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Church Failing On School Bullying.

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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Teagan wrote: »
    Now that's a much more gentle and persuasive argument ... thank you. :)

    In my experience, gay children at school were the bottom of the bullying hierarchy. Heaven forbid you were ever a GAY spotty, nerdy, fat kid - life would just not be worth living.

    The other thing is, though, that many fat kids grow out of their puppy fat, spotty kids get Clearasil and their skin clears up in their late teens and nerdy kids grow up to be uni grads etc. Gay children stay gay ...

    Also, fat kids don't have to hide the fact they're fat from their parents, or repress "unnatural desires" for the same sex. I'm sure the church does not preach against fat kids, or acne faced kids like it does with gay kids either.

    You can get bullied for many things, but at the end of the day, struggling with your sexuality is difficult whoever you are, but it must be worse if you're gay. You have to hide it from the whole world.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Namaste wrote: »
    Sorry, I meant school... he went to a catholic school.

    ok, but I still have the same question. I mean, what was his motivation for attending a catholic school where the doctrine is clearly unfair and prejudice against him? Why not go to another school?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ok, but I still have the same question. I mean, what was his motivation for attending a catholic school where the doctrine is clearly unfair and prejudice against him? Why not go to another school?
    I doubt he had much choice in the matter. I mean parents don't really consider whether their kid is gay when they're picking secondary schools for them when they're about 10. And also if a Catholic school happens to be head and shoulders above the rest in terms of average grades, then the parents are going to pick that one. I imagine that most parents would expect schools to be fairly similar (i.e. good) at dealing with bullying in all forms. But the point is that in a state-funded Catholic school, the doctrine shouldn't be unfair or predjudice against him. As far as I'm aware, a headteacher of a Catholic school would take a case of homophobic bullying just as seriously as any other form. Unfortunately, this doesn't help because all bullying is inadequately dealt with at the moment, in most schools, not just Catholic ones, and not just homophobia.

    Oh and for the record, in my experience, Catholic schools don't preach against homosexuality, not to the promote abstinence instead of contraception. The worst mine did is simply only mention the bare minimum required by law and nothing else (which in my opinion is still counter-productive, but they don't preach against homosexuality). Mine tended to have a "let's pretend it doesn't exist and hope it goes away" attitude towards sex.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I doubt he had much choice in the matter. I mean parents don't really consider whether their kid is gay when they're picking secondary schools for them when they're about 10. And also if a Catholic school happens to be head and shoulders above the rest in terms of average grades, then the parents are going to pick that one. I imagine that most parents would expect schools to be fairly similar (i.e. good) at dealing with bullying in all forms. But the point is that in a state-funded Catholic school, the doctrine shouldn't be unfair or predjudice against him. As far as I'm aware, a headteacher of a Catholic school would take a case of homophobic bullying just as seriously as any other form. Unfortunately, this doesn't help because all bullying is inadequately dealt with at the moment, in most schools, not just Catholic ones, and not just homophobia.

    Yeah, I figured it was something like that. But I mean, if it really does become a serious problem, the kid is likely to bring it up with the parents and hopefully something will be done about it. Although I'm sorta on shaky ground with that one since each family handles those sorts of things differently.

    Is bullying really that serious of a problem (I'm speaking generally now not just bullying towards gays and gender queers)? How do we know that?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Is bullying really that serious of a problem (I'm speaking generally now not just bullying towards gays and gender queers)? How do we know that?
    Put a poll on this site asking whether people were bullied at school or not and you'll see how big a problem it is. I think for gay people, it's more the threat of bullying rather than bullying itself that is the bigger problem. I mean in the last year of school, no-one was gay. The everyone leaves school, and suddenly a load of people "turn" gay. It's more that they were shit scared to tell anyone in school, and therefore weren't allowed to be themselves.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Put a poll on this site asking whether people were bullied at school or not and you'll see how big a problem it is.
    Oh I'm sure the number of people who said they were bullied would be pretty high. But just because they were bullied doesn't mean that it was a huge problem. The fact that you are being bullied to some degree or another doesn't necisarly mean that it will have a huge negative effect. I know for me personaly it didn't.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Namaste wrote: »
    Also, fat kids don't have to hide the fact they're fat from their parents, or repress "unnatural desires" for the same sex. I'm sure the church does not preach against fat kids, or acne faced kids like it does with gay kids either.

