Link from psychologytoday.com

[syredronning]

Thought-provoking article: "No Name-Calling Week" Weakens Children

I propose a better alternative to No Name-Calling Week. This new week would solve the name-calling problem for good. If we are genuinely concerned with kids' emotional well being, we should have a Call Me Names All You Want Week. Students will be instructed about the brilliance of

Comments

[lady_drace]

I'm... not so sure...

[syredronning]

I'm not so sure either but I found it to be an interesting article nonetheless.

(I don't have experience with bullying on any side, though, and have no children either... so it's mostly an intellectual problem to me.)

[lady_drace]

I've been bullied all my life. And personally... I don't see that working for an awful lot of reasons.

[syredronning]

I think I found the entry interesting in two aspects - a) the reasons why the writer thinks the current method doesn't work (and I really can feel his frustration there), and b) the suggestion he makes, which might be totally wrong but still shows his frustration, I think. It made me ponder the effect of emphasizing bad experiences and names (or even just tags that the outer world gives you), far beyond this article.

[illariy]

Well, that method sounds as if it'll easily hurt the kids the most who are already getting teased and bullied. And what does "forbidden to get upset" even mean? Forbidding a feeling doesn't stop it. Did they mean children weren't allowed to fight back physically? Or verbally? Hm.

[syredronning]

I think I found the entry interesting in two aspects - a) the reasons why the writer thinks the current method doesn't work (and I really can feel his frustration there), and b) the suggestion he makes, which might be totally wrong but still shows his frustration, I think. It made me ponder the effect of emphasizing bad experiences and names (or even just tags that the outer world gives you), far beyond this article.

I think he hopes that using names all around will have a blunting factor, making each name calling much less stressful. Just as you'd bring spiders to someone with arachnophobia. Show them that it's not that bad, that it's not important enough to let it influence their lives. Something like that.

Not sure his idea works but I think the writer is really frustrated about what he perceives as a week that increases the problem far more than his idea would.

[fer_de_lance]

Yeah, I

[syredronning]

I really don't quite know where the line between bullying and hatred and attack is, and it's possible that this blurred line is part of what the writer dislikes about that week.

(Reminds me of the discussions you can have regarding flirting, molesting and sexual assault. Sometimes, when I read the web, I do wonder where people draw the lines, and what consequences it has when the distinctions get lost.)

So, no idea whether his take would work, but I guess he sees a fair share of cases where teaching intelligent ignorance and productive methods would be better than focusing on the stuff too much.

This said, I don't think I've ever engaged in bullying on either side, to it's all just theoretical for me.