Bullying

Discuss the February 2016 book of the month, Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver.
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Toria Mason
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Re: Bullying

Post by Toria Mason »

Most definitely, unfortunately. I'm not really from a very good area so I'm not certain if I can say "times have changed, people are more cruel now" or just that I wound up in an unfortunate area, or perhaps a bit of both. Whichever it is, there definitely was bullying. I was bullied, others were bullied...frankly I'd say there wasn't much in the way of true kindness, as even within groups of friends there could be found the cruelest actions.
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Post by Dh_ »

I never actually saw anybody get bullied in middle or high school. I was never bullied myself, but that was mostly because other kids didn't really notice I was there. There was a bully hotline and I heard stories of people calling it, but I never found out who or what happened. The closest I got to bullying was when a friend of mine said she being made fun of for her weight. It wasn't anything too serious though. I know bullying is a huge problem, but I've never actually seen it happen.
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Post by Christina O Phillips »

KAV wrote: Did anyone else really have this much bullying and issues at there high school?

I was bullied in elementary school and junior high and high school.
I think things have changed though as there is more awareness now and people are more willing to talk about the fact that bullying happens and the consequences of it, how people feel because of it.
I never said anything to anyone about what was going on.
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Post by Mailis »

We had bullying, but it wasn't labeled as such. There were just nasty kids with bad attitudes who acted out and were disliked. And there were popular kids who thought they were better than others. But there wasn't any talk about bullying or how to act when those situations came up.
If I think back there were few times that could be labeled bullying by todays standards but I think you cannot prevent it 100% anyway. There is always going to be a bad apple somewhere in there.
I was quite oblivious to bullying to be honest, I lived very much in my own head and just didn't understand some of the barbed comments aimed at me at the time. I think I was just lucky like that. I ignored stupid people and had this ironclad view that you had to protect the weak, so I always tried to intervene when someone was bullying anyone I perceived as a victim.
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Post by AmySmiles »

There was a lot of bullying at my school. I was one that was bullied. It was a small school so maybe a bigger school has enough kids that groups are formed and they just stick to their own. There were "groups" in my school too, but they still found time to make fun of those that weren't in their group.
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Post by Clare Jose »

In my school, social status was not something important. We were either focused on our academics or on having fun.
So most days students hung with their friends and kept to themselves (except of course when we had some kind of school event then it was just one large group). I don't recall having witnessed any form of bullying myself but I was kind of anti-social and didn't talk with many outside of my friend group so I can't be sure about that.

Seeing the comments here it seems everyone has either witnessed or faced bulling some form or another.
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Post by Sabrina Chen »

From what I've seen and experienced, bullying can vary greatly from school to school, even class to class. Different social groups can exhibit different levels of maturity. Some groups did not bully at all, while other groups may have specific targets where they direct severe bullying.

While I haven't experienced much bullying at all, I have attended a couple of different schools, and the bullying problem is definitely a lot more prevalent in some than in others. In my first elementary, the teachers did not particularly care how we interacted with each other, and there were kids that would try to injure me (nothing serious) for arbitrary reasons, if they had reason at all. The later elementary schools I went to, on the other hand, took these things very seriously. Some people bully based on looks, some on grades, some on hobbies, etc. It all depends on the specific environment and the people in those environments. Once the tone of a school or social group is set, it's pretty hard to change.
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Post by Agbata precious »

I don't really remember being bullied, and I hate seeing people doing such. This book will impact more on other people's life.
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Post by Krishi Shah »

I don't think it was as extreme as the book in my school, but I was definitely at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and there were a lot of people who thought that made it okay to say hurtful things. It may not always be intense like the book, but bullying always exists in some form or the other everywhere.
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Post by Krishi Shah »

I think that media pieces usually show bullying in a stronger light to highlight how bad it is, but I've heard of many horrible real life incidents of bullying that are just as bad, or perhaps, worse.
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