This American Life recently re-aired an episode that is quite apropos. Titled The Cruelty of Children, it has a Dave Sedaris story about homosexuality and bullying and then a really disturbing piece of short fiction about children refusing to help a man in a well.
But the really interesting part is the third act (starts at about 46:50). It's the story of a teacher who instituted a rule that actually reduced bullying and cruel behavior in a Kindergarten class. I'm tearing up a bit just thinking about some of the stories she tells, especially concerning one girl who might have been a bully, and how the rule continued to guide her later in her life. The segment is only 12 minutes long. I just listened to it a second time, and I find myself teary-eyed again.
The rule? It was simple: you can't say you can't play. If someone wants to join your game, you have to let them.
Now this was the kind of bullying I experienced the most: "you can't sit with us, you can't play, you can't be here." Compared to the stuff that a lot of other people had to put up with, it seems so minor. I did have friends, I just never saw them at school: they were either too old, too young, from another town, or not on the same academic level as me. Still, I had them and saw them maybe once every couple months. And the really bad stuff only lasted about eight years, from fifth to twelfth grade. (I should have realized what I was in for when my Gifted program teacher told me in 6th grade that 'College will be Better.') Still, to this day I have trouble sitting down at a table without an explicit invitation, inviting someone to lunch, or tagging along with a group activity. A lot of the time I muscle through it, but my default assumption in any social situation is that I'm annoying and intrusive.
This broadcast is over 10 years old, and I'm honestly shocked that the results of this experiment haven't been used more extensively since then. It's such a simple idea, and in this lady's experiment it worked. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff out there that works, it's just not prioritized like it should be.
heresiarch @ 217
I think we just read Rikibeth's posts differently, sorry for flipping out. I do want to address something in your new post.
"This is where bullies come from: by learning the skills to fight back, you learn to become them. I don't think I'm the only one here who had that experience. It's not something I'd wish on any child, not unless it was absolutely necessary. Even then, I'd rather change the rules so that it's never necessary."
I find there is one specific difference between what you describe here and the ideals of self defense: in self defense you never initiate the behavior. Learning pro-active violence or pro-active verbal aggression is not the same as learning that such tools are only to be used reactively. I too learned to be sarcastic, but I do not share your experience, I do not feel it made me a bully. I never developed it as a reflex. I learned both physical and verbal defense mechanisms but inherent in those lessons was one principle: "This skill for defense only. To use it on offense dishonors you and your masters." While that was only explicitly laid out for me during my training in the hitting-people arts, I generalized it to my skills in the sarcastic arts.
I have two friends. One of my friends I banter sarcastically with, one I've pretty much never insulted. The friend I make fun of once asked me why I left the other friend alone entirely
"Because she never started it." was my reply. And it's true.
I am also quite self-deprecating, but I was certainly self-deprecating before I learned to be sarcastic or learned physical self-defense. I know a lot of people who lack any capacity for sarcasm or verbal abuse who are really self-deprecating. The most self-insulting people I know couldn't mock a fly without apologizing for ten minutes. I'm not willing to correlate self hatred and ripping on yourself with learned verbal abuse. I'm not saying that isn't your root cause, but I don't think preventing kids from learning to insult others will make them stop insulting themselves.
And yes, I'd rather live in a world where violence or verbal abuse never came up, or where it was always dealt with by a force for perfect justice, or where kids were just kinder to each other. And while I believe it's possible to work toward that ideal, training kids to live in a fantasy world rather than the real one is very dangerous.
I still remember the breakdown one of my friends had in middle school. It was because she had been taught to always be nice, that being kind to others would almost always beget kindness, and that adults would help in situations where things went wrong. Finding out what the world was really like was devastating. For a long time she believed that she had to be doing something wrong, that if people were being mean to her she must be bad herself.
I think what finally snapped her out of it was someone trotting out the old idea that "Jesus was the nicest guy ever, and a lot of people hated him."
