I never realised I was bullied until I left school. I never felt like I was bullied, I knew people didn’t like me and I had been the victim of being physical bulling but it never actually occurred to me that I was being bullied. It was just a part of going to school that I had to put up with.
I was never popular when I was at school right the way through from primary to secondary, but I guess pretty much all the bullying I experienced happened in secondary. When I was in second year, about 13 years old, I was commonly described as a “goth” because I like alternative music and wore skinny jeans and a lot of black. This mainly cause a problems because the large majority of my school were neds (The wiki article isn’t great in my opinion but it should give you rough idea), so anyone who is different from them is a target for them, I knew people who “swapped sides” so speak in order to avoid the bullying. I never changed because I always thought, “This is me, why should I change?”
Bullying wise I’ve been spat on, had chewing gum in my hair, all kinds of things thrown in my direction, sly comments, water poured over me in home ec and probably a lot more but I just can’t remember anymore. Writing this out makes me wonder how I never knew I was bullied...
The most direct kind of bullying I remember ever happening to me happened during, I think, my third year. In Scotland everyone has to take RME (Religious and Moral Education, which obviously didn’t work) and most people don’t want to be there. Unfortunately for me two of the most disruptive neds in my year happened to be in the same class as me and a few of my “goth” friends. I remember dreading going to that class because none of the teachers were any good at controlling or keeping their pupils safe. There is no story to this attack other than that I was sitting in class talking to my friend when he jumped off the table behind me and kicked me in the back. Everyone saw. The teacher saw. But nothing was ever done. I feel this speaks more about my schools attitude to this kind of behavior, like there was no point in doing anything because they’d do it anyway. I mean one winter a large group of were standing outside and we were having balls of ice with stones and all sorts in them thrown at us, I remember sitting for ages waiting to see the head teacher about it and then being told to just go to class.
Now that I’ve left school I haven’t actually experienced any bullying and it’s pretty great. I know it sounds stupid but being able to sit in a room and not having to worry about what people think or checking that all my belongs are with me or being scared that something is going to be thrown at me is pretty great. It makes life easier.
That's really awful what you had to go through back then, it's always worse when violence takes place in front of a teacher, and in a class about morals?
ReplyDeleteA lot of teachers in a lot of schools do nothing about bullying, sometimes they don't see it as serious enough to care or some teachers are actually afraid of the students themselves. It's pretty horrible to be a victimized student surrounded by those sorts of adults who are meant to be role models.
It's great that it's stopped since you've left school, once you finally make it out of mandated educational systems the worst of them seem to disappear.
Oh wow, that is some intense bullying. It's ridiculous that you had to deal with that, and a shame that even in front of adults that are supposed to be keeping kids safe, those kind of actions aren't punished.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Sarah - the beauty of being out of school systems is that you can generally avoid people who attempt to bully you, and while there will always be Mean Girls (/gratuitous pop culture reference) at least in the adult world, any sort of physical violence has swift and stern repercussions (i.e. jail).