You said not to punish them. How do you intend to teach them empathy if all they learn is that they can get away with doing what they want?
Because punishment shouldn’t be the focus. It shouldn’t be “you did bad thing therefore bad thing happens to you”. I’m not saying it has to be a totally positive experience for the bully, bully might even have to get their teeth rearranged for them, but what I take issue with is the institutional, top-down, carceral mentality of punishment. The focus should be on making the victim whole and making sure the bully doesn’t bully again, not that the bully gets some requisite amount of pain and suffering.
The adults who focused their ire on me anytime in stood up for myself, instead of having my back or telling the bullies to knock it off. No, they just told me I’m supposed to be better than them, so I’d get in just as much if not more trouble than they did, because “held to a higher standard” or some shit.
Yeah I’m absolutely not saying that. If you beat the shit out of someone bullying you, you are generically in the right as far as I’m concerned.
So no, don’t let bullies off the hook because you think “punishment” is a naughty word.
Again, that’s absolutely not what I am advocating. Quite the opposite, actually. I am advocating that we treat bullies like people capable of change. Hold them accountable for their actions. And if that process is painful the bully, so be it, but inflicting pain and suffering on the bully should not be the primary goal. When we do this, the bully simply learns to pick better targets.
It seems like you’re assuming I have a retributive approach to justice, and I think that’s where this disagreement is coming from. I don’t though. I don’t think bullies should be punished just for the sake of punishing them. That wouldn’t be effective.
Sure, the focus should be on making the victim whole and making the bully stop being a bully. The first part of that I think is beyond the scope of this discussion. I assume we would agree that it would take some research-based approach likely involving counseling and social support. But I’m not here to hash out those details because it’s not my expertise.
As far as making the bullying stop bullying though, that requires either extrinsic interventions, which would be reactive and circumstantial at best, or giving the bully an intrinsic motivation to stop bullying. Most people are motivated by the desire to be a good person and treat others with kindness. Those people aren’t bullies in the first place. Bullies don’t have that motive.
So what could motivate a bully to stop bullying? Well, you wouldn’t bribe them with nice rewards for good behavior. That would be unfair to people who were never bullies in the first place, and to the bully’s victims.
Psychologically speaking, extrinsic motivators fall into two broad categories: rewards and punishments.
So how is that not bringing us full circle? Because the punishment here isn’t strictly retributive. The point isn’t to get back at them because “fair’s fair.” The point is to force them to stop bullying by making it more painful to them to continue bullying than they find worth the intrinsic reward they feel from bullying.
Maybe it sounds crass to say we need to cognitively/behaviorally condition bullies to stop bullying, but what else can you do besides asking them nicely to stop? What do you do when they refuse?
Because punishment shouldn’t be the focus. It shouldn’t be “you did bad thing therefore bad thing happens to you”. I’m not saying it has to be a totally positive experience for the bully, bully might even have to get their teeth rearranged for them, but what I take issue with is the institutional, top-down, carceral mentality of punishment. The focus should be on making the victim whole and making sure the bully doesn’t bully again, not that the bully gets some requisite amount of pain and suffering.
Yeah I’m absolutely not saying that. If you beat the shit out of someone bullying you, you are generically in the right as far as I’m concerned.
Again, that’s absolutely not what I am advocating. Quite the opposite, actually. I am advocating that we treat bullies like people capable of change. Hold them accountable for their actions. And if that process is painful the bully, so be it, but inflicting pain and suffering on the bully should not be the primary goal. When we do this, the bully simply learns to pick better targets.
It seems like you’re assuming I have a retributive approach to justice, and I think that’s where this disagreement is coming from. I don’t though. I don’t think bullies should be punished just for the sake of punishing them. That wouldn’t be effective.
Sure, the focus should be on making the victim whole and making the bully stop being a bully. The first part of that I think is beyond the scope of this discussion. I assume we would agree that it would take some research-based approach likely involving counseling and social support. But I’m not here to hash out those details because it’s not my expertise.
As far as making the bullying stop bullying though, that requires either extrinsic interventions, which would be reactive and circumstantial at best, or giving the bully an intrinsic motivation to stop bullying. Most people are motivated by the desire to be a good person and treat others with kindness. Those people aren’t bullies in the first place. Bullies don’t have that motive.
So what could motivate a bully to stop bullying? Well, you wouldn’t bribe them with nice rewards for good behavior. That would be unfair to people who were never bullies in the first place, and to the bully’s victims.
Psychologically speaking, extrinsic motivators fall into two broad categories: rewards and punishments.
So how is that not bringing us full circle? Because the punishment here isn’t strictly retributive. The point isn’t to get back at them because “fair’s fair.” The point is to force them to stop bullying by making it more painful to them to continue bullying than they find worth the intrinsic reward they feel from bullying.
Maybe it sounds crass to say we need to cognitively/behaviorally condition bullies to stop bullying, but what else can you do besides asking them nicely to stop? What do you do when they refuse?