I’d agree. I was hurt by bullying enough that if I had ever made it big I would have found the most outrageous bullying case I could find and try to sue a school district out of existence? Maybe if teachers thought they could lose their pension maybe they would put a stop to bullying.
I'm sorry that happened to you - I was bullied early in life too, and it's horrible.
It's frustrating that people downvoted your comment. It's a failure, from a lack of empathy, to understand that the reason you want to make an example of the school district is because you were one of the victims of bullying.
Does raise an interesting question, though: Is it the teachers' or the parents' responsibility to teach manners to a child? Isn't this something that you'd pick up at home first, before ever stepping a foot into an institutionalized pedagogical setting?
Perhaps instead of suing the entire school district, GP should rather sue the parents of the offending child? /s
To remove the tongue from the cheek, though, and provide some anecdata in the same breath, let me say that I have a number of close friends who are teachers; their constant complaint is that the children reach school already too spoiled (in the rude and egocentric sense). Which apparently gets worse every year.
It's easier to make a case for a society-wide pandemic of negligent upbringing by parents who - goes without saying - are under-educated in child rearing, lack the traditional support networks ("it takes a village to raise a child") and generally overburdened by life's other demands. The children then get passed over to underpaid and overworked teachers (and overflowing classrooms), where the egos of the little cute monsters clash, occasionally loudly and physically, more frequently in passive-aggressive, bullyish manners.
An old guy's perspective: It's not this or that lesson or parental intent that matters, it's the sheer amount of one-on-one interaction with the parent(s), that matters most. IIRC, that's about twenty minutes a week for most kids. Nomads (See the book The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshal Thomas) don't have the same behavior problems at all; but the kids are getting an incredibly high amount of one on one interactions with their parents (mother in particular, while gathering, say berries, with them.)
I think you're spot on with this. Contact affects manners, and also gives opportunity for bad manners to be weeded out early.
Definitely not something that twenty minutes a day is enough for. And perhaps such a lack not only allows for bad patterns to emerge and fester, but also traumatizes the child. Modern city life, and its discontents, I guess.
Eh, look at PaulHoule's statement with some empathy.
I got bullied by a teacher, probably more, starting in fourth grade. I've written about it on this website. It can develop authority issues, trust issues, or both. It's a lifetime of work to undo those things.
Similar to people posting their stories with names with the hope for justice in some form or fashion, suing someone puts the details out for bare. He would likely never get the state government to actually repeal pensions, but he would get to tell his story in a media that people would definitely be paying attention to.
There's a valid question of whether any of the approaches above are healthy for a society. I'd venture to say no, but that is the way our society is.
