the fact that people have so little empathy for human life these days is appalling! as a race we are despicable!!!!

Name and shame?

@jeffcahill1 I took a screenshot of the tweet before I blocked him.

Prove it… name the person

@ Mark – standard practice here, I’m afraid. The Journal needs to sort it’s policies out, or either have clearly labelled “fighting talk” threads. The red thumbs / green thumbs might have seemed like a good idea, but have ended up being used as bullying mechanisms in certain cases. It’s a mess, not one thing or the other. For those who see it as a sport, fine, but people should be able to choose if they’re playing or just honestly commenting on an article. It’s also unclear if certain commenters are playing along or are really dangerously unhinged. Silly stuff.

How can someone get bullied by being red thumbed?

A person or group of people using multiple accounts to continuously red thumb a particular commenter irrespective of what their comment actually is. Very prevalent amongst the political/economic articles. There’s no problem with this if it’s a regular user who gives as much as they get, but genuine commenters may get caught in the crossfire…. Not a million miles away from classroom bullying, the fact that they’re adults makes it a little sad…

Sean I did, also took a screenshot of the tweet if you want to pm me details of where to send it. enough proof for you?

Sorry Hal, I find it very hard to believe that any adult is going to get all that flustered by being red thumbed on a website. The thumbing bhaviour is sometimes a little odd but it’s not that big a deal.

Check out this article, one of the internet’s biggest “trolls” who reposted images of under age girls and made racist and sexist remarks along with them;

http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web.

People like this are glamorised by the internet and that’s the problem. As the first comment said, it’s about privilege. The idea of the cyber bully being the social reject is often incorrect, and more often than not they turn out to be straight white middle class males preying on anyone who isn’t.

I agree that you’re limited in what you can do but it’s a bit of a cop out! It’s your job as a teacher and mine as a parent to teach them that its not acceptable to ridicule somebody and that bieng ridiculed doesn’t have to be accepted. I agree that parents should monitor electronic gadgets to a degree to make sure their kids are safe in using it, but its down to parents and teachers to get the message into them from a very young age that its not acceptable to bully or be bullied.

@Risteard
‘..bullying has become electronic over the years..’.
i.e. a phenomenon always present moved into a new niche that emerged to facilitate it.

In a society that venerates ‘competitiveness’ and superficial material success, and gloats over ‘professional fouls’ just as long as its to the benefit of ‘our lads’; and where having the latest bling is promoted through advertising and media iconography, should it be a surprise that the most sensitive link in the social chain, children, might snap?
More band-aid deck-chair shuffling will not solve this pervasive collective cultural sickness. The church/state mindframe that facilitated the horrors againstt children leading to the current referendum campaign will not be solved by partial salves or constitutional window-dressing.
The bullying, and bullied, child is a symptom of a deeper set of problems stemming from ‘adult’ culture.

sure every school in the country has an anti bullying week and also promote bullying awareness in sphe class. i understand what you’re saying but we do have to teach our respective subjects.

and about bullying not being tolerated, can i ask out to suggest an appropriate reprimand a school can do with regards cyber bullying. at the end of the day, in many facets of our society, we attempt to manage the situation as opposed to knock it out completely. otherwise, we’d apply the same ideals to our legal system and have no law breakers.

damien… what?

The main solution is educating them on the consequences of their actions, keeping the parents fully involved in what their child is doing so they can step up to their own responsibility at home,
Practical punishment can be complete exclusion of school online activities weather it’s access to school equipment or access to school lessons around I.t. And if there’s a no phone policy in the school then enforce it. Let them be responsible for what they do. If a phone is taken the big thing seems to be the parents looking for it back because they spent money on it. Let the parents have it back, but only when they show up and collect it in person along with all the information of what the kid has been using it for. I had to sit down recently with my seven year old and go through his schools Internet policy which we both had to sign. His teacher is entitled to see and control everything he does on a school computer and there are strict rules on what he can and can’t access.
I’m not saying that the teacher has all the responsibility but you have as much as the parents.
How do you deal with bullying when it comes up?
Awareness weeks and anti bullying classes are important but is there a real deterrent too?

@Risteard
Trying to point out that the problem is bigger than the technology which facilitates it and can amplify it.

A society that elevates competition into a fetish is going to create thuggery. If kids are brought up to repect ALL others from the beginning they will transfer that value to whatever they do. Bullying is not an on/off switch phenomenon, it is part of a continuum of competitiveness.

A culture of me-feinism(always present as default anyway)was overtly promoted and pumped by the me me me Tiger ideology which still prevails.
You might make a beginning to solving the problem in the classroom, but if the wider society persists with its promotion of these dog-eat-dog social-darwinian values the problem will not only persist, but ramify and increase.

