Can a teacher encourage/ignore bullying or even be a bully? Why?

[Clinky]

In many cases when I hear of how to handle a bully telling a teacher is usually at the top of the list. But when I was growing up going to the teacher very often got me the lecture of being a 'tattletale' for saying so and so was saying hurtful things or even once getting a punishment for telling about a student who was flat out making me cry. Also some of my teachers have done things which I found out are not punishments that are looked upon favorably by many people and could even be considered illegal, such as one sticking me in the kindergarden classroom and bringing my classmates to laugh at me.

My point in mentioning this has made me wonder about the very question this is titled with: Can/Why will a teacher encourage/ignore or participate in bullying?

I'm not looking for sympathy or anything, I already know that some of what was done is wrong and I'm trying to get past it but this question had been bugging me as of late.

Captcha: Head case... Ow.

 

[burningdragoon]

Can? Um... yeah. Why? Well they might not care, they might not believe it's a big deal, they might just not understand why it is a big deal. Plenty of possible reasons why really.

 

[Marter]

Of course they can. I've heard a lot of instances where telling a teacher did nothing, as well as a couple of times in which the teacher was more of a hindrance than a help.

Why? Well, indifference to the student could be one reason. The teacher in question might also believe that the student should deal with his/her problems alone, as it will build character.

 

[requisitename]

Teachers are human. Not excusing anything, just stating a fact. Although they obviously should be above such things given their position of authority, especially teachers who are close in age to their students (fresh outta college high school teachers, for instance), can fall into this. When I was in school, the coaches were the worst offenders when it came to bullying students/allowing students to bully other students.

When I was in school.. eons ago.. bullying was a part of life. It was something you had to deal with at some level if you weren't one of the super popular students (read: jocks or cheerleaders). It just.. was. *shrug* We just lived with it. We didn't tell (tattling it was called then).. and if someone did tell, teachers basically told us to figure it out for ourselves. As such, I have a hard time understanding why it's such a big deal now.

Please note that I'm not saying it's NOT a big deal now.. just that I don't understand how it changed so radically in such a relatively short time.

 

[I.N.producer]

Most obvious bulling isn't in the classroom. For most teachers, unless they see it, it's their problem. Plus the fact that most teacher are people, and some people are assholes, so some teachers are bound to be assholes.

What are teachers supposed to be able to do anyway? They don't have any kind of evidence, just someone saying something happened.

Really, it sounds like you had a particularly bad bunch of teachers. That's some seriously twisted crap. I was bullied for 4 years and my teachers and principal just ignored it. They never would have acted like such children.

The closest we ever had to a teacher who bullied anyone was one 11th grade English teacher who picked on everyone equally, and he didn't mind if we did the same to him. I think he just used that to get us to think quick. Really more like verbal sparring than bullying.

 

[Indecipherable]

When you grow up (that sounds ridiculous to say that...) you'll see that people are generally asses to each other all the time. Sure, the kind of bullying decreases once people become young adults but it will never go away. People will try to bully and intimidate people until the day they die.

 

[Doclector]

Can they ignore it? No, they shouldn't. Why? Because, like anyone else, teachers can be terrible people. I've always had a theory that there are two kinds of people who go into teaching; people who actually want to teach, and educate people, and the kind of person who simply craves a position of authority, and those sort of people are the last kind of people who should ever be given control of anything.

 

[Palademon]

This was regular occurance for me:
Me: "Help sir, these guys keep following me and bullying me. Could you make them go away?"
Teacher: "Just stay away from them"
Me: "Did you hear what I just said?"

During tutor time once, people started singing me happy birthday since my birthday would be on the weekend after, and used the excuse to kick me until I was under the table, unable to get up. The teacher found it amusing and the class continued singing as it happened. My tutor always thought these kind of conflicts were funny.

I hate those times when people are told off for reporting that they've been bullied, it's almost like a life lesson telling you that if you ever report something bad you're fun-killing loser.

