[datagramm]

On the home-schooling argument. I'm not saying you shouldn't home school your kids, but in my opinion avoiding bullies is not the best reason to do so. I can understand that people want to protect their kids, but I think it's much more effective to teach them to deal with it rather than just avoiding it.

I think it's incredibly short sighted to think that bullying just stops once school ends. People just learn to deal with it through years of practice. Learning to deal with crap like this is an incredibly valuable life skill and if you don't learn it at school you're going to have to learn it later in life. Sure, kids can be a lot more cruel than adults, but delaying the inevitable solves nothing.

I went to a state school in the north of England which could be described as 'rough' at best. Like many geeks I never really fitted in and was the subject of some fairly severe bullying at times. Like most people that were bullied (and anecdotal evidence would suggest that most people were bullied at one time or another) I got through it and never looked back. As soon as I gave up trying to fit in (and even started going out of my way not to fit in) people respected me a little more for it and life got easier.

Not that I want to tell people how they they should raise their kids here. I don't even have any kids of my own. But having been a child for a number of years I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the matter.