people are getting mad at parents who let their kids be jerks? Where are the news articles that say "Bad parenting responsible for bullying?" I can't find them. All I see is "schools to blame!" "what the school could have done differently" "parents call for new anti-bullying policies in schools"

This just seems like another example of society trying to place the blame on someone other than themselves. A mob of angry parent's is much more likely to yell at the school than to ask themselves what they could do. Granted, I'm not a parent so I could be way off base.

Kids will never stop bullying other kids until parents stop bullying their kids, which won't happen until we live in a societal structure where adults aren't bullied by their employers or what they see as governmental abuse. You have to look at the root of the problem, and it's a lot deeper than just a parental issue

CryojenX wrote: Kids will never stop bullying other kids until parents stop bullying their kids, which won't happen until we live in a societal structure where adults aren't bullied by their employers or what they see as governmental abuse. You have to look at the root of the problem, and it's a lot deeper than just a parental issue

These things may hold some truth but all it does is continue to pass the blame up the stream. Where does it end? For me it ends at the people who can make the biggest difference the fastest and in that stream it's the parents.

Plus, there will never be a society where people aren't abused by someone at some point and if there is then there will be an even bigger problem. I have difficulty believing that grown adults can't handle their abuse well enough to correctly teach their kids not to continue the cycle or at least I have difficulty believing that it's wrong of me to expect them to.

As the parent of an autistic child I have had to deal with this bullying issue often, even daily.
From my point of view the school could help alot. They could help educate about differences and why it's not alright to exploit someone's differences in order to get a funny reaction. E.g. screaming at someone until they cry and then standing around laughing is not OK. Some autistic people cannot cope with loud noises and explaining that might reduce the bullying. Also stopping children from screaming at the cowering child might be a good start too. But I know teachers cannot see everything all the time.
Also the schools would blame the victim. E.g. tell my son its his fault he got thrown into the bins because he was stupid enough to stand alone next to them.
I don't know if the school ever informed the parents of the bullies to give them a chance to educate their own children. I never heard of them doing this. The school always claimed ignorance or lack of proof and then suspend my child for running off site after the bullying. No bully was ever suspended.

schools are not to blame...children are @$$holes...it's the parents responsibility to teach them not to be...however the parents can't do that if they aren't informed about the @$$hole nature of their kids....

i wasn't just bullied at school....i was bullied everywhere...most bullies are insecure cowards/weaklings that lash out at those they perceive as weaker then themselves....it gives them a sense of empowerment....how i dealt with them was i became stronger and fought back until they got the picture...once they ceased to bully me and sought new victims i would step in again, this time protecting the new victims...

the parents of @$$hole children need to teach their children to be kind....the parents of bullied children should teach their children to defend themselves (if possible)...a collective effort is needed...casting blame is pointless and leads to no solutions...action leads to solutions...

I don't blame people for feeling this way, but I guess I have opposite view.

Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. They learn math, history, science, and reading as basics but to say that they should leave everything else to parents kinda says they shouldn't learn the practical applications of things they're learning in those four basic subjects. I think too often we think of school in terms of those four core disciplines when school should be utilized in developing a child's whole self. Many schools do a half-assed version of this through programs put on by school counselors and administrators, but it often times the material is outdated and some of it is even the kind of garbage where they just blame the kids being bullied (I had that at my junior high).

More fundamentally though, students need a safe environment to learn in and not every parent is as involved with their kids as this idealistic "leave that to the parents" mentality requires. Schools cannot afford to leave it to the parents because not everyone has two parents who love and care for them and will put the extra work in to help address the underlying problems that make them want to bully others.

at the same time 1 teacher to 24 students, 1 counselor to an entire school is an unfair ratio....1 parent to 1-4 children is a much more fair ratio....teachers and counselors can't be everywhere all the time and can't see everything that happens in a crowd of 1000+....heck most can't see everything that happens in a classroom with just 24 students...unless schools manage to implement some sort of improved ratio, then it has to be up to the parent(s) to be more involved with their child's development...really the whole family should be...i teach my nieces and nephews a variety of things whenever i can...

Like I said, it's really half-assed.

The fact that we are unwilling to spend what is needed to educate our children seems to me to be the bigger problem. We can't make parents be good parents, but we can improve the learning environment as well as the resources needed to educate our children.

Yes, the parents need to be more involved, but since I can't control another kid's parents, the only thing I can change is how the school handles things.

I expect the school to be a safe environment for my child. That's why I'm all for the new CA law on vaccinations. I can teach my daughter how to be a good human being. I can try and teach her how to handle bullying brought against her. But if the school doesn't tell me that she's the one doing the bullying, I can't do anything further about it. If she's the one being bullied, then I expect the school to defend her. Because I don't trust other parents to do what they're suppose to do I at least expect the school to maintain a standard of safety for healthy learning. If I'm entrusting her to this school for as long in the day as she's going, she should be safe.

I was bullied my entire childhood and early adulthood both at school and at home. *shrug* I'm not going to go into what it did to me but I'm still working my way through it. I hope my daughter never has to face what I did.

It's the parent's responsibility to raise a child. But it's the school's responsibility to ensure the safety of those under their care. I'm not saying that it's the school's fault that bullying happens. Kids are jerks. But I think the schools should be enforcing proper behavior.

enforcing behavior is a difficult challenge...it's a numbers game....look at the middle east...pure chaos...the preferred behavior can't be enforced because there aren't enough people to do the job....schools are like mini nations unto themselves...they have a figurehead, and a small contingent of people to enforce the rules...however the masses are the one's that truly run things...a class of children behave because the children decide to behave....not because the rules mandate it, or because the teacher is present....family needs to teach the children to choose appropriate behavior...if a child chooses wrongly the family needs to be notified and correction taken....unfortunately not every bad behavior gets caught....i seldom ever got caught misbehaving in school...it wasn't because i was a saint....i was just clever enough not to get caught....if the behavior is not witnessed then it becomes one person's word against anothers...we cannot prosecute someone simply because of what someone else says...there has to be proof of wrongdoing....

i don't expect any place to be "safe"...i remember my childhood...no place is safe....only perceived as safe....