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.
