CTV:
The new anti-bullying and anti-discrimination strategy is being set up in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross and will see more than 48,000 of young people trained to host anti-bullying workshops in their communities.
Hubley, Laureen Harper and Heritage Minister James Moore made the announcement at A.Y. Jackson High School in Kanata, Ont., where Jamie was a student before he committed suicide.
In days past bullying was dealt with in one of two ways: 1) The victim and /or his friends would physically fight back 2) A teacher would intervene and discipline the bully.
Neither of those options is possible in modern Canada. A child who defends himself is likely to get into as much trouble, if not more, than the bully. Adults in Canada arguably don't have the right to self-defence, much less school children. We are raising a generation of wimps who, by logical necessity, will encourage a generation of bullies. No longer do the good kids band together against the bad. They must meekly submit or meet the wrath of the school administration. Of all the guilty parties they are the worse, their minds vacant of common sense and their lips brimming with nonsensical rhetoric about "zero tolerance."
Then there is the lack of discipline. It amazes practically anyone over the age of thirty the degree to which discipline is lacking in modern schools. It varies from school to school. In schools dominated by children with responsible parents, it's a marginal issue. The parent knows their duty. When parenting is weak, the problems are off loaded onto the schools. The teachers, many of them trained in little more than the pseudo-pedagogy of the moment, do not have the ability or the authority to act. So the problem festers.
I don't recall discipline being especially rigorous back in the 1980s in Toronto schools, certainly not when compared to a typical southern European household. Today it is non-existent. The horror stories I've heard from teachers and principals are beyond belief. Merely scolding a disobedient child, even a violent one, can land a teacher in career and legal jeopardy. It is the nature of children to push boundaries. It's how they learn. If no one ever pushes back you have laid the ground work for a monster.
At some point the real world will hit these children. The victims will be psychological scarred for decades afterwards and have to slowly adjust to a life of independence and earn self-confidence. The bullies will themselves have challenges, perhaps greater ones. For the moment the police still generally enforce the law. The successful social strategy a bully deployed in High School will be less useful in adult life. Harassment, assault and threats of violence are all criminal offences. If the bully has never learned to be considerate of others, to obtain his desires through persuasion rather than force, he will have to learn as an adult. Or never learn and become a marginal and dependent figure in society.
There is no discussion in this new anti-bullying program of instituting genuine discipline in Canadian schools. Instead there are brochures, flyers, planners and talk shops. A bureaucrat's answer to the problems of the real world. It may not be quite true that to spare the rod is to spoil the child, but to spare the child any sense of consequence for their actions is ruinous. Ruinous for the child and in time for the country.
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