When I was coming up, especially in middle school, we were always told that you should just ignore bullies and they would go away. This, of course, never actually worked. And anyone who did fight back against their bullies were punished just as severely, if not moreso if they swung first, as the bully. This entire approach was complete BS and only served to enable bullies because they now know that their victims either won't fight back or, if they do, the victim will receive most of the consequence.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think its vitally important that all children learn some form of self-defense (boxing, karate, BJJ, it doesn't matter). I only realized this way later in life when I started training in Muay Thai and found I had way more confidence standing up to other men, both because I knew how to handle myself and because I wasn't as afraid of getting punched in the face. Bullies only go away if you make them go away. Fighting back is the only real solution victims have in the absence of adult supervision (which is often the situation). You may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than makes up for that.
> You may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than makes up for that.
The kind of punishment doled out by law-abiding adults to children isn't even a blip on the radar vs. suffering a vicious bully. It isn't even worth mentioning, punishment for violence is a total farce until adulthood. That's basically the whole source of the problem; bullys have realized there are no consequences.
The best response to a bully is an immediate and vigorous aggression resembling that of a honey badger, full stop. I agree it's important to teach children self-defense and get them familiar enough with conflict to not piss themselves when faced with it. It's the children who can get away with fighting back without negative consequence, and substantial upside potential.
It's not that easy to hurt somebody enough to make a real difference without weapons. Getting angry and taking ineffective action is one more thing that people will mock you for and further contribute to your worthlessness just as much as the principal telling you that you have no recourse for what is happening to you.
My acting teacher told me about her fantasy of punching somebody in the face and I told her that when I tried that as a kid and really hurt my hand. In fact there was a time my son got mad and hit me in the arm and I didn't find it especially painful but his hand was still hurting 10 hours later. Usually your hand is less durable than whatever it hits, particularly the rather large bones in the face, it is a big subject of martial arts to mitigate that. Someone who smacks you has to balance the intimidation power of the smack vs the very real sting they'll experience. Packing a roll of dimes in your pocket is a deniable way (like the clipboard carried by a store manager confronting shoplifters) that can greatly improve the pain factor for both your target and yourself.
I'll tell you that 40 years later the people I have rage at are the principals who told me I had no recourse to stop the bullying than the bully himself. It's not just getting hit or the unkind words, it is that the entire community organizes to support the bully and his ability to operate. I'm not particularly mad at the actual bully, in fact in one case I made peace 20 years later with that individual and his family.
I was on both sides of bad behavior in school that involved insults, punching, etc. and this is not necessarily bullying. There was the time a friend and I did something cruel to an MR kid and his big brother (emphasis on "big") gave me the smackdown which I deserved. Not to condone my own behavior, but the fact that this kid got immediate protection from his big bro would have reduced the long term psychological effects of my transgression.
100%, the way to avoid being bullied is to not be an easy target.
I once had a kid bullying me in middle school. I spoke with my mother about it, who recommended I say something to the teachers, which I did.
When that didn't work I knocked the shit out of him the next time he tried to bully me, to the point that he was running around the edges of the classroom trying to get away from me while I chased him down to beat on him some more.
He stopped fucking with me after that.
To your point, we both got suspended, but my mother made it clear I wasn't being punished and made sure I had fun during that suspension.
It's a lifelong skill that will be used as an adult too.
100% agree, I was a skinny kid who taught himself to fight to ward off bullies.
I bought a punching bag and started training when I was 12 - in 6 months I got so strong that I was bare-hand punching into cement walls.
There was this bully who would constantly berate me - he probably had 4 inches over me and a good 15-20 pounds heavier.
This one time am walking down the street and he comes out of nowhere and throws a punch, luckily I saw it coming, ducked and it grazed my cheek.
I flew into a rage - all I remember is he was down on the ground in a couple mins and I had beaten his face to pulp - I stopped when a friend and bystanders pulled me off.
So yes, learning to fight is a life skill - because there are times when there are no adults around and it's you or the bully.
> the way to avoid being bullied is to not be an easy target.
That may work for the individual, but there's always going to be an easiest target. We have studies of bullying interventions, including teaching kids self respect by way of martial arts, and changing the victim doesn't work.
