How to train a bully

So like all schools, my kids' school is half-public half-private. This means they run constant fund raisers. Of course, if they want to change the system long term, they need to be doing letter writing campaigns to increase school funding, which requires hiring a lobbyist instead of doing bake sales, helps every school instead of just your own, but whatever.

But let's go back to bullying - because like whatever school your kid goes to, mine did a big anti-bully campaign, which involved a lot of awareness that bullying is bad, including a poster contest. However, the concept of WHAT IS BULLYING is completely lost.

Let's take the current fund raiser - a walk-a-thon. I'm all for having the kids walk around outside. But in order to get money from the parents, the school has told all the kids that if they get 100% participation in a class, they get a Popsicle party. So essentially we are TRAINING THE KIDS TO BEND TO PEER PRESSURE.

Bullying, as all of you experienced it in school, is not a one-on-one situation. It is invariably a result of how kids form groups, and how peer pressure works. The bully always has a crew of people around them standing in a circle watching as they do their work. Nobody wants to raise their voice to protest.

This means that inadvertently, when we teach kids the massive value of conformity with sugary sweets it will lead only to bullying that is not stopped by even the BEST poster.