What is the down side?

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
What is the down side?

Lawsuits, or just appeals processes. As the article points out, bullying is rarely done where adults can see it happening. So, in a lot of cases, there'll be an element of doubt as to whether it happened, the parent of the perp (likely a bully themselves) won't believe it happened, and that parent may be inclined to make a stink about it.

Plus, as we've talked about here before, bullying is sometimes an overused word, covering activities that you and I would not have called bullying when we grew up. Example: kids A and B are playing. Kid C tries to join. Kids A and B run away from Kid C because they don't want to play with them. In some school districts, that's defined as bullying. I think it's socially unacceptable behavior, but not bullying, because bullying involves intimidation. Schools throw it under the bullying umbrella because they already have anti-bullying policies, and it's easier to call it bullying than to develop a new policy for other kinds of antisocial behavior. But it's not bullying.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
What is the down side?

How about an uptick in child abuse at home when fathers take out their rage at getting fined on their kids?

Sorry, this just sounds like the latest "innovation" that pretends to solve a complex societal problem (involving many conflicting definitions, as Quirt notes) with a mechanistic answer. An answer that is just as fraught with potential abuse from bias and power plays as is the current system.