I don’t think this is an optimal or especially good way of dealing with bullies unless the bullying is so serious that it is a threat to the child’s safety. It encourages a habit of appealing to the authorities whenever things are suboptimal, instead of developing interpersonal skills to deal with the problem without an authority. It teaches the child to depend on authorities to save them when things aren’t going his/her way.
In my school at least, being a “snitch” had serious social consequences. They were despised, and often bullied more, and more furtively. Someone who can stand up to a bully, on the other, was seen as brave, as a leader.
Also, there are certainly authorities who sometimes offer help in the adult world (as Desrtopa notes) but often an appeal to an authority is difficult or impossible. What do you do if a coworker verbally bullies you? Or an in-law gets nasty? A friend of friend?
I don’t think this is an optimal or especially good way of dealing with bullies unless the bullying is so serious that it is a threat to the child’s safety. It encourages a habit of appealing to the authorities whenever things are suboptimal, instead of developing interpersonal skills to deal with the problem without an authority. It teaches the child to depend on authorities to save them when things aren’t going his/her way.
Blackmailing authorities by a smart plot that involves having a evidence that you can take to the media isn’t “being dependent on the authorities”.
You know, this environment is probably as close to the Hobbesian state of nature as it gets in modern first world countries. The solution to that has traditionally been for society to create a government to hold over itself, a leviathan able to be applied to. Thus, violence is curbed, by the threat of intervention by the overseeing power.
As in the world, so in this microsim.
Is this a desirable state? As someone who leans more towards the libertarian side of things, I think the answer is no. But despite that, there are two very valid points. The first is that like it or not, this is how the world is. You can try to set up an alternate system of governance, but if you play in a certain society, you play by their rules. Or overthrow them and institute your own rules, but that is a task of much greater scope.
Second, there has to be some rules. Life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, after all. In the “state of middle school”, it’s not short, but it’s pretty nasty and brutish. This problem has to be overcome somehow, and the established way to do it is by government, that is to say in this case by authority figures. Have you got a better way? Many libertarians over the years have tried to hammer out alternatives, but as of now it’s still an open problem.
1) It teaches the child that power is in the hands of bad guys and authorities.
2) It is a strategy that is dependent on having a genuine authority that is sympathetic to one’s cause (which may not always be true).
3) It is unlikely to directly teach the bully a better way to behave, and is likely to get him/her in a lot of trouble that might affect the rest of the bully’s life, especially if his/her identity is revealed (especially ethically problematic with a young child).
4) A person, especially a child, might misunderstand a situation. The “bully” might be reacting to something offensive or hurtful that the child did. If someone goes to authorities before attempting to resolve the problem quietly, s/he risks getting the “bully” unjustly punished, and not learning about his/her own inappropriate behavior. This one is especially important, IMO.
5) If the bully is a bullying a lot of people, gathering those people together and having them unite against a bully may simultaneously allow many people to feel like they and their community has power outside what an authority grants them (this seems like a more HPMOR-type of solution to me).
6) Once something reaches the mass media, you lose all control over the outcome. Your school administrator or dean or principal might be replaced (which may or may not be a bad thing). The bully could be sent to juvie or removed from his/her family or whatever.
7) You don’t know the full context behind the event. Maybe the bully just suffered a traumatic or tragic event. Maybe s/he has a mental disorder. Sure, then s/he needs help, and the authority should help him/her get it, but that approach seems lacking in the compassion due to the child in the midst of a tragedy.
8) You shame the bully and force him/her into a corner. The bully now loses face, especially if s/he backs down. With an especially impulsive person with little regard for his/her future, this could provoke some sort of desperate, especially violent response.
My suspicion is that libertarian practices would be (especially) bad amongst young children, who have lower impulse control and experience with self-organization.
In response to Villam_Bur, your extremely specific hypothetical in response to my comment reminds me of this. In response to that exact situation, I would attempt to use interpersonal skills, to get the support of my peers, examine my own behavior, ask for advice from others that I trusted, and try to understand the bully’s actions and figure out whether it was worth the effort and potential consequences of getting him/her to stop (seriously try all these strategies, not just give some perfunctory mental equivalent of a passing glance at trying). Then I would try physical force. If all of the above were unsatisfactory, I would have no qualms about bringing it to a trusted authority figure with good judgement.
I am curious: what kind of intepersonal skills (which don’t include using authorities) would you use to deal with a person who is three times as strong as you (and most of people around you), enjoys hurting you (physically), and makes it obvious to others that only you will be hurt (unless someone tries to defend you, in which case they will also be hurt, but it will be a one-time event for them)?