My philosophy is this: teach the kids about how the world is now, but also teach them to be better than average, and teach them to dream for a better future. It's a much more solid plan than teaching kids to live in a fake world that their parents invented.
Kelley McCullough @ 702
I apologize for putting words in your mouth but, to be fair, there was some misunderstanding on both sides when you interpreted my post as supporting your stance. I also haven't slept tonight, so I might be a bit crazier than I normally am. I'll try to be better. What I should have written is this: if someone were to use the method you have proclaimed to be "least bad" they would conclude that Charlotte's books are better than Anne's due to Charlotte's suppression of Anne's work.
I think a the source of our conflict here is that we've both seen various tools of the critical evaluation trade used against works we like in extremely harmful ways. I've primarily seen the bludgeon of "popularity" thrown about to great damage, whereas you've had worse experience at the hands of "literary fiction is good, genre fiction is bad." I've just gotten the impression so far that you were claiming my beating was not as severe as yours, and the club used to beat me was not as bad as the club used to beat you. I'm not saying that you are actually claiming my pain is less, but I hope you can see why I'd be irritated when you say the thing I've had a problem with is less bad than the thing you've had a problem with.
I believe it is possible to come up with a rubric that avoids the pitfalls of both the "literary fic is superior" club and the "popularity" club. I'm trying to finish a proper post on the subject, but I'm going to throw out some vague ideas to give you a sense of what I'm getting at: Instead of straight popularity, let's try a system I'm going to call
Comparative Appeal: a measure where popularity is taken into account but only in cases where the person voting is familiar with both subjects. So you ask people if they've at least attempted to read both LotR and Shannara. If they haven't, their vote is less important in this scheme.
Example: I'm not the biggest fan of LotR, but I actively dislike Shannara. I have tried both, so I can vote in this. My vote goes to LotR.
My friend loves LotR, but refuses to even look at Shannara out of principle. He can't vote in this, or his vote is weighted lower.
This scheme also helps weed out a lot of the "Twilight Outliers" in the bestseller category. A lot of people who like Twilight or the DaVinci Code haven't read a huge number of other books, genre or not. So when you ask "which is better: Twilight or Dracula?" and filter out all the responses from people who have not even tried to read Dracula you'll probably get a better result than from a straight count of books sold. You'll also get better results if you ask "Which is better, the Twilight series or the Night World series?" Both are tweeny vampire lust stories, but everyone I know who has read both prefers Night World. It just wasn't as well marketed, so it has sold far less than Twilight.
I'm not saying this Comparative Appeal system is an ideal measure of whether a book is any good, but I'm saying it's a measure that I believe would yield better results than a straight popularity contest OR a straight categorization of literary versus genre fiction. It took me two minutes to come up with it. Give me a few hours and I can come up with more factors to consider and more tools to use, all of which I think will be less painful than straight popularity or genre identification.
I'm saying that there are a lot of implements out there, a number of which are bad and painful, but not all of them are vicious clubs. There are nerf bats and pillows out there, and I mean to find them.
Joel Polowin @ 213
This is probably not the quote you're thinking of, but it's the one I'm most familiar with:
"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." - Dave Barry
Lila @ 208
Sarcasm and wit are good weapons in many cases, though I agree that they can't be taught. There are a lot of weird solutions to bullying, the problem is that most of them aren't teachable or don't work consistently.
After I completed my post, I thought a little more about the fact that I was considered crazy. Really, the more people thought I was crazy the less people messed with me. Now that I think of it, one of the things that may have caused my "reputation" wasn't violence per se, but a bit of a freak out. In high school I was sick with an undiagnosed thyroid disorder that made me sleepy all the time. A girl called me dumb and lazy, and shoved me in the hall. I screamed "Don't you shove me," and put all my body weight into pushing past her, resulting in both of us stumbling loudly into the lockers nearby. The whole time I was ranting that I was sick and she didn't know me, 'til this girl I barely knew from drama came and offered to walk me to my next class. I still consider that girl to be some kind of crazy angel.
