Poll: US vs UK Bullying Experiance- Which is worse?

[Mikeyfell]

I've never been bullied in the UK so I guess I'll vote US? I suppose...

I did get stabbed by a bully in the US and the cops, teachers, principle, and his parents all treated him like the victim, the victim of him stabbing me. So I don't say US frivolously.

America fuck yeah...? Justice? what's that?

 

[The Pinray]

I've lived in the US and UK. People in the UK seemed colder, and as this forum has showed on many a thread somewhat xenophobic, and for some reason holding some sort of resentment towards Americans for just being American. Not to say the States aren't bad. They can be. But I've never really been bullied. I've witnessed plenty, though. I would say it's a crap shoot. Just speaking from personal experience, so don't hurt me please.

 

[irmasterlol]

I don't know how anyone is really supposed to have any perspective on this. I've never heard any bullying stories from the Brits make it to our side of the pond, but my area has been on a huge sensationalist bullying kick after some middle school kid went and offed himself because someone called him a fag on facebook or something. The issue of cyber-bullying is being badly overblown as far as I can tell.


Well I got a tad off topic didn't I?

 

[Valorik]

here's a chart from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2747624/

Cross-national comparison of general bullying among boys aged 11, 13 and 15 years old.


So yeah bullying is more prevalent in the US than the UK, both are relatively middle of the pack.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Having been to a shitty British school, been a total freak and still managed to escape without major bullying (but having known some friends who didn't), I'd say schools in the US seem to have a different culture that's much more encouraging (sometimes passively, sometimes actively) of bullying.

 

[The White Hunter]

Then again, I imagine there might be more chavs and douches in UK schools.

There is an unreal amount, there was when I was there 4 years ago now, of asrseholes and blinding social ignorance.

It depends on the victim, I personally was picked on for almost every tiny phyiscal detail, I wasicked on for being vaguely intelligent, I was picked on for having a low tolerance for people being fucking pricks to me (they never learned from a fist in the jaw I swear), all very shit but my favourite?

Orientation.

I'm bi-sexual, big fucking deal right? At school I got endless crap about being selfish and filthy and wrongn and being a waste of human flesh from kids of every orientation with absolutely no support available from anywhere. We don't have any kind of that gay-straight alliance crap, and what's more is the gay kids picked on me to so whoo for that.

Yeah, bullying is shit wherever you go, but I think in reality it doesn't matter where you are, the experiences are different, a bit of teasing in the UK is lesser to beating and continuous torment in the US, and vice-versa.

Having not experienced american bullying I can't talk about it much, but I think there are a lot of things that affect the issue more than geographic location.

My own personal experiences were harrowing, painful and left me with scars, both physical and mental that will likely never heal.

Thank fuck the real world isn't entirely full of worthless toss pots.

Ah venting. But yeah, bullying is shit wherever you go and if you can do anything to prevent or reduce it you probably should.

EDIT!!!!

I'd also like to point out that occurences and other such statistical stuff are a touchs kewed because of the massive population difference between the two nations.

Otherwise it's down to experiences, I've known americans with very similar problems to me who had it worse and some who never had any trouble.

 

[The White Hunter]

I've never been bullied in the UK so I guess I'll vote US? I suppose...

I did get stabbed by a bully in the US and the cops, teachers, principle, and his parents all treated him like the victim, the victim of him stabbing me. So I don't say US frivolously.

America fuck yeah...? Justice? what's that?

There used to be a kid o beat the hell out of me regularly and he got away with it cuz his dad killed himself.

So he was the victim of me being hit with cricket bats and beaten up by 5 or 6 people at once.

There isn't any justice anywhere in this world my friend.

 

[zidine100]

*you know what no snipidy snip, deleted and gone boom there goes the post and done*

what there's no delete button,

Im not having a rant like that to my name. I have no right to even bother posting it.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Technically most of us had not experienced the other nation school so we wouldn't know what it is turly like other than what we have seen and read.
Anyway going from what I've read and seen, I guessing the US is worse (I read more stories on bullying in the US than in the UK but the UK isn't exactly bully free). Regardless of which places is worse any more of bullying is still bad especially to those who suffer from it.

 

[Sara Fontaine]

I can't say which country seems to have it worse. All I know is my own experiences here in the UK, and how they affected my personality. I'm heavily sarcastic and use it as a defencive tool, I'm pessimistic about almost everything and incredibly wary of people at first meeting. I'm also incredibly bitter about it all. It was both physical and mental bullying, from when I was three to the day I left high school, by the same group of people. Not once did anything get done about it.

In my case, the staff at both primary and high school could've done a lot more to help me, I feel. Primary was the worst though; they always loved to proclaim how they had a zero tolerance policy towards bullying. Then when I got pushed off a wall face first and smashed my nose open, the headmistress told my parents I was just 'one of those kids who are a target'. The reasons she said that was because I was quiet, shy and clever for my age. Almost like it should've been expected that I'd be bullied to the point that I'd beg not to be forced to go into school. High school was only marginally better, but many things stayed the same. Got slapped across the face by a guy twice my size; nothing happened to him. Got tipped off that twenty people (male and female) were waiting for me outside of the gates to try and land me in hospital. Only one of them got suspended even though they all readily admitted to it. I was offered counselling sessions to help; turned out to be where they sent all the kids with mental problems or were just consistently badly behaved. I wasn't too sure what they were trying to say by sending me to them but I certainly didn't stick around. It seemed to me like unless they could fob me off to someone else to be dealt with, they'd do the minimum amount they could to stop it.

