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

[fer_de_lance]

Yeah, I...

When I think that it would work, it's because my experience with teasing/bullying is relatively mild. (As a kid I claimed to have a Don't-Notice-Me forcefield that I can generate at will, and I was only half joking.) So yes, I got mocked for various personal foibles, and picked on when any target would do, but a combination of genuinely not caring (why yes, I *do* play with toys. What am I reading? It's called 'a book', but maybe you're unclear on the concept. Snapping my bra straps is not particularly painful, why are you giggling like maniacs? What on Earth makes you think I haven't heard every *possible* joke about my last name already, more than once?) and keeping quietly out of the way spared me from most of it.

So for kids like me? Yes, I would've been pleased enough to have a week in which to call my classmates ignoramuses and scurvy-ridden curs. (If I was laughing, it wouldn't have been quite the kind of laughter the article seems to suggest; but since I am competitive and every time they failed to understand a word I used I'd count that as a point to me, yes, there would be laughter.)

For kids who suffer hatred and attack rather than what I think of as bullying? I don't think being allowed one week to call their tormentors nincompoops is going to make up for their classmates being given open approval from on high to call them genuine, real-world slurs.

In sum: might work with kindergardeners, which is what I think of as the "name-calling" set. Probably won't work with any set of kids old enough to know genuine, actually-upsets-adults verbal attacks.

[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.