Depending on your answer, my second question would be: If such a situation happened to you tomorrow (and then every day) and you couldn’t avoid it, would you prefer to use only the interpersonal skill, or would you (also) use a threat of authority?
But why would you be singled out this way, and not some other small kid? The explanation probably involves interpersonal skills at some point (I would expect likelihood of being bullied to be more correlated with being weird and friendless and “a pushover” than it is with being weak).
Also, even a small kid should be able to bite really hard, or come up with something foul-smelling that sticks in the hair or something like that—but I don’t think either one of those are what is usually meant by “interpersonal skills” :)
But why would you be singled out this way, and not some other small kid?
Would it be too unrealistic scenario to imagine that I am a best student in the classroom, and the bully is the second best, but he used to be the best one in his previous school, he cannot emotionally accept not being first and when he cannot deal with competition in a fair way, he uses his physical strength as a backup option?
People can also hate you for being good at something, not just for being weak.
even a small kid should be able to bite really hard
Yes, I used this kind of solution, and it worked. It just took me too much time to overcome the taboo about hurting other people (even in self-defense).
Learning to win fights despite a physical development disadvantage is exactly the wrong interpersonal skill to teach.
This does not seem like a claim that is universally true or obvious. If for whatever reason (such as bad judgement, incompetence at parenting or simply lack of resources) you choose to expose your child to one of the many environments where physical aggression is socially advantageous when they are at a physical disadvantage then it is neglectful to not also train them in at least the low hanging fruit with respect to succeeding in that environment.
To win one thousand fights in one thousand battles is not the skill you should be seeking. To resolve the confrontation favorably without fighting is the skill you should be teaching.
Either that, or firearm lessons. Biting and stinkbombs simply won’t work in environments where physical aggression is required, and there is no good reason for partial measures.
To win one thousand fights in one thousand battles is not the skill you should be seeking. To resolve the confrontation favorably without fighting is the skill you should be teaching.
To avoid losing a thousand fights through the mere presence of a deterrent is a valuable and generalisable lesson. Finding ways to resolve confrontation without fighting is desirable but once again I have to point out that it is not always possible. Children do not get to choose whether or which school they are subjected to and so can not rely on the most important aspects of personal boundaries (those that follow from having the ability to choose situations). If they are forced into an environment where pacifism is a suboptimal survival strategy then forcing pacifism on them for ideological reason is adding insult to injury. Or adding more injury and permanent psychological damage to injury as the case may be.
Either that, or firearm lessons. Biting and stinkbombs simply won’t work in environments where physical aggression is required,
Taking firearms to school is frowned upon. At least it is in my country, I can’t speak for anywhere else. I also haven’t ever seen either biting or stinkbombs advocated as an optimal fighting strategy for humans.
and there is no good reason for partial measures.
Yes there are. There is a reason not all wars consist of total nuclear obliteration in the opening day of conflict. There is also a reason why comparatively few physical conflicts between individuals, including individuals confined to schoolyards, are fights to the death.
“environments where physical aggression is socially advantageous” are frowned upon as well. If the people who frown upon violence in the school don’t take effective measures to address moderate violence, then they might take effective measures to address serious violence.
I think we might be talking about different things; I’m not addressing social posturing. I’m addressing things which would be felonies and treated as such if done openly by one adult to another: If someone punches me in the stomach and demands cash or he will do it again, why should age or the amount of money involved be deciding?
Fights are to lesser stakes than annihilation because the outcome is typically less important than existence to both parties. I’m not sure why the minimum required deterrent is better than the maximum possible deterrent.
That said, using weapons that are less likely to attract as much attention from an incompetent school administration while still being sufficient have a cost advantage. I suggest things which are also legitimate educational supplies, like metal or metal-edged rulers, if low-social-cost weapons are desired. As with any weapon, learn to use it effectively before you use it.
“environments where physical aggression is socially advantageous” are frowned upon as well.
That is as it should be. But you do not fix this problem by crippling the victims and still not giving them a way out.
I think we might be talking about different things; I’m not addressing social posturing. I’m addressing things which would be felonies and treated as such if done openly by one adult to another: If someone punches me in the stomach and demands cash or he will do it again, why should age or the amount of money involved be deciding?
Those things certainly should be illegal and treated as such. Authorities who control such environments and who permit such behaviour are collectively evil. But it is also abhorrent to me to cripple the victims with idealistic morality that doesn’t work in the world in which they live.
