Comments

Interesting - no loops, no feedback. You think of some solutions, think of what would happen, but there's nothing about going back and revising.

And of course it's all terribly abstract. There's nothing in here about how you might actually come up with some solutions.

It's like that post you linked to where the guy said that kids should be taught problem-solving methods, not algebra, when algebra is of course a powerful problem-solving method. There seems to be a impulse at schools not to teach problem-solving methods.

-- TracyW - 23 Jun 2006

That's an excellent point.

I didn't even pick up on it, which I think is interesting.

I'd be willing to bet that the reason I didn't pick up on it is that I've been "trained" - unwillingly so - in the essence of character education, which is obedience to authority.

I have never, not once, seen a character education program look for solutions. Kids are taught to look for motives (other people's motives); they're taught to look for responses.

They are never, ever, told to evaluate whether or not their response worked.

I believe that's because character education itself does not work (for the most part).

If anyone were to ask whether No Putdowns works he would find that it makes matters worse. No Putdowns tells victims of bullying not to respond, but instead to tell an adult what the bullier has done.

Telling may be OK; I don't know.

But any effective anti-bullying program teaches the victim to "push back."

That's critical.

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 Jun 2006

Well what can adults do to stop bullying by themselves?

-- TracyW - 24 Jun 2006

wait!

I just saw your comment & I've lost the thread - what are you asking? (if you're still around, that is...)

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Jul 2006

What I'm asking is that if a kid tells an adult that the kid is being bullied out of sight of teachers, how is the adult meant to stop it?

Apart from teaching the kid to push back of course.

There have been various disasters in NZ where a kid's parents knew that the kid was being bullied but they couldn't get the bullying to stop.

-- TracyW - 03 Jul 2006

What I'm asking is that if a kid tells an adult that the kid is being bullied out of sight of teachers, how is the adult meant to stop it?

Well, they don't, really. They look real concerned and they talk amongst themselves and then nothing happens. I just went through this myself and there were 3 witnesses. The "bully" waved a knife on top of everything else. Nothing was done.

-- SusanS - 03 Jul 2006