I'm aware that there are people who've had it so much worse than me, which is why I'm so angry that the staff in schools seem to be powerless or unwilling to intervene. I never contemplated self harm of any type, but I know people who did, and a couple who went through with it. The warning signs were obvious, as was the aftermath; one guy being bullied for his weight ended up anorexic, on a feeding tube and made no point of hiding the marks on his arms and legs. He recieved as much 'help and support' as I did, and it clearly wasn't enough.

...Wow. Sorry, I wasn't expecting all that to come out in response to a question of who's got it worse out of UK or US. I did admit that I'm bitter over it though, and it's rather deep set in my mind.

 

[Alternative]

snip

Australia's low ranking on this doesn't surprise me. In my school there was a noticeable race/class divide

 

[kortin]

Because we have uniforms in Britain, I think that there are less "social groups", and most people in my year at school would talk to most of the other people in the year because we didn't separate ourselves into "goths", "nerds", "jocks" etc.

In all my years of US schooling, I have never seen these supposed "social groups" occur. Friends would hang out with friends. I certainly wasn't a goth, but I would hang out with a few kids who could be considered goths and I certainly wasn't a nerd and I hung out with some kids who would be considered nerds and the same with jocks and every "social group".

I've gone to a lot of schools. At least 6 or 7 from Kindergarten to my Senior Year (this year).

 

[NoOne852]

here's a chart from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2747624/

Spoiler

Cross-national comparison of general bullying among boys aged 11, 13 and 15 years old.

So yeah bullying is more prevalent in the US than the UK, both are relatively middle of the pack.

Well kudos for having the chart by all means, but I think we should all keep in mind that these are just reported instances. There are a good number of instances that do not go reported making those kinda charts only approximate. Plus theres the fact that it was from six years ago. Again, please don't take this as bashing you or something like that, there are just a few more variables that don't get represented in the chart.

OT:
As stated before, it is hard to say since not many of us have gone both to the US and UK for enough time to notice the bullying situation. I am from the US and have dealt with bullies before I even started school up to about sixth grade (the ridicule since then was too spaced out and inconsistant to be considered bullying). Most of the friends I made in high school also I later found out had various bully issues. One even had rocks thrown at her almost regularly when she walked to school. So I may have to say the US is worse, but that shouldn't be taken seriously since I have no way of knowing what it is like in the UK or even the rest of the states.

 

[JasonKaotic]

Bullying isn't actually that bad in the UK. It's there, but for the most part it's nothing as serious as what I've seen and heard of the US's bullying. So my vote goes for the US.

 

[Sneezeguard]

snip

Australia's low ranking on this doesn't surprise me. In my school there was a noticeable race/class divide

umm... Australia isn't on that list, Austria is though

 

[JasonKaotic]

Whichever country has the most schools with a "zero-tolerance" policy

Bullying isn't actually that bad in the UK. It's there, but for the most part it's nothing as serious as what I've seen and heard of the US's bullying. So my vote goes for the US.

Well I know for a fact that the schools in the US are just as wild as they seem but I'm wondering if British schools are just as strict as the media portrays them to be.

That really depends on the school. Most schools are like what I'd assume American schools are like in terms of general strictness, but you do get the occasional school that would flay their students alive if they so much as turned up to school without their tie. I think those are mainly the private schools, though. So you'd have to go out of your way to end up in one of those.
I think.

 

[TheKaduflyerSystem]

It's almost impossible to make a truly (first hand) informed decision as times change and peoples attitudes change, no matter what country you're in.
With an educated guess I would say US on account of sheer numbers: More people in America = More children in schools = more bullies overall = more people bullied.
That's just logic and assumption BTW.

 

[Black Arrow Officer]

I went to a more liberal high school school in America where the amount of homework is reasonable and you got to do more "fun" activities in classes like watch movies, do Origami, and go outside to do science classes. During our French Revolution and Napoleon unit, I even convinced our teacher to let us watch the Napoleon Bonaparte vs Napoleon Dynamite Epic Rap Battle of History. I think the kids learned better that way, and everyone was very friendly and accepting. There were tons of openly gay and bisexual kids who were never bullied or discriminated. It was paradise compared to the shithole school in Texas I went to for my freshman year. I had my head shoved in a locker and the locker door slammed on me the first day of school, I got snuck up behind while I was on a computer and punched in the back of the head for no reason, the teachers turned from comatose to raging psychopaths at a moments notice, and the school grounds were filthy and dangerous, with broken glass, condoms, cigarettes, and trash everywhere. Some of the teachers even slept with students.

 

[Dogstile]

I got jumped at least twice a month, so i'm gonna vote UK on this one. My american friends haven't really had to same problems, but then again, they were a tad bit more popular than me.

 

[AngloDoom]

I have not gone to school in the US or UK so I cant compare them.

This, and the fact that we haven't been to the majority of schools in each country to make a fair enough 'average' experience. I've been to a few schools and I have to say that each one was total different: in my earliest Secondary school there was less bullying in general but it escalated into violence very quickly, then simmered down again. The school I went to after that was a relentless bullying experience where people would be shunned and rumours would be made to create rigid social barriers that were practically inescapable, but barely any violence whatsoever.

In the end, I think the individuals (teachers, the bullies, the bullied) are so different in each school that it's hard to truly get a grip on the subject.