Freedom to Learn

I recently read the book "Queen Bees and Wannabes." I found it disturbing for a couple of reasons but mainly because the author considered everything in there to be default behavior for teenagers.

Ironically, the person who recommended the book, along with a similar book about boys (don't remember the title) is convinced that by being homeschooled, my children are missing out on valuable socialization experiences.

I believe that *one person-one vote* policy at Sudbury Valley is ridiculous.

Furthermore, I don't think it has anything to do with bullying-prevention.

What prevents bullying, at Sud-Val, and in homeschool co-ops is not just the lack of overall coercion, but more importantly the mixed-ages of students, i.e. the lack of age segregation.

What creates a bully in the third grade is nothing more than insulation from a 6th or 10th grader who would otherwise fly in and mete out justice.

I thought kids calling each other horrid names was already unacceptable behavior. It certainly is unacceptable in the mixed company of children and adults.

Carol Dweck has a discussion on bullying in her book "Mindset" talking about school counselor Stan Davis's strategies to deal with bullying. She quotes a statistic that "Within a few years, physical bullying in his school was down 93 percent and teasing was down 53 percent." If replicable, I would call that a meaningful positive gain.

Thank you, Peter, for this interesting article and for the references you've included.

I was an elementary school counsellor when the first wave of bullying programs hit the schools. Prior to bullying programs, we had focussed on supporting kids in learning conflict resolution strategies, tolerance and acceptance, and appropriate assertiveness.

However, once the word "bully" started getting tossed around, it seemed an opportunity for groups of children to gang up on and label kids who often had less developed social skills or were quiet or.... When bullying escalated into a conflict between two kids, the child who was less popular was labelled "bully" by the other children, but the child (often popular and well-liked) who often instigated the conflict subtly was the considered the "target" (I hate to use the word "victim" in this case as I felt that the "bully" was the victim.) I remember one child, who was goaded into action by his classmates time and time again, was sent home from school multiple times and put on a behaviour plan. Yes, this child was reactive. But the biggest problem was the classroom climate and the school culture.

I disagree with another commenter that age segregation is the main factor in creating a bully. I have seen school children play in mixed groups on a playground and bullying still happens due to the overall climate. Older kids often bully younger kids on the bus, on the way home from school... I was just reading in the news about a kindergarten child who had his leg amputated after a lawnmower accident and was teased so badly on the school bus by older children, he's no longer allowed to ride the bus. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/05/11/sk-bullying-schoo...

I'm looking forward to reading your next installment, Peter.

Hi Peter, as a Drama teacher I am greatly impressed at your ability to heighten and manipulate emotion. You have highly well developed sense of melodrama, displayed to its full extent in your following paragraph, oozing with passion:

"you have been singled out by your schoolmates as an object for scorn and humiliation. Every day at school, for you, is another day in hell. You are called "whore," "bitch," "slut;" or "fag," "pussy," "scum;" or worse. People deliberately bump into you and knock your books out of your hands in the hallway. Nobody sits with you at lunch, or, if they do, those people are harassed until they stop sitting with you. These bullies are not the brutish looking comic-strip bullies, whom nobody likes and who steal other kids' lunch money. No, these bullies are among the popular kids--the athletes, cheerleaders, preppies.

It is a compelling image, strangely reminiscent of a TV soap. However, please could you answer a few questions to help us come to an informed, rather than an emotional debate;

1. How many schools have you been in to form these specific images?
2. Have you got any contemporary evidence to back up these images? 3. Have you compared the bullying of schoolkids with bullying of unschool kids, for example?
4. When are you going to start using facts instead of emotion as a starting point for debate?

Steve

I think you are onto something here! My sister was the victim of bullying in high school. I know deeply how it works and how insidious it is. She ended up having to change schools, but thankfully my parents were kind and considered other options. Other kids that I knew weren't so lucky. I knew one kid who killed himself.

Fast forward to today and things haven't changed for the better. Bullying is even harder to pin. What I see often, is texting and cyber bullying from school peers, something that schools can't even remotely touch, even with every anti-bully policy they could possibly come up with.

