Bullying harms kids’ mental health.
A new study provides strong evidence that being bullied can cause children to develop depression and anxiety.
O RLY?
I attended two high schools as my parents switched me from Mountainview High to Timaru Boys High School because they were concerned about my academic performance at Mountainview. Ironicall I hated TBHS so much more than MV that I bunked off FAR MORE classses attending it. I don’t think my grades improved at all.
TBHS had all the same shit as any other high school (like, say, having to show up at classes! The nerve!) and a whole new swag of other unique shit mostly driven by the unspoken pretense that TBHS was a sort of jolly hockey sticks boarding school with tuck shops and prep and “I say! Bad show!” and one of the worst things about it was that bullying was pretty much accepted and if you complained about it to teachers (like I did, exactly once) then you were told in so many words to Man Up and Build Character and Bad Show For Snitching.
Fortunately for me it got around in 7th form that I was often seen talking to girls (usually my ex-schoolmates from Mountainview) and since most guys at TBHS thought that women were a strange, alien species to be stared at from afar, my mysterious ability to communicate with them made me slightly cool and less likely to be subject to the kind of casual low-grade bullying that’s pretty much background noise for a fat computer dork attending High School.
I remember when the Columbine happened. And I was talking about it to my parents and they were going on about how horrible it was that those kids could do that, even if they were bullied at school by the kids they shot. And I said that I would never ever turn a gun on my fellow pupils … but I UNDERSTAND how they could.
This led to an argument which, even on the adjusted upwards to compensate scale that I use to grade arguments with my folks[1] was still at least a 8.9 – on a par with the time I mentioned that despite the fact that I was tired and had something to do it was okay because I had some NoDoz hanging around somewhere. THAT led into a 2 hour discussion on How Drugs Are Bad. From my mum, who has maybe 7 cups of coffee a day. For Fucks Sake. But I digress, hugely.
I honestly wish I could go back to visit myself at that age, or ANYONE else that’s been subject to bullying, and just say “See all this shit? The fucking INSTANT you leave High School and get out into the real world? It ALL goes away. Immediately. And forever. And you and the rest of the smart guys that get picked on for being nerds go on to get paid SHITLOADS because in the real world smarts are IMPORTANT, and all those rugby chumps go on to pump gas and hang drywall and in the unlikely event you see them again they’ll be trying to impress you. And you will be bored by it.
[1] This is an actual conversation I have had with my mum:
Mum: Hello.[2]
JSR: Oh, and what’s THAT supposed to mean?
[2] It was her tone of voice. You had to be there.