As a teacher I thought you would be aware the primary locus of education is always the home.
Which makes it a wider social education problem. I hope that computes. I’ve brought up a couple of kids, and witnessed some pretty vicious bullying. But it is by no means restricted to children’s behaviour. It is pervasive in society, often by far more subtle methods than cyber isolation and abuse. As long as the ethic remains personal success uber alles, and civic/social context is suppressed, bullying will remain more norm than aberration.
You can paint it with ‘meritocracy’ lipstick, but it remains pure blind-eyed piggery.

well Dave, you still haven’t given me a proper reprimand for a teacher to use in the even of cyber bullying.

Each school has differing policies but some things can be used, and i’m not stating if i have nor haven’t used them and am not stating if there are / aren’t in my school’s policy

group discussions with parents and kids involved
contracts of behaviour with regards bully / victim
detentions
suspensions
referral to school psychologist / councillor for both bully / victim
home visits to parents by home school liason

I will once again ask you, what do you think is an appropriate action to take as a teacher for cyber bullying, that in effect, happens outside of the school

Damien, I follow what you’re saying and I’m going out on a limb here and will assume you’ve studied some sort of anthropology or sociology with how you phrase things, or you are at least well read, which is ironically making it hard to follow, considering I’ve accustomed myself to the 12 – 18 reading age since I began my job.

Dave, to be specific,

removing a child, bully or not, from an IT class is depriving them of their educational right. We have to teach all children equally. You can argue they’re infringing on the rights of the victim not be harrassed but that’s a philosophical issue not for me.

Also, being able to see what a student is doing on the computer in the IT room doesn’t nessecarily stop them from doing things at home on their laptop, ipad or smartphone.

if we take a phone, we’ve no right to go through the emails / text messages. Most schools just take the phone and leave it turned off. In general, most school don’t have a no phone policy, just a no phones on in class policy. So taking the phone and explaining why to parents usually equates to “it went off in history”

I’m not saying you don’t have valid points, but I’m asking you for realistic and workable practical solutions here. Parents advice is always welcome.

Sound, Risteard.
I’m not trying to pontificate, just recognise that you are dealing with symptoms of a much larger social ethos that stretches from the creche to geopolitics.
A glance at the day’s news shows that economic and military Machiavellian power-play is the norm, not an exception. I could cite examples, but I don’t want to divert from the current context.
No, sociology and anthropology are not my dimensions. Just chronic bibliophelia, with a skew towards history.
This may(or may not)contextualise the stance. Bring your own grain of salt. Its a snapshot of the world we are exposing our kids to, as childhood itself is eroded by these technologies. And no, I’m not advocating Luddism.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/imperialism-in-the-x-factor-age/5309400

I can appreciate the points you’re making regarding exclusion and not having the right to read texts or emails.

I think weather the abuse happens on of off school time/property it’s still the responsibility of both parents and school.

Seems like reasonable courses of action to take in your list but are these only used if it happens in school?

A proper course of action would be to exhaust your list and if still no progress it should be passed onto the Gardai,
It might seem a bit extreme but I’d rather a call from a community Garda than from a devastated parent letting me know my child was so deeply involved in tormenting a child that the outcome may be so horrific.

Even in the case of outside school time/property, you can be an advocate for the child you teach and if you find your hands tied by what information you can or can’t access then pass on your information to the people who can demand the information and act on it.

I agree every child has the right to inclusion in lessons but not to the point where it may facilitate them tormenting someone to death.

I joined secondary school, mid term, as a very shy first year, here in Ireland, in the early 80′s.
Being the new boy I was physically and verbally bullied by the other pupils in my class, punched, kicked, kneed in the groin, spat on (in my face) called names etc etc etc.
Some of the teachers, including the headmaster (whose family was high up in the civil service) in that school used to beat me and try to ridicule me in front of the rest off the class, this only seemed to encourage the other pupils to continue to bully me (just to note this was well over a year after the corporal punishment ban).
I vividly remember them beating me around my head with their big brown, filthy, nicotine stained hands.
In some cases where senior pupils in the school were hit by teachers the pupils actually retaliated and hit the teacher back.
This school was only approx. 5 years old at the time but it was wrecked, the lockers were vandalized, locks on toilet cubicles were broken, storage heater guards buckled, walls were all marked, few pupils wore the full uniform etc etc etc.
I do not remember many occasions where staff members patrolled the yard at break times, pupils smoked openly in the yard and many other fights and atrocities happened there.
It was a terrible, disgusting, frightening environment, It made me sick to my stomach, I hated it and I wanted to get out of it anyway possible.
It was first year and it looked like I was going to be the class punchbag for both teachers and pupils for the next 4 years.
I kept it to myself.
I told no one.

