The first reason is that I have not experienced preschool teachers getting upset at a child for reporting that a kid was hitting them.
This is presumably related to your previous point, that you just don't see much of this. Here's a slightly different take, which may help:
If the teacher is told a couple of times about the same kid being hit/kicked, that kid becomes tiresome, basically. They're more work, and taking away time from other kids. A clever bully can play the game of "how much is okay", both with "how much can I get away before they tell?" and "how much can I do that the teacher won't be sure I did?"
Kids are very good at that game, naturally.
There are two winning scenarios here for the bully. One is "I can hurt them and they're not sure if they can tell and won't hit back." The other is "they tell but the teacher doesn't think it's a big deal or can't prove it, and won't punish me." Neither is very hard to achieve, especially if the teacher is busy.
The "hit back" advice is trying to escalate past victory condition #1 being possible, and shame the teacher past #2 being possible. Naturally, that means the person hitting back is more likely to be punished too. A lot of "bullies can't win" scenarios assume that, yes, it's going to suck for the person being bullied too. If you start with "there's a bully who's pretty sure they can get away with things," that's basically required.
If you don't see any of this happening, great! You can even skip giving the advice. Awesome.
Similarly, it would be great if this was all overkill for metaphortunate's case. I hope so. It would be great if this just cleared up and she never had to do anything. I never optimize my advice for that case ;-)
But what you've written here is so alien to my own experience that it's hard for me to even imagine how that works. I grew up as one of four boys in my family, in a not-particularly-rich school district in rural Texas. So I'm not saying "that can't happen", just "huh, no clue how that works."
Yes, my experience has been like yours. The kid who brings up the problem is the problem.
But I am hearing from all the local people that here, now, and at this (very young) age, tattling is acceptable. So we will push that more! I must remember to deal with where I am, not what was happening 35 years ago, in another land.
This is presumably related to your previous point, that you just don't see much of this. Here's a slightly different take, which may help:
If the teacher is told a couple of times about the same kid being hit/kicked, that kid becomes tiresome, basically. They're more work, and taking away time from other kids. A clever bully can play the game of "how much is okay", both with "how much can I get away before they tell?" and "how much can I do that the teacher won't be sure I did?"
Kids are very good at that game, naturally.
There are two winning scenarios here for the bully. One is "I can hurt them and they're not sure if they can tell and won't hit back." The other is "they tell but the teacher doesn't think it's a big deal or can't prove it, and won't punish me." Neither is very hard to achieve, especially if the teacher is busy.
The "hit back" advice is trying to escalate past victory condition #1 being possible, and shame the teacher past #2 being possible. Naturally, that means the person hitting back is more likely to be punished too. A lot of "bullies can't win" scenarios assume that, yes, it's going to suck for the person being bullied too. If you start with "there's a bully who's pretty sure they can get away with things," that's basically required.
If you don't see any of this happening, great! You can even skip giving the advice. Awesome.
Similarly, it would be great if this was all overkill for metaphortunate's case. I hope so. It would be great if this just cleared up and she never had to do anything. I never optimize my advice for that case ;-)
But what you've written here is so alien to my own experience that it's hard for me to even imagine how that works. I grew up as one of four boys in my family, in a not-particularly-rich school district in rural Texas. So I'm not saying "that can't happen", just "huh, no clue how that works."
It sounds nice.
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But I am hearing from all the local people that here, now, and at this (very young) age, tattling is acceptable. So we will push that more! I must remember to deal with where I am, not what was happening 35 years ago, in another land.
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