I suggest people should look into the actual science on this. A good start is "Bullying at school: what we know and what we can do" by Dan Olweus from 1991.
So this book that’s been around for over 30 years has the answers, yet apparently few schools have implemented it enough where bullying is still a problem?
If that would surprise you, you don't know much about social science. Proving an intervention works is one thing, convincing the people who make the decisions to follow up on it is quite another.
Luckily Olweus was uncommonly good at that too. It has been implemented at thousands of schools all across the world, and kept being evaluated in differing cultural contexts, and in comparison to alternative interventions, in many systematic review studies.
Dan Olweus, the father of studying bullying and anti-bullying interventions, also studied this. He found that fighting sports did not help bullying at all, and there was even evidence it made it worse.
It's not so surprising when you think about it. Bullying is about power, but it isn't being good in a fight itself that makes some kids have power over others. It's social, not physical. The victim had the ability to strike back physically all along, they don't need special training. In theory the victim could stab the bully in the back in plenty of ways - even literally. The reason they don't do that, and the reason the bullies don't fear it, is because all the ways the victim could strike back would be scorched earth. It makes no difference if it's with freshly learned BJJ or a weapon.
> Fighting back is the only real solution victims have in the absence of adult supervision
Adult supervision is no guarantee either. Kids are way smarter than adults give them credit for. I remember bullying occurring in the presence of teachers who were completely unaware of the meaning of subtle language or other cues meant to be harmful (with the same meaning known to others of the in-group).
> When I was coming up, especially in middle school, we were always told that you should just ignore bullies and they would go away. This, of course, never actually worked.
I don't think ignoring works well, if we consider "ignoring someone" as an emotional attack. The bullies may feel more hurt/rejected/ignored and therefore bully more or in different ways. The ignoring/conflict avoidance can be quite similar to a silent treatment, which can escalate conflict.
> I only realized this way later in life when I started training in Muay Thai and found I had way more confidence standing up to other men, both because I knew how to handle myself and because I wasn't as afraid of getting punched in the face. Bullies only go away if you make them go away. Fighting back is the only real solution victims have in the absence of adult supervision (which is often the situation).
I agree with you that I'd love if more people took self-defense (full disclosure, I train people in what I call Emotional Self-Defense), as when I took Krav Maga I felt more confident to stand up for myself in situations where I had previously thought I would be physically attacked. I disagree, however that "fighting back is the only real solution" because I think what I learned in Krav Maga was the confidence to stand up for myself without having to fight back. I learned that I could fight back if I needed to but that in most situations, just standing up for myself and not attacking back would bring quicker and longer lasting resolution.
Part of the reason I created Emotional Self-Defense is because I thought most self-defense/martial arts don't go far enough upstream to resolve the conflict when it's at an emotional stage and before it becomes physical violence.
Anecdote to go with everyone else's: punching a bully in the nose in the 9th grade wound up bringing about an immediate, universal and permanent end to anyone bullying me in school.
Love it. My best friend was bullied by the class jerk for being Indian. Unfortunately for the bully, my friend and I had been practicing martial arts together for years, and my friend knocked the guy out in the middle of class. The story spread like wildfire and no one bothered him ever again. It still gets brought up many years later at class reunions!
A couple of years later, some other kid tried his luck against me with the same result. It's the grapevine that really does it for you. "Some kid fell down trying to tackle me" turned into "I knocked out this hapless boy with Bruce Lee's one inch punch" over the course of a week of storytelling.
Ideally the equilibrium would be that enough people in the group can't be bullied that it extinguishes the bullying behavior, or bullies get ganged up on.
It's unfortunate, but to the person being bullied, their immediate concern is not the next weakest person. Their immediate concern is avoiding or fending off the bully.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think its vitally important that all children learn some form of self-defense (boxing, karate, BJJ, it doesn't matter). I only realized this way later in life when I started training in Muay Thai and found I had way more confidence standing up to other men, both because I knew how to handle myself and because I wasn't as afraid of getting punched in the face. Bullies only go away if you make them go away. Fighting back is the only real solution victims have in the absence of adult supervision (which is often the situation). You may be punished, but the sense of catharsis more than makes up for that.