Get attacked at school? Defend yourself and get suspended. Don't defend yourself and your bully might get suspended, but don't get your hopes up because the school hates dealing with their shithead parents.
Get attacked at work? HR, the union, OHSA, potentially police are all called in. Whether or not you defended yourself is likely irrelevant (assuming a reasonable use of force) because self-defense is a human right. You have the full force of the law backing you.
Some advice on dealing with school shit for your kids: make dealing with you even worse than dealing with the shitheads. I don't mean being an obnoxious prick, I mean letting the school know you will be forced to take the issue to the police if it cannot be resolved by the school. Nothing sends school administrators scrambling like the threat of a criminal investigation.
I don't have kids, but I know some teachers AND some cops... police don't like to get involved in bullying because it could ruin some kid's future for being "young and dumb". Putting a kid "into the system" for shoving a younger kid in a locker strikes them as "could make that kid not grow up to be a productive adult".
And they have a point. Juvie does bad things to kids, according to everyone I know who has been there or who has had a kid go there. They're as likely to be scared-violent as scared straight.
And as you and I know, it's about scaring the school straight, not the kids. But the school often knows all this. Especially small-town schools.
Better send that bully to juvie than letting them keep on bullying other innocent children.
Unless you plan on locking that bully up for a long time or overhauling several systems, you're statistically creating worse than just a bully with juvie. The current legal system doesn't have a good measured response for bullying. You either do almost nothing or dis-proportionally (and ineffectively) punish them.
Fuck bullies and their future.
And fuck their victims, too? Because bullies only have a slight chance (still much higher than non-bullies) of becoming adult offenders, but if you put them in juvie, that number skyrockets.
Look. I have no sympathy for bullies, and had to deal with my share of them. But when someone decides the answer in a broken system is to increase the suffering of minors, that's when I put my foot down.
Get attacked at school? Defend yourself and get suspended. Don't defend yourself and your bully might get suspended, but don't get your hopes up because the school hates dealing with their shithead parents.
Get attacked at work? HR, the union, OHSA, potentially police are all called in. Whether or not you defended yourself is likely irrelevant (assuming a reasonable use of force) because self-defense is a human right. You have the full force of the law backing you.
Some advice on dealing with school shit for your kids: make dealing with you even worse than dealing with the shitheads. I don't mean being an obnoxious prick, I mean letting the school know you will be forced to take the issue to the police if it cannot be resolved by the school. Nothing sends school administrators scrambling like the threat of a criminal investigation.
I don't have kids, but I know some teachers AND some cops... police don't like to get involved in bullying because it could ruin some kid's future for being "young and dumb". Putting a kid "into the system" for shoving a younger kid in a locker strikes them as "could make that kid not grow up to be a productive adult".
And they have a point. Juvie does bad things to kids, according to everyone I know who has been there or who has had a kid go there. They're as likely to be scared-violent as scared straight.
And as you and I know, it's about scaring the school straight, not the kids. But the school often knows all this. Especially small-town schools.
Better send that bully to juvie than letting them keep on bullying other innocent children. I rather let the innocent keep being innocent.
Fuck bullies and their future.
Unless you plan on locking that bully up for a long time or overhauling several systems, you're statistically creating worse than just a bully with juvie. The current legal system doesn't have a good measured response for bullying. You either do almost nothing or dis-proportionally (and ineffectively) punish them.
And fuck their victims, too? Because bullies only have a slight chance (still much higher than non-bullies) of becoming adult offenders, but if you put them in juvie, that number skyrockets.
Look. I have no sympathy for bullies, and had to deal with my share of them. But when someone decides the answer in a broken system is to increase the suffering of minors, that's when I put my foot down.