My brother had a similar thing happen to him: in junior high a large group of boys began to constantly call him gay and steal things from him or break his stuff. One day he snapped, punched a kid, and then, after he had punched the kid, burst into tears. The fact that he was crying and the kid he punched was a known bully led to the teachers not even suspending EITHER of them, and the fact that he burst into tears only after punching a guy led to him being thought of as "crazy" by all the bullies. They stopped messing with him after that. I think the crazy idea was far more productive than just the punch; the bullies hit each other all the time, but you don't mess with crazy.
A few younger friends have similar stories that don't involve anything remotely resembling violence. They would just dress really bizarrely and say things that sounded unbalanced and no one would mess with them. I really think this "crazy" thing has legs. Despite the positive effects, neither I nor my brother were "trying" to seem crazy or to manipulate the system in any way. We were just at a breaking point and broke in a way they were totally not expecting.
That's... part of it I think. The bully thinks he knows how the world works, thinks he knows what to expect (tattling, capitulation, bargaining, or defeat). Surprising and confusing him may be enough. Self defense is one way to do this, and I think it may be the most useful simply because it is the most teachable.
Kelly McCullogh @ 695
I'm sorry, but if you read any agreement in my post I must rephrase it because I must have been unclear.
To me "least bad" and "best" are the same concept.
I believe that "popularity" as a judge of quality is, at best, no less bad than many other systems. More likely, using popularity as a judge is significantly worse than a number of other systems I could name.
I believe that any statement which implies that popularity is the "least bad" is incorrect.
I also disagree that popularity over time is the only measure that matters. At the very least I think that is a measure so obscure and open to interpretation as to be useless. It also discourages critical thinking, emotional response, and innovation.
Also, how do you judge popularity over time? The total number of people in all of history who have read a thing? The number of people who have read the thing times the number of years it was in print? If you destroy the language of a native people does that mean all their art is not as great as it once was? The idea that popular art is better and that popularity over time is a good judge of value has been a motivating factor for suppression and destruction of other cultures since time immemorial. If no one remembers the stories of the Pagans or the Jews, the stories of Christianity MUST be better! So destroy all their works and kill their storytellers!
Popularity over time may be a good measure of how influential a work is. But let's look at the Eye of Argon: it is famous and popular BECAUSE it is terrible. It's possible that more people have heard of it than have heard of it than, say, Dunsany's "the Sword of Welleran". I'm unwilling to admit that it is a better story, whether or not it is more popular than the Dunsany.
If preservation and awareness over time is a good rubric (or even a factor that should be weighted equally with other factors) then you should actively discourage anyone from mentioning any bad work, since any time you mention it, read it out loud to your friends, or email it to someone you are MAKING IT GOOD. STOP IT! Every year that we refuse to forget the Eye of Argon, we are valuing it over the works of thousands of great shorty story tellers throughout history! Any time I read a blog about how Twilight teaches bad lessons to young girls I am increasing Twilight's google rank and am causing it to be judged as even higher quality.
Popularity over time also gives censors and destroyers of works more power over literature than any other force. You would argue that Charlotte Bronte's books are better than Anne's because they are more famous: well that largely occurred because Charlotte refused to allow one of Anne's novels to be reprinted after Anne's death. Through her cruel dismissal of her younger sisters' work, Charlotte's work became "better" art.
That idea makes me so mad I could spit. Even if somehow, against all instincts, popularity over time is no worse than any other rubric, the fact that it is used as an excuse to destroy works of art must make it a worse system than most others. In the toolbox that is literary examination, popularity is the dynamite: useful in some cases but easily abused and, more often than not, harmful to what you're trying to accomplish.
I'm still working on a post about what we can use to judge whether something is good, but I wanted to make sure I cleared up any possible confusion about my feelings on "popularity" or even "popularity over time" as a rubric.
heresiarch @ 202
I don't think anyone here is suggesting that violence is a panacea. In fact, Rikibeth wrote the following in her post:
"THEY STOPPED DOING IT. Which no amount of 'ignoring it' or appealing to adult authority had done."