My own daughter, who has never been in school was the target of such bullying, simply by having a boyfriend in school, who was sought after by other girls. It was viscous and cruel and it lasted for months and still occasionally happens now, over a year later. All those things you said... "whore," "bitch," "slut;" or "fag," "pussy," "scum;", and worse were said to my child by other kids who barely knew her. It spills over out of the school boundaries into the homes of children.

The ways in which peers must interact with one another creates a dynamic of brutal social pecking order. When kids can't escape other people, they bring out whatever defense mechanism they have. Some resort to cruelty to others. Even "nice" kids do terrible things to other kids. I see it happen all the time. Even something simple like taking another kid's books and hiding them, knowing full well that each kid without a book can't do their homework and must pay to replace it.

Over the course of this last school year, some of my daughter's school friends have, to name only a few, had mp3's stolen, money stolen, bus passes stolen, wallets stolen, lockers tampered with, lunches stolen, phones taken away by teachers and looked through, phones stolen by others, private texts spread without permission, skate boards broken, back packs turned upside down and inside out, viscous rumors spread.

That's just the tip of the iceberg and these kids are really very nice, normal kids, and these things were done by mostly the same. Each time, each kid knew exactly who had done what but with no recourse. Some kids I know skip school to remove themselves from that environment. One boy skipped school because he was harassed so much in the locker room that he didn't feel like going and forcibly dressing down in front of his torturers. He would've skipped every PE class, but there's that whole compulsory attendance thing to contend with.

It is one of the MAIN reasons that my own daughter chooses not to attend school. She sees this stuff happen and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. The kids she knows that don't go to school, or who go to the local "free" school don't behave in this way. There is no need to. If a kid doesn't get along with another kid, they simply don't spend time together. Sometimes, years later, they find ways to be friendly with each other. I've seen that happen many times outside of the school context. It probably happens in Sudbury style schools too. I know it does in the local "free" school. They work together for a common goal and that changes EVERYthing! People like to feel heard and valued. Traditional schools don't do that in the way that homeschoolers do and what I've seen of the democratic schools doing.

In this "modern? world is bullying a part of socialization of youth? Socialization is touted as the biggest single reason kids should go to public school rather than to home school.

I home schooled my grand daughter for a year. Her parents stopped me because their kid needed "socialization".

I sure wish I knew how to convince the parents they should be home schooling their child.

Oxford Dictionary says to socialize is to mix with others, make someone behave in a way that is acceptable to society, and to organize according to the principles of socialism.

What "society" are we talking about? Your family and its values? My family and our values? The culture of the neighborhood you live in? The coercive school system's culture, which as this artice conveys is actually a dangerous culture to live in let alone to learn in.

Home schooling is socialization according to the parent's values. Those values may not be good either. But who defines good? Most parents want to be parental, take care of their child, do right by the child.

As Peter Gray has documented in these blogs, schooling at gun point is a relatively new method of readying a child for adulthood. How can we overcome the gun and teach kids by persuasion?

Or is the last definition of socialization what is really going on? Are we being organized according to the principles of socialism?

"The only real solution I know involves a radical restructuring of the way schools operate."

Right, Sudbury schools. For one at least. Perhaps there are others?

I wonder if there are statistics about bullying at other somewhat different types of schools like Magnet, Waldorf or Progressive high schools. But hmmm, my guess is that if the same kids who were bullies at other schools were in these schools, it might be the same issue. Still top down control (even if kind) and kids still with no real voice.

Whereas at Sudbury schools, I believe there is 40 years of evidence that the bullying cycle quite often stops. (Well, or never starts, in the case of kids who are at such a school right from the start.)

One difficulty in comparing is that public schools sorta have to keep the kids (or at least they maybe feel it's their mission or duty to do so) whereas at a private school or magnet or charter type school, I am sure they are freer to give kids the boot if they don't behave.

Any thoughts on these 2 points (other non-traditional schools, and public vs private)

Erik