Fortunately I think my parents must have noticed something and transferred me to another school.
Thank God.
I will honestly say that the new school had none of the above problems even though it was in the same town as the previous school and the building was many years older.

Did these teachers know how I felt?
Did they care?
Would they accept their own children being treated in the same way that they treated me?

I hope for everyone’s sake that an environment that was created in that school,
is never allowed to be created again (both out here and on the internet).

Might I be correct in assuming from your surname that there was a racist element?

Inform the gardai or your solicitor.

that’s b.s…. there is so much schools can do. by bringing the awareness into the schools. teachers or guidance councillors need to become educated in this area and appointed to teach classes and stress that this is unacceptable. how can people be let away with the death of a child? they caused her to take her life. many others have caused the same it’s flipping ridiculous. kid’s are being punished for writing their names on tables or chewing gum in skool as a learning curve yet bullies are not receiving the message that physical, verbal and cyber bullying along with exclusion can ruin the lives of their victims. suicide is not the only outcome of bullying it’s causes depression, anxiety, low self esteem which can lead to addiction and many other problems!! people do get over being bullied but for many these problems are life long and it’s unacceptable as a society to let it continue.

if you keep putting the responsibility to stop bullying on teachers, it won’t work. classes are dedicated to bully awareness in every school.

realistically, to tackle cyber bullying, measures need to be taken at home, that can then be re-enforced by the school

I meant there was not much schools could do in regard to punishing a student who was bullying another online. Obviously schools should educate students on bullying, and provide help to students who are being bullied both in school and online. I just do not believe that schools can properly punish cyber bullies in a way that will prevent them from continuing to bully. Giving a kid detention will not stop them going home and posting comments online. That is why I said parents have to take responsibility and monitor what their child is doing online.

yea I know it’s not just up to schools but a lot of cyber bullying that leads to this type of tragedy has an extension of bullying elsewhere more likely than not SCHOOL.. yes parents also need to become aware of how to help their kid’s deal with it but educating kid’s in schools now, provides them with the info and ability to teach their kid’s when the times comes ya know. there is insufficient advise and education on not only bullying but suicide, it’s not the answer there are ways around it and it’s been used too easily these days as an answer to psychological issues!

I don’t know about primary but SPHE deals and discusses alot of these issues in secondary school. But on top of it, we need to teach our main topics aswell. Thus we get one class a week to do it. I particulary enjoy teaching it with my tutor group but I’m lucky to have a group that’s so good and willing to discuss these issues.

risteard… I was never ever ever thought anything about the affects of bullying in school to be honest. I learned from research after seeing first hand how it crashes through lives and destroys a persons self esteem. one week a year for something that is a big part of society is not enough anymore. I don’t know what subject you teach I’m not saying just anyone, i.e a history teacher, should have 2do it but doesn’t every secondary school have a guidance councillor? couldn’t there councillors learn more about the subject, do courses, research the affects and use examples such as little Erin and Pheobe prince to drive it into young people that their actions cause reactions in the lives of those they’re tormenting. education does start in the home but most bullying starts in school. just because in this case it’s linked to cyber bullying doesn’t mean teachers get off with educating on it. school as I was told many times is preparation for the real world!

why the thumbs down for wanting 2bring awareness??

Sounds like McCarthyism =D

Damocles – not to you, not to me, but I’ve been hearing stories from a lot of people who feel that they’ve been driven off the site by abusive comments and serial red-thumbers. The result is that thejournal comments become, like many things in Irish culture, an inward-looking self-important clique. And that’s not good for thejournal’s future. Personally, I’m well aware what I’m up to here, Im’ve a thick enough skin, but the fun’s wearing off. Same old comments by the same old people on the same old issues, all either trying to sound “smarter-than-thou” or “more offensive-than-thou”. It’s getting boring and it alienates any new blood from joining, so it’s not going to expand.

Damocles – given the above, I reckon it’s time to take my leave. So it’s goodbye from

HAL 9000
Z?
JTHM
Karswell
Klaus Störtebeker
Nikolas Koehler

I may surface again of things pick up… Watch out for the unbalanced, statistically at least a few must be as defective as they come across.

You’re complaining about people with multiple names and you have six?

Nothing wrong with multiple accounts, just a lot wrong with using multiple accounts concurrently to gang up on a single individual.