So she TRIED other options and violence was the last resort. No one is saying that violence is the first resort and the default solution, that's a straw man.
If you don't think Rikibeth's solution was appropriate, than what do you think she have done? Put up with being touched inappropriately? Run every time she saw a boy? Dropped out of school? Transferred to another school? All of those solutions give the bully power, let them win, and give them every possible motivation to keep bullying.
I've never had to use violence to defend myself, though I did once use the threat of a slightly less unfair fight to keep a friend from being assaulted. In a similar situation to Rikibeth, my friend was being surrounded by six girls who were angry at her because she talked to the wrong boy. I stepped into the circle and said, brightly, "Are we gonna fight? I wanna fight too!" These six girls looked at my friend, (5'0 and 105lbs) and me (5'2, glasses, a bit chubby) and decided it wasn't worth it. I later wondered if that was because I was generally thought of as a crazy person. It might have been; high school is a lot like prison.
Your suppositions about escalation also neglect one other key factor: most bullies are able to continue doing what they do due to an intricate knowledge of the rules and of what they can get away with. Something that can differentiate a bully from someone simply committing an act of violence is the ability to get away with it for a long period of time. My greatest failure as an authority figure was allowing a bully to remain in the organization and continue bullying based on the fact that she always kept just barely within the rules, and never committed the exact same offense twice where anyone was watching. She had a few dozen probations and last chances before we threw her out, and then we watched her do the exact same rule-skirting with several other organizations.
You say that violence should be the "last resort in a long series." Well, what is that long series for a student in school? I can think of a short series:
1. Ask the person to stop
2. Tell teachers, parents and other authority figures
3. See if it is possible to avoid contact with these people without sacrificing your quality of life
4. Retaliation.
What other steps in there should constitute your "long series?" In cases where the first three choices are non-viable (you are already being physically assaulted in an area where no escape or help is available) is it all right to skip to option 4?
No one is arguing that violence should be the first response. I am willing to argue this: If you can reasonably conclude that you are unlikely to find any other remedy in a given environment it is all right to defend yourself physically. It is also all right to train kids to assess these situations and make decisions based on the probability of other options working.
Do you disagree?
I think my bolded statement above is closer to what those who have told stories of violence working are arguing than your "violence is a panacea" interpretation. Hopefully they will correct me if I am mistaken.
Bah, "one of the best pieces" "an item's quality" I swear I previewed that post half a dozen times before hitting submit. Typos haunt me during late nights.
I am always a bit annoyed with people who propose popularity as the best indicator for "good."
Say that, and you're basically saying that the Twilight Series is one of the best piece of genre fiction written in the past few decades, and definitely the best piece of genre fiction written for girls. I'm going to go right out and say it: any system that judges a book that tells girls they should submit to being controlled by stalking men who are constantly battling impulses to kill them as one of the "best" possible books for girls is a terrible system.
I think it's more valuable intellectually to say that there's no way to judge quality than to say that popularity is the best judge. I'm not saying that popularity and accessibility can't be factors in judging if something is any good, but they're nowhere near the most important factor.
I'm trying to find a similar post I wrote on good vs. bad film. The problem with using sales in that case is even clearer, unless you really think that "Disaster Movie" is better than the vast majority of independent films made every year. It reveals that another serious factor in popularity is the level of marketing and accessibility a thing has... you're basically saying that ten million dollars in saturation advertising add to an items' quality. Look at TV and the absurdity of using popularity as a measure of quality gets even more apparent. If you think that popularity is a good judge of quality there, it means that Fox News is a higher quality network than CNN. Go further, and you'll conclude Rush Limbaugh is a higher quality radio host than Ira Glass and the Big Mac is a higher quality food than a fresh veggie salad... and on and on.
Oh Fluorosphere, in which all knowledge is contained, I seek wisdom and possibly advice.
