School board head calls for ACT-wide bullying audit

Grimm said :

Pointless. They should probably be teaching kids to toughen up a bit unless the bullying becomes physical, rather than trying to force everybody to be nice to each other. It has had such a beat up lately that kids can’t even choose who they do and don’t want to be friends with, without being accused of bullying.

There seems to be a lot of bullying going on, even though the school has supposedly” a zero tolerance to bullying policy”, not just the verbal kind that your talking about, I am talking about physical bullying as well.
Trouble is that just about all bullying seems to start off with teasing and verballing, then if nothing is done to address verballing, it tends to take on a physical form.
I am aware of such incidents at “Kingsford Smith” in Holt, where the bullying has ended up ranging from the bully punching other students in the head, punching them in the stomach, kicking them in the back, picking them up and throwing them on the ground.
On these occasions it has started off with verballing and teasing and then ,through lack of action from teachers and staff, has ended up physical. These are not isolated incidents involving just one bully or just one victim but involves several incidents concerning different bullies and different victims. If that’s not bullying then I don’t know what is.
In any case, they have all started off with the bully verballing the victim.
There seems to be an issue with little or no consequences or not teaching the kids (bullies) to take responsibility for their own actions. Adults have to take responsibility and suffer the consequences, why don’t the kids.
When the governing bodies of schools remove the tools necessary to fix the problems (expulsion for repeat offenders), resulting in the lack of action from teachers and staff to deal with these situations, then the bully soon learns that not much if anything will come of it. Then you also have a situation where potential bullies watching and seeing the lack of action are learning that not much will happen to them, if anything happens at all.
Are you saying GRIMM that the Chinese woman, who was bullied for taking up a seat, by the raving lunatic that was captured on camera and has been on the news, should “toughen up a bit” or should the raving lunatic bully be made to take responsibility for her outrageous behaviour.
If you expect that the victims should toughen up a bit and just have to accept this behaviour, then the outlook for our kids in society really is GRIMM!

Pointless. They should probably be teaching kids to toughen up a bit unless the bullying becomes physical, rather than trying to force everybody to be nice to each other. It has had such a beat up lately that kids can’t even choose who they do and don’t want to be friends with, without being accused of bullying.