Comment by giardini
3 days ago
School was OK, but Boy Scouts was great! We learned to organize into groups, to obey orders and coordinate as groups, play games, watch the Scout Masters (all adult men) discuss and decide matters and then try to do the same ourselves.
I also learned how different fathers can be: some with few friends, some with many, each having different abilities, etc. All were wonderful people ready to help us learn.
I was never bullied (in school or out) and I can think of only a few instances where I saw it. So I am always disappointed to see numerous claims of bullying "pile up" online whenever there is a discussion of school. One gets the impression that everyone has been bullied always and that school was/is hell. But my experience was that bullying was truly rare: rarer than snakebite, rarer than black widow spider bite, indeed, rarer than actual death! My conversations with others with whom I associate indicate similar experiences. School was fun and rarely boring.
I like your anecdote about the boy scouts being a healthy environment- that could well be true and I have no reason to think otherwise.
But I think being blind to the other kids being bullied is probably a common thing, you’re likely better adjusted as an adult and can’t possibly comprehend how common or how helpless kids can be to being bullied.
You can imagine then, a person like you becoming a teacher might not be looking for signs that kids are being bullied, because its rarer than death after all- and all you’d see is the built-up backlash of the bullied kid finally hitting the bully back (because, being a bullied kid fighting back for once is dramatic).
This is a large part of why the the bullied kids end up being punished when finally acting out in zero-tolerance scenarios.
Bullying is definitely more common than death.