I'm looking for some online education courses in English and programming. Here's a little background.
I'm on the job hunt again, and find I'm missing a few key pieces in my education. Most notably, I'm a professional writer without an English or Communications degree, and a game designer who is severely lacking in direct programming skills. I do have a BS in Psychology, and I have about five years of experience in writing, development and customer service.
The obvious solution is to take some classes. Some of this stuff I can learn from books or online tutorials, but some things stick better for me with formal instruction. I figure more coursework will help my resume and my confidence, too. There are a few community and state colleges near where I live, but in the next few months I'm going to be out of town a lot - at conferences, workshops and at interviews. This doesn't mesh well with a standard or night school schedule. There's also the chance I'll get a new job even without extra training and move across the country before a standard semester would be over - given all that, I'm really hesitant to try to start normal schooling locally.
Overall, I'm wondering how I can tell if an online program is legitimate and likely to be helpful. There seems to be very little available online for English or creative writing, and I'd really prefer programs that offer some form of useful certification or college credit. I'd like to eventually get some sort of degree in a writing-related discipline, and if I don't get a good job in my field in the next six months I'll likely go back to school and work part time. I'm trying to figure out if I can make any noticeable progress online in the meantime. For programming I'm less focused on getting a degree. Very few jobs I'm looking at require anything beyond basic competency in one or two languages, so I'm mostly looking to just familiarize myself with python, lua, C++ or flash.
I'd be interested in hearing any other thoughts on my situation. Are online degrees generally looked down on? Are non-degree certificates considered worthwhile?
I've asked all my real life friends and googled my heart out, but I haven't been able to find any real answers. Can anyone here shed some light?
@72
A Girl's Guide to Interdimensional Travel
Alice Liddell
Dorothy Gale
Lucy Pevensie
Chihiro Ogino
Coraline Jones
The panel was a bit muddled to start, since no one was entirely sure who was meant to be running things. Coraline complained about the panel title, saying they should rename it "A Guide for Dangerous Explorers." The next few minutes were a bit awkward and unfocused until Lucy remembered something about being a queen and took over as moderator. After that things began to go a bit more smoothly.
I think Coraline was a little surprised when Dorothy introduced herself; she obviously wasn't what was expected. There was a little tension between the two initially (it's possible Coraline may have thought that OZ was easy mode for explorers), but then Alice brought up the subject of cats and the three of them bonded for a bit.
After that the panel became a collaborative discussion on how to tell whether the world you've stumbled into is good or bad and what rules worked the same for both. After hearing everyone else's stories, Coraline seemed relieved that at least the FOOD in her world hadn't been actively dangerous.
Coraline and Chihiro talked a bit about the safety of one's family as motivation for escape, while Dorothy and Lucy talked about the challenges of adjusting to changing family roles and culture shock in long-term extraordinary habitation. Alice was a bit quiet during all this, but in the end made a few very piquant remarks about total isolation and independence.
Unfortunately the panel went long, and Chihiro (who had been fairly quiet thus far) was cut off just as she was starting an interesting thread about how her trip hadn't just been about what she did to the world, but what the world did for her. I think most of the audience would have liked to let her finish, but the panelists for the next sitting were congregating at the back of the room, and Peter and Huck would not stop throwing things.
I hope they put it together again next year... either give it a double block or at least some flex time at the end. I'm not sure what happened in the chaos between panels, but I think I saw all the panelists slipping through an unmarked door in a disused hallway, one after the other.
Women and the Grey Market
In challenging times, opportunities can hard to find. It's even more difficult to maintain personal integrity and respectability while operating outside the accepted system. These successful women talk about running their own businesses and breaking down traditional barriers.
