Schoolyard bullying is nothing new and will never be anything old. It should be treated with respect. It is a part of growing up and children should be learnt to face it young, helping them progress in their future years through all the other forms of bullying.

I am strongly against extreme bullying. However typical 'group' bullying should be allowed to take place, where the more dominant children have a preferred status over the less dominant children. In the eyes of a capitalist it is the strongest who should win and teachers should not intefere until it becomes detrimental to somebody.

Bullying is a natural course of child social development. It will occur no matter what. Love-dovey crap is simply another branch of the "advanced" method of raising children with relation to making the world child-proof. It doesn't work. Neither does zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is another failing tactic. It's only redeeming quality to school "counsellors" is that it's been used for millenia in it's varying forms. It's efficacy has been further compromised at the advent of banning the strap and has since been replaced with time-outs and the like. Zero tolerance at it's most effective (observed obidience when applying corporal punishment) has never solved any problems, only made life easier for the staff. The issue of bullying lies at the developing ego of the children involved. It's dually a natural developmental process and a coping mechanism for whatever home or school issues that may exist and either may exacerbate the other. To "time-out" a child for witnessing a difficult home life does nothing but forces the child into different coping methods. The solution lies at understanding the children involved, bully and victim alike. Victims may in turn bully another and bullies may be bullied at home. Applying lazy and sloppy corrective action does nothing but complicate the situation. For any people subscribing to either form of punishment (corporal or douch-bag) consider that the kids aren't solving issues due to your disciplinary tactics, they're solving them in spite of said tactics.

P.S. Zero tolerance forces the bullying outside of the schoolyard ("not our problem anymore") where it isn't supervised therefore much more dangerous.

"In the eyes of a capitalist it is the strongest who should win"

You really don't know what you are talking about. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are in the hands of private ownership and which creates goods or services for profit in a market. It's not the "strongest" who wins a market, its the goods or services that best mean the needs of the market.

Capitalism has as much to do with bullying as a fish has with a bicycle.

Here is the problem. We have instituted a system of public education that resembles an assembly line in which all 6 year old kids are treated like widgets that need to be processed a certain way, and so on with each age group. In addition, our society has created ghettos for our seniors in nursing and retirements homes, for our adults in the workplace and for our children in these educational factories. In this context, abnormal social relationships are allowed to develop in our schools -- one symptom of which is bullying.

We have to stop segregating kids by age and we have to stop segregating our different generations in order to develop healthier social relationships.

We could reintegrate all age groups into a "village" -- for example, place child-care centers and senior centers in office buildings so all generations can have involvement with one another. A parent could then easily have lunch with her child and her own parents for example, and check up on the kids during breaks. The grandparents can help assist in the class-rooms and/or the kids can visit their elders at the senior center.

The class-rooms could return to the model of the "one-room" school house in which children of all ages mingle and learn together, each at his or her own pace.

In this type of milieu, I believe the bully could not act with impunity.

But one thing is certain. If nothing else changes,this one thing does need to change. Teachers and administrators need to institute a program to deal with bullying in schools. We send our kids to schools to be education, not to experience a Lord of the Flies environment. No school should allow physical abuse, threats, bullying and theft of personal property to go unheeded.

Research has shown that bullying can lead to terrible problems for bullies, victims, and bystanders. Studies have also shown that to experience being bullied is no longer need be a childhood inevitability. We now know that bullying can be prevented. We need to make certain that it is.

Schoolyard bullying is a byproduct IMO of inferior parenting skills. In speaking with teaching friends of mine, they noted that the children more likely to be bullies were the ones who seemed to have the more critical parents/home life. Children who get raised up by their parents and accepted for themselves seem to be more likely to succeed and treat other children fairly, whereas children who are subjected to large amounts of pressure at home seemed to do more poorly and to be more critical and/or physical with their classmates.

Bullying is a learned behaviour. And it starts at home. This is a very thin line for teachers to walk. My gut reaction says that with most crime, rehabilitation is a better solution than punishment, and this is no different. We should attempt to give the bully reasons to strive for better behaviour. At the same time, we should attempt to educate the parents. Unfortunately, teachers are only there for a small part of their day to day lives, and cannot control the rest.

Let's be honest, the whole 'lovey-dovey' program things are not going to work to deter bullying. In their place, I would prefer a zero tolerance policy against it, which would be a better deterrent. If you insist on taking away the ability of another student to get an education, you should forfeit the right to your own. You can go to summer school, with all the rest of your kind. ;]

What is bullying?

I think we should get a definition in first, cause what may be bullying in other schools wasn't shit in my schools.

Bullying is despicable and causes mental anguish toward the victims. Bullies must be punished right away.