Teachers suck. It's quite possible that they would require evidence and feel bad without it, but they'd do nothing even in clear cases commited from people who are serious known attention seeking troublemakers. Sometimes they'll be trying not to draw attention to those attention seekers, but unfortunately that isn't very helpful.

 

[Esotera]

There will always be assholes in the world, so you could argue that if the bullying hasn't been serious & sustained then it helps the child by ignoring it, as they'll hopefully learn to resolve it themselves. That's the only case I can think of worth presenting, other than the teacher just not giving a crap.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

I've had plenty of teachers actively bully me or encourage it.
Although the most depressing aspect of it was that if i ever told someone about it, they'd usually tell me that i was the one doing the bullying and give me detention or something.
For example:

This one guy had been bullying me for ages, along with the entire rest of my year. One day i got sick of his shit, so this time i punched him back (my dads advice) But he happened to be of Indian descent. So my dad got a phonecall saying i had started a racially charged incident.

The irony of it was that I was being bullied because I had moved from England to Scotland and 90% of my classmates hated me because of that, the other 10% wouldn't talk to me either because it was social suicide. So if anything I was the one subject to racism, the teachers knew this but i got in trouble anyway.

 

[Keoul]

Too many /s :c
Also anyone can be anything really, is it really that surprising that teachers can support bullying or even be the bully?

 

[ClockworkPenguin]

I've done work experience in a school and I got bullied as a pupil, so i've sort of seen it from both sides.

There are a few different reasons teachers can be useless.
1. the super naive teacher who thinks that you're all friends really, and if you shake hands it will all be over.
2. the teacher who basically can't be bothered unless it is actively disrupting the lesson.
3. The teachers who have favourites who never do anything wrong.

There are teachers who are bullies, When i was doing experience there was a teaching assistant who was a really angry person, and couldn't separate issues at home from how she acted in school, and she took it out on the kids. You could see when she was looking for an excuse to take someone to task.

On the other side of the coin, (this was in a primary school you have to remember) there where kids who had quite poor emotional development and would label as bullying anything that didn't go their way because they couldn't understand the difference between someone making them unhappy on purpose and accidentally. anything that made them unhappy was bullying. Obviously that stopped happening as everyone matures, but you can sort of see how it might make some teachers less quick to act.

 

[lRookiel]

They can. but they fucking shouldn't!

Teachers are supposed to look out for their students at least during their working hours and on the premises, if teachers becomes bullies then who do the students have to turn to?

 

[HardkorSB]

In many cases when I hear of how to handle a bully telling a teacher is usually at the top of the list. But when I was growing up going to the teacher very often got me the lecture of being a 'tattletale' for saying so and so was saying hurtful things or even once getting a punishment for telling about a student who was flat out making me cry. Also some of my teachers have done things which I found out are not punishments that are looked upon favorably by many people and could even be considered illegal, such as one sticking me in the kindergarden classroom and bringing my classmates to laugh at me.

My point in mentioning this has made me wonder about the very question this is titled with: Can/Why will a teacher encourage/ignore or participate in bullying?

I'm not looking for sympathy or anything, I already know that some of what was done is wrong and I'm trying to get past it but this question had been bugging me as of late.

Captcha: Head case... Ow.

I went to a teacher's training college to become an English teacher. Never became one as I felt I would lose temper and kill a student one day. My friend however became a teahcer and was teaching for 2 years. He told me what being a teacher looks like on the inside.
These people are acting worse than their students. They fight with each other, back stab each other, form antagonistic camps among themselves. Not to mention that they laugh at some students, show each other poorly written tests and laugh at them, sometimes even start rumors about teachers/students they don't like.

I wouldn't count on them.

 

[Wintermoot]

in my case it got excused and some crap about "you are going to get this in real life to" I was sitting in front of the teacher crying my eyes out and still it got excused. Good thing I left that fucking school.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

I don't think they should condone bullying or be bullies themselves, that's not good for the student's welfare.

And if you're still not convinced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R95pTekso_Y

 

[SirDeadly]

I'm studying to become a teacher and so far we have not been taught how to deal with bullies. This would lead to many teachers not knowing what to do and taking the easiest option available to them.