Carmen Sandiego*
Selina Kyle
Lina Inverse
Anita Blake
While not terribly talkative herself, Ms Sandiego proved an excellent moderator, managing to subtly introduce new topics of conversation and guide the discussion to interesting new areas. Ms Kyle spoke a lot about the importance of both independence and networking, while Lina explained the basics of building a good team and keeping them motivated through difficult situations. Anita seemed pleased to be on the panel initially, but as time went on she started interjecting comments that implied she felt like a bit of a martyr, appearing on a panel with people whose enterprises were far more questionable than hers. For a while it looked like a fight might break out between her and Ms Kyle, but Lina managed to defuse the situation with some self-deprecating humor and closed the panel out with a few good stories about saving the world.
All in all the panel was a success, but the con is looking to add a few more panelists for next year. (Recommendations would be greatly appreciated.)
@#10 Fragano
Simple: just have the panel moderated by Turtle, and everything will be fine.
There are a few stories with Anansi and Turtle, and somehow turtle always manages to make things come out even (or at least escape unscathed). I'm really fond of him... the trickster who never starts anything, but will finish it.
Sometimes I wonder why we don't have a huge government incentive plan for people going to med school. If med school seemed much more affordable than, say, law school I think we'd have a lot more doctors.
Caroline @515
The devil's mirror was part of the Snow Queen story, and the pieces could lodge in your eyes or your heart. The former making you see everything as bad and ugly, the latter turning your heart to ice.
Sarah S. @441
As a kid I was really fond of the Random House book of Fairy Tales. I credit it with my lifelong love of the Snow Queen, which is often neglected in other compilations; that story has the most awesome female protagonist of any fairy tale, in my opinion. Half the illustrations are in black and white, and it has an illustration every two or three pages rather than every page, but that's still more than normal.
I had a few others I really liked as a kid, but I can't remember the titles and my old library is mostly still at my parents' house.
Regarding eating on the street in Japan, I'll second joXn @195. I went to two different Japanese universities, and in both my Introduction to Japanese Manners seminars it was made clear that eating and drinking while walking was rude. Buying food or drink on the street and eating or drinking it right where you were standing (or immediately nearby) was not. It was also fine to buy food and take it to the park and eat on the swings... as long as you didn't eat while you were actively walking. I developed the habit of buying bottled drinks and only taking sips when I was stopped somewhere and had stepped out of the way of traffic, closing the bottle and returning it to my bag when I started walking again. Most of the Japanese kids I knew would buy a can or bottle of juice and drink the entire thing standing next to the machine, immediately disposing of the can in the invariably provided adjacent receptacle.
Another thing that encourages this practice is that trash cans are usually located immediately near the place where you buy the food and nowhere else anywhere around. I remember walking six blocks looking for a recycling bin once when I was in a hurry and hadn't yet gotten into the habit of buying resealable bottles.
On the breakage of things: when I was little we had a set of old-fashioned glass Christmas ornaments. These weren't your modern shatter-proof kind and, over the years, some of them broke. These very large plain blue bulbs purchased long before I was born were some of my favorites. There were three when I was little, then two, then one. Finally the last one broke, probably around when I was twelve or thirteen. I put on gloves, got out a decorative glass bottle, and put as many of the shards as I could in the jar. I broke the big piece into a few smaller pieces to get them to fit in. I still have that jar somewhere, and it looks very pretty and strange.
I always mean to get into quilting so I can do the same with beloved old clothes. Maybe someday I will.
I'd say that it is significantly less troubling and disturbing than the Dark Knight was, both the violence and the subject matter. However, that's just my opinion. I came out of the Dark Knight thinking "that movie was a trial. I'll probably never watch it again." I came out of Watchmen thinking "I'll probably end up seeing that again soon."
The only thing that might be troubling are some fairly explicit sex scenes.
As you can see from the rest of this thread, mileage may vary. But I'm mildly squeamish and easy to bother, and none of this really got to me, except possibly small bits of the Rorschach Origin.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 27 |
| 2008 | 71 |
| 2007 | 76 |
| 2006 | 18 |
| 2005 | 17 |
| 2004 | 19 |
| 2003 | 3 |
Total: 231 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Leah Miller:
Show all comments by Leah Miller.