Learning to win fights despite a physical development disadvantage is exactly the wrong interpersonal skill to teach.
Is it? I agree it’s probably not the best, but is it worse than having the kid learn that he sucks, that the world is a nasty, unfair place, and that there’s nothing he can do about it?
I don’t think this is an optimal or especially good way of dealing with bullies unless the bullying is so serious that it is a threat to the child’s safety. It encourages a habit of appealing to the authorities whenever things are suboptimal, instead of developing interpersonal skills to deal with the problem without an authority. It teaches the child to depend on authorities to save them when things aren’t going his/her way.
In my school at least, being a “snitch” had serious social consequences. They were despised, and often bullied more, and more furtively. Someone who can stand up to a bully, on the other, was seen as brave, as a leader.
Also, there are certainly authorities who sometimes offer help in the adult world (as Desrtopa notes) but often an appeal to an authority is difficult or impossible. What do you do if a coworker verbally bullies you? Or an in-law gets nasty? A friend of friend?
Blackmailing authorities by a smart plot that involves having a evidence that you can take to the media isn’t “being dependent on the authorities”.
It’s the HPMOR way ;)
You know, this environment is probably as close to the Hobbesian state of nature as it gets in modern first world countries. The solution to that has traditionally been for society to create a government to hold over itself, a leviathan able to be applied to. Thus, violence is curbed, by the threat of intervention by the overseeing power.
As in the world, so in this microsim.
Is this a desirable state? As someone who leans more towards the libertarian side of things, I think the answer is no. But despite that, there are two very valid points. The first is that like it or not, this is how the world is. You can try to set up an alternate system of governance, but if you play in a certain society, you play by their rules. Or overthrow them and institute your own rules, but that is a task of much greater scope.
Second, there has to be some rules. Life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, after all. In the “state of middle school”, it’s not short, but it’s pretty nasty and brutish. This problem has to be overcome somehow, and the established way to do it is by government, that is to say in this case by authority figures. Have you got a better way? Many libertarians over the years have tried to hammer out alternatives, but as of now it’s still an open problem.
If you add that middle school lasts for three or four years, and after that most people are no longer in middle school, I think ‘short’ applies.
I wish that there was a well-documented way to apply the ideals of libertarianism in a manner that had effective results; I don’t see such a option.
Not to one’s subjective experience. Oh no.
Okay, why I think this is a bad idea:
1) It teaches the child that power is in the hands of bad guys and authorities.
2) It is a strategy that is dependent on having a genuine authority that is sympathetic to one’s cause (which may not always be true).
3) It is unlikely to directly teach the bully a better way to behave, and is likely to get him/her in a lot of trouble that might affect the rest of the bully’s life, especially if his/her identity is revealed (especially ethically problematic with a young child).
4) A person, especially a child, might misunderstand a situation. The “bully” might be reacting to something offensive or hurtful that the child did. If someone goes to authorities before attempting to resolve the problem quietly, s/he risks getting the “bully” unjustly punished, and not learning about his/her own inappropriate behavior. This one is especially important, IMO.
5) If the bully is a bullying a lot of people, gathering those people together and having them unite against a bully may simultaneously allow many people to feel like they and their community has power outside what an authority grants them (this seems like a more HPMOR-type of solution to me).
6) Once something reaches the mass media, you lose all control over the outcome. Your school administrator or dean or principal might be replaced (which may or may not be a bad thing). The bully could be sent to juvie or removed from his/her family or whatever.
7) You don’t know the full context behind the event. Maybe the bully just suffered a traumatic or tragic event. Maybe s/he has a mental disorder. Sure, then s/he needs help, and the authority should help him/her get it, but that approach seems lacking in the compassion due to the child in the midst of a tragedy.
8) You shame the bully and force him/her into a corner. The bully now loses face, especially if s/he backs down. With an especially impulsive person with little regard for his/her future, this could provoke some sort of desperate, especially violent response.
My suspicion is that libertarian practices would be (especially) bad amongst young children, who have lower impulse control and experience with self-organization.
In response to Villam_Bur, your extremely specific hypothetical in response to my comment reminds me of this. In response to that exact situation, I would attempt to use interpersonal skills, to get the support of my peers, examine my own behavior, ask for advice from others that I trusted, and try to understand the bully’s actions and figure out whether it was worth the effort and potential consequences of getting him/her to stop (seriously try all these strategies, not just give some perfunctory mental equivalent of a passing glance at trying). Then I would try physical force. If all of the above were unsatisfactory, I would have no qualms about bringing it to a trusted authority figure with good judgement.
