Few Know Bullying When They See It

Lee schools look to revise bullying policy : Lee : Naples Daily News

It may be a surprise to my readers that many well-meaning people within the education system actually "bully" students. In the above linked article, we find this comment:

"Rhodes said that her son, who has Asperger syndrome -a high functioning form of autism, was bullied by elementary school students and emotionally harassed by his teacher.

“I lived it,” she said. “A teacher who emotionally bullied my child on a daily basis and a principal who refused to do anything.”

The most frequent bullying that I know of is when kids who have thought processing delays or have sensory processing problems are called "lazy" or "blamed" for not paying attention. For some reason, one of the most prevalent "behavior strategy" in our education system is to "shame" the kid into appropriate behavior.

For example, I have been in many IEP meetings where the educators at the table do not recognize dyslexia as a real phenomenon. Instead, they focus on behavioral strategies aimed at "self discipline" and "increased study time". Along with this ignorance comes the obligatory message to the parent that the parent needs to stop making excuses for the kid.

True professional educators who understand true disabilities can teach kids with disabilities. Unfortunately, there are few true professional educators who understand true disabilities that come in contact with kids with true disabilities.
All too often, misguided and ignorant choices of behavior management not only do not teach the kids, it makes them worse. The resulting behavior unfortunately reinforces the ignorance of the "professionals" instead of drawing attention to it.