One thing I’ve been able to check by using multiple accounts is that, in the majority of cases, regular commenters judge and form an opinion on comments based on who posted the comment, and not on the actual content of the comment. The same comment, phrased only slightly differently, receives a very different reception when posted from one account then from another. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you post, in most cases certain commenter’s opinions are already pre-defined.

Well that’s a massive shock.

HAL 9000, you’re getting too worked about this and drawing some invalid inferences. I think it’s pretty funny that you had all those accounts. I wouldn’t have guessed that Nikolas Koehler, Karswell and Z? were one and the same. It’s interesting that you got different reactions to the same comment, but context is everything – the same comment on the same story reviewed by the same people? Hardly scientific, eh?

a good kick up the arse, bring back corporal punishment!

There needs to be much more education on bullying. It’s one of those terms that most people think they understand, when in reality most don’t have a clue.

Sometimes a person who is a victim of vicious bullying lashes out at the bully leading to the bully being mistaken for the victim and the victim the bully. More often than not, a bully will be a more popular person than the victim and might have multiple people ready to back up their story, while the victim has noone.

Feigning the victim is a classic bullying tactic. Sometimes bullies in the workplace or elsewhere will go as far as to use anti-bullying policies against their victim.

To identify who the bully is in a given scenario, you have to look at who has the power. The person claiming victimhood with 5 of his friends all backing up his story is the one with the power. The girl sobbing in the corner as all of her friends gather around to offer their support… and attack the accused, is the one with the power.

Bullying isn’t just about the big kid in the playground and nor is it limited to school life.

My best friend and i have known each other since our early schooldays. We are both small enough lads . I remember someone once starting to give him a hard time. But he is the type of bloke who wouldn’t have it. He told the guy trying to bully him what he would do, if he carried on. So the bully pushed him kept at him. Needless to say my mate made good on his promise. Now i don’t condone his behaviour now that Im an adult. But it stopped this bully in his tracks. I know not every child is like this also.

@ RP – wonderful example to give. Respond to verbal violence with physical violence. I can see the school system adopting this immediately.

so some small amount of physical discipline amounts to physical violence? when i was a child i was slapped when i misbehaved, it made me have some fear (not terror) of my elders, the kids now have no fear at all and are smart arse little terrorists, you cant say anything to them, ill tell you what, we are now seeing the product of this new system, lets see how much worse it gets

Revolting Peasant, while some bullies could probably do with a slap there are a lot of studies done into the effects of corporal punishment on children, and it doesn’t work.

Moreover potential negative effects of it on one’s ability to think criticially is shown with the inevitable “Sure my mam gave me a big slap every time and I turned out grand”, which somehow invalidates all the actual scientific research which shows, by law of averages, that it does not help.

you just agreed with leigh, when a bully has no fear they will not stop being a bully, children do not deserve a slap every time they do something wrong, but bullies deserve a slap every time they bully

same reason the whole internet isn’t closed over the child pornography on it. same reason you don’t close pubs where people get drunk and start fights on the street.

as long as the site isn’t actively promoting bullying or facilitating hatred, its not responsible for the actions of its users.

Ciara, if any medium is being used for bullying, the bully is at fault, not the medium. If a child was being bullied by cruel notes being passed around a school, you wouldn’t ban paper and pens. It comes down to parenting. Children need to be brought up in a loving home and be taught respect and kindness as basic rules for living. Parents also need to make a concious effort to understand the services their children are using and to monitor their child’s online conduct closely.

Just to clarify, from 1st hand experience from 20 years in the service industry business,
the fact is that if you allow an environment in your public house to exist where fights, assault, and anti social behavior regularly occur,
you can indeed loose your licence and be shut down for good,
even if the occurrences are outside the doors of your establishment.

Some publicans run their businesses more responsibly than others.
Some people do their job more responsibly than others.
Some people run their businesses over and above the minimum requirements of the state.
Some people do their job over and above the minimum requirements of the state.
Some people just care a lot more than others.
We can learn a lot from these people.

Not all public houses are the same.
Not all schools are the same.
Not all mediums are the same.

This very pretty young girl for example. Will any person spend one day in jail for assaulting her mentally and causing her to snap and take her own life? I think not

Here
Here
Mary
I would love to see a system where teachers and parents who really care
and who really love what they do
had more say in the way things are evolving.

You won’t believe this Damocles but I did read somewhere recently that bullies actually go on to good careers due to their confidence and general “I’m better than you attitude”, which seems to be recognised in the working world. Kinda peed me off reading it.
Can’t find the link to it though, apologies.
The victims of bullies though, I’d like to think I’m a valuable member of society! :)