[maceurt]

I agree with you. If you are a child then you are almost entirely dependent on your home and school environment for cues on social development. If a child is bullying another kid then you can almost guarantee it is a problem with their home or with the school.

[zozbot234]

Well, guess what's the biggest "problem with (the) school" - the inability to get away from a bad environment. And you can't fix that with counseling alone - you actually have to figure out who the worst offenders are, and punish them consistently. The more you can deprive those folks of the social influence among their peers that's what they crave most, the better for everyone else.

[maceurt]

"The more you can punish people who are broken socially the more they learn"

Punishing a kid is not going to help them get over the fact that their mom abuses them or they don't have a dad or that they are not safe in their neighborhood, etc.

Punishment is good, but it can further traumatize or ingrain a kid into their bad behavior. Speaking from personal experience, I remember in elementary school I got very harshly punished and shamed for bullying a kid in my class. After that year I lost almost all my friends, and I was honestly traumatized. I still don't have many or any friends if I am being honest, and I think the situation would have been a lot different if they sat me down and talked to me instead of making me feel like a criminal.

Punishment does not really work to curb bullying, and often does more harm than good. Like your not going to have violent bullying for the most part, but you can't stop other types of bullying with punishment.

[zozbot234]

It doesn't have to be "very harsh" punishment. What's more important is that it be consistent.

[grimjack00]

In my experience as the target of bullying, talking to the bully doesn't really work, either.

[maceurt]

As a target of bullying and a bully myself, teacher intervention or punishment rarely worked either. I was talking more therapy or something like that, or investigation into school environment/ classroom.

[philpem]

The bigger problem is what it does to the victims.

If you have no possible escape from the situation, you end up falling into learned helplessness -- nothing I do can affect it, so why fight it. Maybe if I pretend to be dead, the predator will get bored with me and find some other prey...