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bediger4000yesterday at 4:16 PM0 repliesview on HN

My children got the US equivalent of this, which apparently started in the wake of the Columbine shooting. It was garbage. None of my kids could figure out exactly how to stand up for their peers, no practice was ever included with the exhortations.

For my part, it looked the teachers and administrators offloading the work to students. "Only you can prevent bullying" looks like "I, as a teacher, am not going to bother doing it".

This made me reflect on my own school experience and I've come to believe that some schools and some teachers tolerated bullying because the bullies were doing discipline for the teachers. Maybe not excellent discipline, but it was easy. I also believe some teachers allowed bullying to punish kids they didn't like for whatever reason, nonconformists, smartasses, or minority group. Bullies gave PE teachers plausible deniability.