    You can get bullied for many things, but at the end of the day, struggling with your sexuality is difficult whoever you are, but it must be worse if you're gay. You have to hide it from the whole world.

    Very true. Fat kids, Black kids, spotty kids etc all at least should have their parents on their side - gay kids are often completely alone.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Except for the kids that are bullied because their dad is in prison, or their mum left them right?

    Like I said in my first post in this thread. Either you have a policy on bullying in general, which makes sense to me, or you have a policy on every conceivable kind of bullying
    me wrote:
    *shrugs* If they have a policy on bullying, shouldn't that be enough? Otherwise you'd need a policy on everything, fat bullying, spotty bullying, fasion bullying, glasses bullying, being a mummy's boy bullying, being a posh nob bullying, being poor bullying, smelling funny bullying, broken up with the wrong person bullying.................
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Fiend_85 wrote: »
    Except for the kids that are bullied because their dad is in prison, or their mum left them right?

    Like I said in my first post in this thread. Either you have a policy on bullying in general, which makes sense to me, or you have a policy on every conceivable kind of bullying

    So do children from families where the father is in prison or their mother has left them have a higher rate of self-harm and attempted suicide rates? No - it's gay children. Children from your example can at least talk about their problems openly while gay children usually cannot.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If gay children cannot then it is in the mainstream that they cannot. Not just in relgious schools. I am of the opinion that having a policy on homosexual bullying is bollocks, and that it is society at large that needs to become more accepting.

    It is, as kermit has rightly already said, a NON-story.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Fiend_85 wrote: »
    If gay children cannot then it is in the mainstream that they cannot. Not just in relgious schools. I am of the opinion that having a policy on homosexual bullying is bollocks, and that it is society at large that needs to become more accepting.

    It is, as kermit has rightly already said, a NON-story.

    It's all very well saying that society should change - but it's not, certainly not fast enough.

    So part of the anti-bullying policy of any sort should be better education of children on the effects of bullying - which the church (and other organisations) are obviously not doing well enough (whether it be gay, fat, spotty bullying etc).

    It's obviously a NON-story to you because you no doubt grew up as a happy and popular straight child. Not everyone is as fortunate as you ...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    .
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    You should never ever assume something like that about anyone. I was bullied because I had freckles and liked reading. One of my best friends at school was gay and wasn't bullied at all.

    The point being, that he should not assume that this is a NON-story to everyone .. it isn't.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    .
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    All bullying is bad.

    But if you read the story, it says that the church "is abdicating its responsibility for children's welfare by refusing to target homophobic bullying in schools".

    To me that implies it IS targeting OTHER forms of bullying - but not homophobic bullying. Or am I misunderstanding it? :confused:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    .
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I am responding to this without having read the source, which I will go and do in a moment. But as far as I understand it, it isn't that the schools are deliberately not targeting homophobic bullying, just that they haven't got policies in place that focus specifically upon homophobic bullying.

    Fiend and Kermit are asking why they should have specific policies just for homophobic bullying - otherwise they would have to have policies in place for all of the other many varieties of bullying as well.

    One bullying policy should be able to cover all types of bullying as they should all be treated equally as seriously, whatever the cause.

    Ah, well the story will put the thread in context for you. I agree - all bullying is bad but if some form of bullying is overlooked for whatever reason, surely this should be addressed? And that is the context of my debate on this story ...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I read the story has having a DELIBERATE but unfounded bias. Saying that the church is refusing to have a specific homophobic bullying policy and the extrapolating that to imply that the church does nothing about homophobic bullying. There was nothing in the article that gave any actual evidence or even actually said that.

