Now I see that I shouldn't have been dismissing the issue of bullying.

[LAS14]

Up until a short while ago I was puzzled by all of the attention being paid to "bullying" in schools. I was never aware of any such thing when I was a child, not even the femine version of intensely cruel cattiness. My middle aged children say they weren't either. I figured it was another expression of the helicopter mom syndrom.

But then I saw an interview of a Trump supporter. He was young, clean cut looking, but his admiration for Trump was based solely on his style. He didn't like Trump for his policies (immigration, racism, taxes) in spite of his style. He liked Trump because of his style. I wish I could remember his words, but he might just as well said "He's a macho man!" He was practically jumping up and down. Every lie Trump tells, every norm he breaks is a reason for glee.

So now I'm thinking that if those Trump crowds are filled with people like him, then it's not a stretch to think that our schools can have healthy doses of out and out serious someone's gotta do something bullying. Truly awful for our country.

Did you experience bullying in school? Has it occurred in any generation that you know about?

tia
las

[ananda]

1. I did see other kids get mistreated once in awhile.

Some by teachers, others by other students.

On the part of the students it was mostly name-calling
and exclusion.

On the part of the teachers, it was really ugly and more
physical.

In my two schools, the adults were worse than the students,
although the students could be pretty cruel sometimes.

[LakeArenal]

2. Yes. Kids AND teachers.

[Turin_C3PO]

3. Bullying has been present since forever.

Yes, I did see it when I was in school in the 90s. My grandma went to school in the 40s and she was bullied terribly. Some teachers I know say it’s actually gotten better since the anti-bullying campaign of the last ten years. But yes, it is a long standing problem.

[cayugafalls]

4. I was bullied and beaten mercilessly in grade school.

As was my son....although his was just verbal. the 60's were a brutal time for little kids like me for some reason the bullies liked to pick on really small weak kids with slightly effeminate features. It was tough.

It is a huge problem.

[lagomorph777]

5. Bullying causes many children to commit suicide. It's very wrong to dismiss it.

I was subjected to it a couple of times, but found that even a bit of pushback seemed to send these assholes crying. Not all kids are so lucky. Those who survive it can be scarred for life.

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. yes, I was often bullied. It's why trump and those like him trigger me.

[grumpyduck]

7. There was some bullying in my schools during the 60s,

and a few times somebody decided to pick on me.

That's when I figured out that the best way to deal with them (other than get into a fight, which I did a couple of times) was to just ignore them, let them know I wasn't interested in getting bullied. I figured out that they only picked on kids who showed they were afraid of them, and somehow I managed to let them know I wasn't taking them seriously.

Somehow it worked.

[relayerbob]

8. Absolutely, I have

In fact, we had one in grade school (in the 1960) who chased kids all over the place, and often picke fights. He finally had me in his sights, kept threatening and threatening. One day he skipped his bus stop to "pound me", then I skipped mine. Finally I got off and he followed. I had a huge pile of books under my arm. Then, he knocked them out. NO ONE FUCKS WITH MY BOOKS. I lit into him like the kid on Christmas Story - except it was a hot day in Tucson AZ, and I slammed him into hot gravel and proceeded to pummel him for quite some time. Finally someone pulled me off and he ran away, crying. I gathered my stuff and went home, unharmed. I told my folks what happened, they shrugged it off. We heard nothing from his parents, and the next day at school, he tried to "tattle" on me. They blew him off. Everyone knew what happened by lunch. He never attacked anyone after that. The sad part that I now know is that people are like that due to their own abuse. My guess is the kid get beaten by his father that night, worse than I gave him.

However, in the end, bullies are cowards and attention seekers. Put them in their place firmly and finally and they hide away.

That's what needs to happen to IQ45. Today. Actually about 65 years ago.

[cwydro]

9. I was bullied in elementary school.

I spoke with an English accent because my parents were British, and they dressed me like a little English schoolgirl. I was also very small. The teachers loved how I talked so they called on me to read aloud all the time. I lost that accent in a hurry.

I had asthma so I was terrible at kickball, etc. Outgrew the asthma.

I still, to this day, remember the names of my tormentors. Bullying is real. Very glad there was no internet in those days. Can’t imagine what children deal with now.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

10. There was a lot of bullying at my school.

I mostly avoided it, but witnessed it. It was usually psychological rather than physical.