I am curious: what kind of intepersonal skills (which don’t include using authorities) would you use to deal with a person who is three times as strong as you (and most of people around you), enjoys hurting you (physically), and makes it obvious to others that only you will be hurt (unless someone tries to defend you, in which case they will also be hurt, but it will be a one-time event for them)?
Depending on your answer, my second question would be: If such a situation happened to you tomorrow (and then every day) and you couldn’t avoid it, would you prefer to use only the interpersonal skill, or would you (also) use a threat of authority?
But why would you be singled out this way, and not some other small kid? The explanation probably involves interpersonal skills at some point (I would expect likelihood of being bullied to be more correlated with being weird and friendless and “a pushover” than it is with being weak).
Also, even a small kid should be able to bite really hard, or come up with something foul-smelling that sticks in the hair or something like that—but I don’t think either one of those are what is usually meant by “interpersonal skills” :)
Would it be too unrealistic scenario to imagine that I am a best student in the classroom, and the bully is the second best, but he used to be the best one in his previous school, he cannot emotionally accept not being first and when he cannot deal with competition in a fair way, he uses his physical strength as a backup option?
People can also hate you for being good at something, not just for being weak.
Yes, I used this kind of solution, and it worked. It just took me too much time to overcome the taboo about hurting other people (even in self-defense).
Learning to win fights despite a physical development disadvantage is exactly the wrong interpersonal skill to teach.
This does not seem like a claim that is universally true or obvious. If for whatever reason (such as bad judgement, incompetence at parenting or simply lack of resources) you choose to expose your child to one of the many environments where physical aggression is socially advantageous when they are at a physical disadvantage then it is neglectful to not also train them in at least the low hanging fruit with respect to succeeding in that environment.
To win one thousand fights in one thousand battles is not the skill you should be seeking. To resolve the confrontation favorably without fighting is the skill you should be teaching.
Either that, or firearm lessons. Biting and stinkbombs simply won’t work in environments where physical aggression is required, and there is no good reason for partial measures.
To avoid losing a thousand fights through the mere presence of a deterrent is a valuable and generalisable lesson. Finding ways to resolve confrontation without fighting is desirable but once again I have to point out that it is not always possible. Children do not get to choose whether or which school they are subjected to and so can not rely on the most important aspects of personal boundaries (those that follow from having the ability to choose situations). If they are forced into an environment where pacifism is a suboptimal survival strategy then forcing pacifism on them for ideological reason is adding insult to injury. Or adding more injury and permanent psychological damage to injury as the case may be.
Taking firearms to school is frowned upon. At least it is in my country, I can’t speak for anywhere else. I also haven’t ever seen either biting or stinkbombs advocated as an optimal fighting strategy for humans.
Yes there are. There is a reason not all wars consist of total nuclear obliteration in the opening day of conflict. There is also a reason why comparatively few physical conflicts between individuals, including individuals confined to schoolyards, are fights to the death.
“environments where physical aggression is socially advantageous” are frowned upon as well. If the people who frown upon violence in the school don’t take effective measures to address moderate violence, then they might take effective measures to address serious violence.
I think we might be talking about different things; I’m not addressing social posturing. I’m addressing things which would be felonies and treated as such if done openly by one adult to another: If someone punches me in the stomach and demands cash or he will do it again, why should age or the amount of money involved be deciding?
Fights are to lesser stakes than annihilation because the outcome is typically less important than existence to both parties. I’m not sure why the minimum required deterrent is better than the maximum possible deterrent.
That said, using weapons that are less likely to attract as much attention from an incompetent school administration while still being sufficient have a cost advantage. I suggest things which are also legitimate educational supplies, like metal or metal-edged rulers, if low-social-cost weapons are desired. As with any weapon, learn to use it effectively before you use it.
That is as it should be. But you do not fix this problem by crippling the victims and still not giving them a way out.
Those things certainly should be illegal and treated as such. Authorities who control such environments and who permit such behaviour are collectively evil. But it is also abhorrent to me to cripple the victims with idealistic morality that doesn’t work in the world in which they live.
You’re trying to change the world so as to make one person not be bullied. I’m trying to change the world such that fewer people are bullied.
It bothers me a little bit that our responses both make sense in context but are so different.
Is it? I agree it’s probably not the best, but is it worse than having the kid learn that he sucks, that the world is a nasty, unfair place, and that there’s nothing he can do about it?
I’ll grant that in some cases it might be superior to no intervention, or to teaching acceptance.
So, do you advocate Ender’s solution?