Bullying

One of the best examples of bullying you can see in all three episodes of "Back to the Future".
Another child in the news has killed herself from online bullying.

When I grew up bullying was much different than now. People thought differently about bullying because it was thought to make you tough enough to survive in this world. In a way I can see the truth of that because in a way life is a jungle and it has always been (and still is) a dog eat dog world. And not just accepting that this is how the world actually is only debilitates children and makes them incapable of ever being strong adults who can survive anything.

However, since we try to teach kids to be kind to themselves and others more than when i grew up I understand what parents are trying to do. In the 1950s and 1960s in public school we just expected to be verbally and physically threatened at any point and knew if we couldn't defend ourselves then likely we would or could die. This was a given.

The teachers then were often the biggest bullies of all and made school age bullies seem like sissies in comparison. For example, I had a 3rd grade teacher who really didn't like 3rd grade boys and used to pick them up by their ears off the ground and carry them around. I tried very hard not to be injured like many of the boys in my class were then. However, eventually she was fired as she was old and was losing it. However a lot of physical and emotional damage was done to all the boys in the class and the girls were terrified of her too. But then, the next year I got my best teacher in Grade School for me, Mrs. Krell, who recognized my talents as a writer even then. It changed my life a lot because she was just so wonderful and creative. But she got pregnant by her husband and we lost her halfway through the school year to having a baby. But still, she recognized me as a story teller which I'm still doing now in my writing.

I consider myself much more of a story teller than a writer because I just hate to edit other than spell checking my work sometimes.

So, even though people worry about bullying I think they should worry more about people with guns and knives in school that will use them even more than bullies. Most bullies I met in school had been tortured themselves either by older bullies or their older brothers and sisters or by their teachers or all of those things at once. So, they were just acting out because of how they had already been tortured. So, mostly bullies are that way because of how they have been tortured and they are just kicking the can down the road so to speak. So, bullies have been driven insane by older people like older brothers or sisters or parents or bad friends who have been torturing them since they were little.

Very few people just torture people for the fun of it without having been tortured first themselves. I was lucky growing up because I was always very big and strong for my age. And then my father said to me at 12, "Freddie. You have to be very strong in your mind and heart always. BEcause if someone makes you angry enough you are going to kill them before anyone can stop you. I had already grown from 5 foot 2 to 5 foot 10 that year and understood what my father was saying.

Though I was never a bully I did protect my friends from bullies that were smaller than me. But, I still had to deal with older kids bigger than me. But even then they knew enough not to start a fight with me because if they did they were going to get hurt if they did even if they hurt me too.

So, what is the solution to bullying in public schools? Either send them to a private school where bullies are kicked out or home school your children. If you don't and your kids die from bullies then you have no one to blame but yourself if they die from suicide or murder from bullies. If there are online bullies you need to take your kids off the internet unless you can mask or eliminate the entries by online bullies to your children.