A ramble about my day... Strap yourselves in.

[thesixthwizard]

Today I am suitably annoyed. I missed BOTH my instrumental lessons. Both. For the first two periods today (there are six BTW) we had a surprise incursion with a few people coming over to talk about bullying.

Some of the stuff the guy said was quite eye-opening (also some stuff we had all heard before), he had obviously been quite traumatised as a

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[thesixthwizard]

It was actually a kind of one man play, where he demonstrated some of the usual tactics bullies can use, why they use them, and why we shouldn't be so quick to condemn them.

One of his main points was personal space. Bullying is an invasion of personal space, which explains why a classic harrasser is often aggressive when brushed, or why they want us to feel uncomfortable. They often feel threatened and want to lash out at people, although they might not see it that way, that's really what they are subconciously doing.

It was bullying only for the guys, the femenine half of the 14y/olds being lectured somewhere else.

I really felt sorry for this guy. His school priest basically dealt with bullies BY bullying, shout at them, rap them with a cane for a while, and when the kid got out of the teacher's room with bleeding hands he would look at the dobber and basically say "I'm gonna kill you".

He also detailed a story where the "fat kid" in the class had gone to sit down, sat on a well-placed iron compass, and when he threw it away in pain, got punched in the arm. As the teacher/priest came into the room, the bully would sit down, the class would say nothing, and the "fat kid" would get a good shouting at for not being ready for class yet. He's sitting there with a bleeding posterior, arm that has gone numb and he's being freakin' yelled at by the teacher.

He told that violence only leads to violence. There was a student who was teased and picked on day by day, but made no move, though he and his opponent were equal in physical strength. Everyone would ask him, "When're you gonna go him, eh? When you going to fight?" and one day he just snapped and tapped the guy on the shoulder, and punched him full in the face. Neither were seen at school again, and the teased one later became a perpetrator with some others in a murder case.

I've got to get off now, but examples like these were the main part of the lecture. Things like this really make me sick. I hope that our school was never and will never be like this. I really hated it when some of the boys started making fun of things the guy said.

[volobm]

Thanks, sure familiar situations... ok, maybe not as radical.

I find it wierd that you and the girls were separeted in these lections. Is it common there?

And of course I can't keep off my sarcastic nature and not write this nasty remark, that I hope you take with humor: Strange that you have this text in the same journal with Churchill...