It's interesting that the fear, pain, scarring and all around serious threat (above and beyond physical violence even) of humiliation, insults and generally making people 'feel like crap' can be acknowledged the way it is here, but a physical response to such things is universally deemed unacceptable and unjustified.
If a kid punches his peer in the face for engaging in the sort of sadistic mind games and public ridicule which leaves wounds that heal far slower than a bloody nose he (the puncher) will end up with the blame.
In my experience, most people won't even entertain this topic, it's an immediate retreat to 'sticks and stones' and simplistic notions of bullying straight out of 60 year old Archie Comics.
Growing up decades ago, my dad had this to say--schoolyard bullies and fights happened, and worst case parents were brought in or kids sent home. Sometimes, the gym coach would just drag the kids over and give them gloves and let them go at it. This was at a public school.
Currently, zero-tolerance policies have removed a long-standing safety-valve for this kind of torment. As a result, we see things like this, like Columbine, like many other things--and feed the school to prison pipeline.
>'Currently, zero-tolerance policies have removed a long-standing safety-valve for this kind of torment.'
Absolutely.
It feels to me like forgotten wisdom that unfortunately can't be taught after the fact.
If a person has grown up in a way that they didn't just fail to realize the utility of that valve but learned to fear and despise it there's very little chance of changing that.
We've traded the annoying whistle and an occasional blast of scalding steam for some percentage of kettles that simply explode with no notice.
Actually, punching a kid in the face in the middle of class was a viable strategy for getting adults to deal with bullying when I was in school. They could ignore the bullying up until then, but once there was a physical altercation in front of them, they had to admit there was a problem.
I got suspended (1 day out of school, 2 days in-school) but the bullying got dealt with. YMMV
If a kid punches his peer in the face for engaging in the sort of sadistic mind games and public ridicule which leaves wounds that heal far slower than a bloody nose he (the puncher) will end up with the blame.
In my experience, most people won't even entertain this topic, it's an immediate retreat to 'sticks and stones' and simplistic notions of bullying straight out of 60 year old Archie Comics.