If you were a headmaster (or principal) how would you solve the problem of bullies in school?

Reconditioning, providing other skills, finding what’s missing psychologically and treating them the way they should have been treated as opposed to the manner in which the bullying happened in the first place.

Bullies are bullied one must counteract that in order to correct it by offering the children it’s polar opposite as an unseen and unacknowledged variable as a solution.

“Everything has it’s own opposite. If you want to change the energy of a situation, polarize it to it’s opposite condition.”

That being said, it is a very difficult thing to do because everyone wants to punch a bully in the nuts. But it only perpetuates and reinforces the negative behavior.

Beatings, manual labor, and indentured servitude.

It was the football question that prompted me to think of this one. I would start by making gym class elective and perhaps even doing away with organized sports altogether. If they want to play sports, there’s junior leagues outside of school they can play in.

Go to the source: their parents. I don’t know exactly how it’d be solved, but I have a feeling this is a damn good place to start.

make all the popular kids clean the toilets ~
In my experience, being bullied, the bullies were always the teachers pets, The “Good kids.”
Maybe if they paid half as much attention to the kids that didn’t shine the problem would solve itself.

What @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard said.

By all means, get rid of sports, that will stop people from being mean to each other. (hysterical laughing that lasts 20 minutes)

Bullies are a fact of life. There is no “cure”. There are so many different brands of “therapist” out there these days that I think society is really starting to believe they are as weak as they think.

As twisted as it might seem, bullies make kids stronger. They give them a reason to stand up for themselves! Or… alternatively.. they can grow up having never stood up for themselves and wallow away in self pity for the rest of their days as “the victim”.

Free homeschooling.

If I were the headmistress, I would assume ours to be a private school. In which case, the demerit system could be used to reduce privileges of those who bully. I would have regular written correspondence with parents about the positive and negative behavior of their off-spring. School materials would describe the honor code and make it very clear that bullying will not be tolerated and serious, habitual offenders will be asked to leave the school.

I’d have an anonymous box where students could leave the name of a bully. The students and teachers know who causes the trouble. They just don’t have it documented. This would help.flag the problem kids early.
I would also install obvious cameras in the hallways as well as stealth cameras that recorded activities outside of the building. The recordings would not be viewed unless there was a problem. If a bully attacked anyone I would assist the victims with legal aid so they could file a civil suits quickly. In fact, I’d insist upon it. I’m sure a neighborhood lawyer would do one case for free and have everything set up so procedures and documents were in place for the next case. Legal fees would be recovered from the bully’s parents.
Prosecute one bully swiftly and severely and the word will get around fast.

I’d explain the bullying policy when kids enter the school, in the manual, and whenever there was a serious incident. I would invite everyone to report bullying to me, and to promise it would be dealt with.

However I think that a certain degree of kids messing and resisting messing with is part of growing up.

The things I think require crackdowns are when people are complaining about it and not just to get someone in trouble; and when someone is being hurt or really distressed; or when the bullies are becoming sociopaths. Sociopaths and their parents get mandatory interviews and likely therapy as recommended by a full psychiatrist who has empathy and an eye for anti-social personality disorder, possibly prescribing bio-energetic therapy. Kids who are becoming real thugs and actually hurting other students and/or bringing weapons to school, getting into gangs and so on would get one very scary warning from me (at most) and then referred to the police.

For small children, an old-fashioned punishment, standing in the corner with a dunce cap on. Nothing a bully hates more than being the object of ridicule. And, who’s he/she going to take it out on? The teacher?

Zero tolerance, constant sensitivity trainings for students AND parents.

I used to regularly study martial arts, and I once got this idea that martial arts would be an excellent thing to teach everyone. It would inspire confidence and promote a healthy lifestyle. If a kid bullied anyone, he would be removed from martial arts study for months, maybe a year or two. Everyone else would progress, and the bully would lose physical power comparatively. Kids wouldn’t want to fight as much since they all knew that others were trained for many years in self defense.

Let’s say you have the option of continuing for the rest of your life or stopping after high school. I think a society full of adults of varying martial arts skill levels will have lower crime in general. Are you going to pull a knife on anyone that you know has had at least 12 years of training, maybe 30? Everyone would be deceptively badass.

I know this isn’t a perfect solution, but I think it’s a decent start.

Public humiliation, largely centered around stocks, fruit & veg, throwing & nakedness.
Oh & i’d have stern words with their parents too.

I don’t know how you can legislate problems like this. It is like making mean people illegal. What do you do with the bully if the talking and sensitivity training doesn’t work? You still have a bully on your hands. Talking to parents probably is fruitless, they probably already know their kid is a bully and either don’t know what to do about it or don’t care.

The world is full of hateful people, at what age do you stop talking to parents? And what do you do to adult bullies, put them in jail?

It seems to me, you just have to find a way to deal with them yourself. You either put up with the behavior, or you give it back. Or avoid the bullies, that is what my mom said to do.

@digitalimpression That’s discusting, but honestly, it figures.

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html

“Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University.”

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Excellent answer.

I would make it directly linked with whether or not they can progress to the next grade.
If they are not mature enough then they should not move up.
While this is some of the basis for these decisions in K-3, it should be be K-12.
Conduct is graded but has only been used as a measure and means for suspension. Make it a measure of being allowed to the next grade.
If done right may help take some of the burden off the Teachers and Administration and onto the parents and child.

Okay. Bad idea I had to ban sports. And maybe there’s some smidgen of validity to the idea that bullying “makes kids stronger” and gets them used to competition in adult life. But there’s still something horribly wrong where kids are utterly terrified to go to school every day. Adults have the right to be free from sexual harassment and other behaviors that make the workplace unpleasant for them. Kids deserve some of the same rights and protections, IMO.

I’d make it mandatory the kid had to wear a big red “B” for bully, sewn onto a uniform shirt that they were required to wear after their 3rd offense. At least the other kids would have a warning and after the bully was shunned for some time, perhaps they would learn to cooperate in order to be received back into the flock. lol

Of course, many would go on to “graduate” towards the big scarlet ” S” for Sociopath. haha

Use the ignore option?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZCUJEWuyow

@Coloma I do like the Nathaniel Hawthorne style approach.

“Bullies make kids stronger.” Sounds like bully propaganda bullshit to me… Sorry.

Not ALL children take well to torment as an imposed way toward personal growth.

From what I have seen, the vast number of issues with the children that are doing the bullying are doing so as a sort of crying out for attention because of some major dysfunction at home. Nothing new here.
The Principal (headmaster) is there administer what the Board of Education lays down. They are there to facilitate a good learning environment.

As a parent I take a very different approach and ensure my child is not only nurtured to not bully, but is in a school system that works to solve the problem. There are many choices if they are in an environment where bullying is an issue, but that is a different question.

The principal is not the only factor, so it has to bridge from school to home.
There are also gray areas where part of being in school is also to learn to interact with all kinds of other children. Bullying is not something brand new. I think Plato was known to have issues in gym class. The difference now is that a child is no longer safe in the confines of their own house and room with the advent of this thing I am typing on.

I still think the solution rests in every single parent.