Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-3-2010

[andrewducker]

• Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected
  Well, those reasons and bullies are evil bastards.
  (tags: kids social parenting sociology)
• France refuses a man citizenship because he forces his wife to wear the full Islamic veil
  (tags: islam France)
• Pregnancy baby brain lapse a myth
  (tags: women pregnancy memory)
• Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot - Dr Who fans might be surprised by a certain resemblance...
  (tags: robot sex robots DrWho)
• Possibly the finest infographic in the history of mankind
  Warning. Contains Mega-Shark
  (tags: visualization funny sharks infographic)

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected

Ah, so it's actually their fault after all? Oh good! We all know those bullied kids are a bit weird anyway, and it's much easier on our consciences to know that, actually, they bring it on themselves!

[andrewducker]

Hence my additional comment.

The problem is that there _are going to be bullies_. Nobody has ever managed to eradicate them. I don't, personally, think it's possible. Therefore, if we know what causes certain kids to be picked on, and they can be helped to change the situation so that they won't get bullied, we should help them to do so.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't work on the bullies as well - but nobody was saying that.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, no, that wasn't a dig at you; I got your meaning.

It's more complicated than that...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

The study makes perfect sense to me: been there, have the emotional scars. Not fitting in means you don't get to practice social skills, or that you ignore feedback because 90% of it is toxic anyway, meaning you get picked on, meaning... and so on.

Thing is, in my experience, seemingly systematic bullying is mostly an emergent property of groups of children and adolescants, rather than organised evil.

Imagine an adolescent male who's having a bad day. His instincts drive him towards butting heads - petty intrusions, wrestling, pranks, monkey stuff - and to do so with somebody lower down the pecking order. In a normal situation, this pecking order is fluid, and the head-butting is evenly distributed: nobody feels bullied.

However, if there's an outsider around, they never move up the pecking order, and consequently receive a disproportionate amount of the head butting.

It sucks, but it's not as simple as Bullies and Evil.

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[andrewducker]

I totally agree - with the caveat that the instant reaction to take it out on someone physically can be trained out of a person (in a positive way, I don't mean by smacking them round the head when they do it).

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

But the adolescants just think they're being silly or having a laugh - after all when somebody steals *their* pack lunch box, it's just funny. (Because it only happens to them once per 12 months.)

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[andrewducker]

Absolutely - but you can train them out of that. Empathy seems to be a learned skill for many people, and there are methods of imparting it.

Re: It's more complicated than that...

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It depends. If Andy stole my packed lunch box, I'd probably think it was funny, because I already consider Andy a friend and I trust him. I would know he's just fooling around for laughs, and he would know me well enough to cut the joke off when it's gone on long enough. There are tons of social cues around teasing one another -- in fact, it's all to do with playing with the cues and the boundaries.
If I don't feel comfortable around someone who teases me, then I am not confident they don't actually intend me harm, and won't chuck my lunchbox down the toilet or something.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

As you mention below, teaching empathy, perhaps via something like role-reversal exercises where children who bully get to experience what bullying feels like seem like an excellent idea, and perhaps more useful than focusing on the victims' problems.

What I'd also like to know is if bullying (as I remember it to be) was largely instigated by a few particularly vile individuals (if so, then I'm reminded of the recent statistics about rape and who commits them). If so, then a mixture of some training to help most children not follow the lead of such individuals, and (more importantly) attention focused on the bullies.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That was my own reaction. That article was classic victim blaming.

[andrewducker]

I find the whole "victim blaming" thing, when used in this context, incredibly counterproductive. I was bullied repeatedly in multiple schools (as we other people I know) and nothing I have ever seen indicates to me that bullying is something that's possible to stamp out. Saying that we can't help people to deal with a situation that they're almost certainly going to have to deal with, because that would violate some kind of dogma seems ridiculous and actively malevolent towards those people. I'd have killed to be given advice as to how I could improve my situation - and if I could have done so through a little bit of help with social situations then I'd have been ecstatic.

Nobody is saying that we shouldn't clamp down on bullying wherever we see it - all of the schools I was in had anti-bullying initiatives, and there are near-constant adverts and campaigns against it in children's media. It's possible to work to help people deal with situations while also trying to alleviate those same situations. The approaches aren't contradictory.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Agreed, though at this point, I'm wondering if at least some bullies are also deficient in social skills, and could use some coaching.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely - see above for my discussions with zornhau on teaching empathy.

[luckylove.livejournal.com]

I was bullied for several reasons.
1. I looked like a "paki"
2. Despite being born and bred in Scotland I had an English accent (this did not go down well in small town Scotland)
3. I was very intelligent

Short of taking a bath in a vat of bleach, not speaking ever again and hitting myself in the head hard enough to induce brain damage there's fuck all I could've done to stop the bullying. I was 4. The bullies were 11. The headmaster just said, "It's a sign of the times," and "If it's any consolation, I get called names too." My Mum took me out of that school a few weeks later. There were far too many bruises.

None of the schools I went to had anti-bullying initiatives when I was there. Nothing. The guidance department's interventions just made matters worse. I ended up turning to self-harm just to get through the day.

[andrewducker]

And that's definitely a situation where they should have been doing a lot more to help you, rather than just saying "it's a sign of the times", which is frankly shit.

Oh, and...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

By co-incidence, I had the misfortune to watch Megashark v's Giant Octopus last night. It was massively disappointing, and I say that as a fan of B-movies and creature flicks.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Note that part of the solution offered for bullied kids is to teach their parents social skills.