We’ve already talked about school and how we can change it in the past. But today I want to discuss a specific topic related to school: bullying.
As a neurodivergent person, I’ve had my own share of bullies pick on me in the past, two of which I was lucky not to get into physical fights with. There are so, so many people who have had even worse experiences with bullying.
In school, children/adolescents pretty much have to be around each other, making it more difficult to deal with bullying.
How can socialism deal with this issue?
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While socialism does have any specific doctrine for dealing with bullying, a lot of bullying stems from reactionary sentiments and ideas e.g. racism, ableism, classism etc., so by fighting those you’d be naturally fighting the causes of bullying. Social Darwinistic modes of thinking are fundamentally incompatible with socialism/communism.
Yeah, as a neurodivergent person too, I also faced bullying and it was fucking horrible.
I can see bullying still being an issue on the first generation of people living in a socialist society, but as the individualistic ideology starts fading in favor of a more collective one, it will probably become much less of an issue.
That being said, it’s probably a good idea for said society to actually teach people how to be parents, teach professionals how to deal with bullying at school, etc. I always found weird how school never teaches kids this stuff in my country. If we learned at some point in the educational system how to parent, it would probably lead to a much healthier family relationships in general on society.
There’s also other stuff that can and should be done, like teaching about neurodivergent people, about limits, respect, empathy, etc.
One thing is for certain tho, I cannot see bullying stopping under capitalism.
CW: bullying case that lead to death
Just recently a 13 year old autistic boy died from health complications after being physically bullied in a school in the state of São Paulo here in Brasil and not receiving the proper medical care after being dismissed multiple times by medical professionals that only prescribed some medication. There are videos of the kid crying in pain and having difficulty breathing. This case is utterly fucking revolting and shows how deep bullying is ingrained in our society, specially since the school knew and did absolutely nothing, there are reports of parents contacting the directors on multiple occasions about bullying happening in that school, and nothing ever happened. The toilet he was beaten in was called “the toilet of death” for fuck’s sake.
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I don’t see this as a question about socialism so much, and if it were then I’d say it lacks specificity. It’s a question about a hypothetical socialism in an unspecified society with unspecified history & material conditions. You could look into how existing AES’s deal with it, but again I don’t see this as a socialism-specific thing, and what past & present AESes did won’t necessarily translate directly. It might be up to the concrete—not abstract—proletariat, through democratic centralism, to decide how to deal with it, hopefully with input from specialists in child education and child psychology.
The main reason why some children are bullies has to do with the prevalence of abusive parents, usually. So to fight against this trend is to implement collective day care which would have professionals taking care of children for the large part of their early life instead of parents who are not trained to do so.
i never though about that, i will guess that when comradery relations become the norm instead of capitalist all against all war that we live and other stuff such as the ideal of masculinity be surpassed then bullying will cease
having really small class sizes, like ten or fewer per teacher, would go a long way.
The death penalty; execution by firing squad.
You’re just like me fr
As a ~~ rightist ~~ moderate, I say too harsh
We should obviously send them to gulags… They can redeem themselves through such work… /s
I was joking. I am somebody who does not see the point in speculating on the specifics of the communist future, so I amused myself by writing something outrageous as a response.
Well, I was joking too… sorry if I didn’t make it clear (this ain’t no brush against ye)…
Scientifically, broadly speaking. I can’t speak specifically because I’m not an expert in child sociology and I don’t know how a theoretical future state might handle things, nor how people might behave in a future state.
But look to initiatives taken in current socialist states (well, most states, really). A problem comes to light, experts are called in, a plan is discussed then voted on then enacted. After some amount of time the results are assessed and any needed adjustments can be made.
I feel like my comment is so vague as to not be saying anything. But the gist I’m trying to get at is that a key component of scientific socialism as a methodology is constant analysis, constant dialectical engagement with the real world, a process of synthesizing theory and practice into praxis, moving abstract notions into concrete results. Universalities are a starting point that get honed down by specificities.
Not to deter anyone from voicing lived experiences, nor silence discussion. Both are essential to developing theories that can be tested. There’s a limit to how far we can get with conjecture about a future world, but the ideas may help us think about how to engage currently.
I strongly suspect the prison- and factory-like conditions :foucalt-madness: of schools contribute to violent norm-enforcing behavior. The strict hierarchical division between the authoritative “knowledge giver” and the supposedly empty-minded “receptacle of knowledge” as well.
Freir’s Pedagogy if the Oppressed may tangentially be relevant to this topic, although I don’t remember specifics.
I feel like my comment is so vague as to not be saying anything
Nah, I get your meaning. I understand wanting to grapple with the issue as it impacts a lot of people now and will in the future if not addressed, but there’s only so much you can do speculating about a future socialist project and it may not be the case that one solution would work for every school, even within the same socialist state.
We can certainly take an ideological position, such as that bullying is unacceptable, that it would be the responsibility of the state and the local community, and would need to be worked toward getting rid of entirely. But without being able to act on it now at a specific school, the most valuable first step probably would be looking at past efforts to eliminate bullying in existing projects, socialist or otherwise. Edit: As well as being clear on what is considered to be bullying, what is not, how something crosses over from being a mutual dislike or dispute to bullying and what are the needed differences in response to that, if relevant. Investigation is key.
Punishment time but unironically.
I think the question will be entirely open under socialism, because if a lot of better school structures are not viable under capitalism, it doesn’t mean that capitalist-compatible education models will instantly be abolished.
I think that making schools as stress free and interesting as possible would take care of most casual bullying. Then more educated staff to deal with extreme cases implying specific conditions might take care of the rest.
That’s just my guess though, don’t quote me on that
Socialist culture and eliminating wealth gap.
It’s very hard to tell since it’s hard to think how the schooling system would be and probably would be different based on the local culture, but what I know is that a socialist society has much more incentive to handle this problem with the deserved seriousness, and the fact that the discussions to decide such measures would include the local population I trust that the issue will be contended too, but there is no silver bullet complex problems need complex solutions.
Bullying is a symptom.
A properly funded and supported education system would be able to determine the cause of any instance of bullying.
A competent government that cares about its people would be able to respond to any call from the education system to address an underlying problem.