When I was a teenager, I went with my parents to see their cousins in Northern KY. The native children would offer me candy or favors while I was there, and I kept mistrusting them as if they were hoping to pull tricks on me. Nope, they were just NICE!

[thucythucy]

11. I was bullied and I saw lots of bullying

when I was in elementary school.

The kids picked on the most were the kids in "special class" and kids like me who were a) small and/or b) came from immigrant families (my parents came to the States a few years before I was born).

Come to think of it I was bullied in high school as well, by kids in the school band. It got so bad I dropped out of the music program.

[meadowlander]

12. Why would you ever 'dismiss the issue of bullying' just because you didn't experience it?

I have Aspergers and so did most of the kids I hung out with.

I was:

- regularly called a 'retard'
- followed home by packs of boys throwing rocks at me
- almost run off the road once
- rung up by groups of popular boys and asked out on a date while the rest of them sniggered in the background
- never invited anywhere, ignored completely at school except by my regular group
- once had maxi pads stuck all over the front of my locker
- had a random girl threaten to fight me on a bus for no reason

And I would consider myself "very mildly bullied" compared with some of the kids I knew who actually wanted to and tried to get into the popular social circles. There was a gay kid in our group who was desperate to be accepted by the cool kids and who tried to kill himself like four times he was strung along and bullied so relentlessly.

And this was in a very liberal community in Seattle in the 1990s. I shudder to think what life would have been like in Arkansas or Mississippi. Or even thirty years earlier.

We all got through it by saying "once I go to college, I'm never going to have to deal with any of these assholes again". And it's mostly true. I looked up the girl who was trying to fight me on Facebook - she's a stripper now and looks 15 years older than her actual age. Definitely on meth. Who knows what was going on with her back in high school.

I've always explained Trumpism as "all the assholes you went to school with didn't actually disappear when you moved on. They haven't learned a thing. And unfortunately they still get a vote."

What's really depressing is to realise that something like 40% of the country has been flatlining on personal growth since their mid-teens.

[chowder66]

13. I was bullied and saw tons of bullying

There are kids from unstable homes (affluent or not) that express themselves in negative ways. Some were from pretty stable homes and still had a sense to bully (most likely some mental disturbance or disorder not diagnosed). It's not just in schools either. It's in workplaces, in social settings, in relationships, etc.

Bullying is a very real problem.

[Wicked Blue]

14. Hell yes

I was one of the cooties in my grade for years. Kids were vicious to me.

I was small, wore eyeglasses, was shy, and my parents immigrated to the US a few years before I was born. I didn't learn English until I was in public school, and took a while to learn various idioms, slang, traditions, etc.

Because my parents couldn't afford new clothes for me, I wore hand-me-downs from relatives that were 5 to 8 years out of date, even in high school. This was in a relatively affluent community where some kids got their own sailboats at age 12.

On top of that, I was skipped a grade and was still one of the smartest kids in the class, but terrible at PE.

I really hated my home town and when I left for college, I never went back there to live.

[stillcool]

15. I think we had other names for it...

like teasing, only kidding, just having some fun.

[RobinA]

16. I Was Bullied

briefly in 9th grade. Other than that, no. My best friend in elementary school was bullied a lot. I never could figure out why and I still can't. There was absolutely nothing "different" about her. I guess she gave off some bully signal and I wasn't a bully so I couldn't see it. Another friend was bullied in her all girls Catholic high school pretty badly. She was smart and good at school, but her family was poor so she couldn't take the college track. She was in with the homemaker-bound track and the girls made fun of her because she got As. My high school wasn't as bad as my elementary school. I was in school from the 60's - 70's. I get the sense it's worse now.

We also had teachers in public elementary school (1963ish) who were WAY out of line. My first grade teacher hit my best friend (same one as above) over the head with a book for "daydreaming." Our second grade teacher was just nasty, although she never did anything physical. Trump acts just like every cartoon bully, both real and drawn, that I ever met or saw.

[Midnight Writer]

17. Lots of bullying in my school days. Everyday thing.

[hunter]

18. I got hammered in middle and high school.

I was called "queerbait" and frequently beaten bloody.

A couple of teachers and administrators told me I wouldn't get into so much trouble if I acted more "like a man."

That wasn't going to happen. I was a skinny, squeaky, highly reactive autistic spectrum kid.

Quitting high school at sixteen was one of the better decisions I've made in my life.