As an adult working with kids, I try to stay out of social engineering as much as possible. I make sure that kids know each other’s names, that there’s opportunities to enjoy fun activities together if they want to take them, that ground rules for the learning community are clear to everyone involved, and that they know they’ve got people they can turn to if problems come up that they can’t solve by themselves. Doing anything further than that without any major standards of courtesy having been broken or anyone having been asked for their help shows a lack of respect for these people with their own emotional and social lives to develop and tend to.
]]>It seems to me that schools are very reluctant to condemn bullying outright; they’ll give shy kids advice about appearing properly assertive (i.e. they’ll blame the victim), or they’ll try to change the personalities of the victims. I find it very hard to assume any sort of good faith on the part of these “teachers and counsellors”.
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