    You're being led.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think you are misunderstanding the article, Teagan- which is the intention of the NASUWT, after all, so don't worry about it.

    The Church does not have a specific policy for specifically homophobic bullying, and because of that the NASUWT feel it is "failing" homosexual children. It has a general policy on general bullying, which should suffice, as bullying is bullying is bullying. There doesn't need to be a specific policy on homophobic bullying because homophobic bullying is not inherently different to other forms of bullying.

    To answer your previous question, incidences of depression, self-harming, and outward signs of anger such as anti-social behaviour are higher in children whose parents are in prison. The same applies to children in care, too, and I note that schools don't have a specific policy on bullying against them, either.

    Bullying is not a non-story, but this is the definition of a non-story. The NASUWT have an anti-religious agenda, and always have had, and this is juat another pathetic little dig. Nothing more, nothing less. It goes to show what teachers really think though- that most forms of bullying don't matter.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ah ok! I see what you mean now .. cool. I am rather naive sometimes .. :blush: Thanks!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nah, the NASUWT have cleverly released that press statement to make people draw the conclusion you came to. They have people earning a lot of money who's job it is to do that. But if the Church was "failing" all victims of bullying they would have said so, therefore my conclusions are probably right.

    My opinion is that schools don't give a toss about any victims of bullying, so there's no homophobic discrimination, they're just twats.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    It goes to show what teachers really think though- that most forms of bullying don't matter.

    Poppy-cock. Your opinion of the NASUWT is one thing, but to purport that teachers don't think bullying is a serious matter is a grossly offensive nonsense.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    kermit wrote:
    Nah, the NASUWT have cleverly released that press statement to make people draw the conclusion you came to. They have people earning a lot of money who's job it is to do that. But if the Church was "failing" all victims of bullying they would have said so, therefore my conclusions are probably right.

    My opinion is that schools don't give a toss about any victims of bullying, so there's no homophobic discrimination, they're just twats.

    Indeed, and no worries teagan. Like kermit said, people get paid a lot to make something seem like it's saying something when it doesn't.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    I think you are misunderstanding the article, Teagan- which is the intention of the NASUWT, after all, so don't worry about it.

    The Church does not have a specific policy for specifically homophobic bullying, and because of that the NASUWT feel it is "failing" homosexual children. It has a general policy on general bullying, which should suffice, as bullying is bullying is bullying. There doesn't need to be a specific policy on homophobic bullying because homophobic bullying is not inherently different to other forms of bullying.

    To answer your previous question, incidences of depression, self-harming, and outward signs of anger such as anti-social behaviour are higher in children whose parents are in prison. The same applies to children in care, too, and I note that schools don't have a specific policy on bullying against them, either.

    Bullying is not a non-story, but this is the definition of a non-story. The NASUWT have an anti-religious agenda, and always have had, and this is juat another pathetic little dig. Nothing more, nothing less. It goes to show what teachers really think though- that most forms of bullying don't matter.

    I'm just wondering how you know what the intentions of the NASUWT are?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    For my own part, I don't care about the motives of the NASUWT, when I read the source, I saw the lead in the style of writing, I saw what it was trying to imply without ever actually making an accusation.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I think the agenda of the NASUWT is pretty obvious looking at the press release, and the long history of gobshite spouting from that organisation.

    My experiences are that teachers couldn't give two fucks about bullying. Is that offensive? Not as fucking offensive as sitting there and doing piss all when their pupils complain of bullying.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    as bullying is bullying is bullying. .

    Now now Maggie, don't want to strain that old heart of yours.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Kermit wrote: »
    I think the agenda of the NASUWT is pretty obvious looking at the press release, and the long history of gobshite spouting from that organisation.

    My experiences are that teachers couldn't give two fucks about bullying. Is that offensive? Not as fucking offensive as sitting there and doing piss all when their pupils complain of bullying.

    Cool, that's your experience of teachers, but to then say that all teachers don't give a fuck is a gross generalisation. I had some fantastic teachers who didn't tolerate bullying at all.
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