Okay, here it is.

[conuly]

1. The specialized science high schools are overrated. The teaching isn't noticeably better than at other schools, and we can see from studies that students who just missed the cut-off for those schools don't do any worse than students who just got in.

2. They also get way too much media attention, and I'm sure that this is not healthy for those students. My goodness, kids at Stuy etc. have big enough egos! They don't need their school in the news every day to boost it.

3. If your argument is "well, if those smart kids went to other schools they'd be bullied because they're smart" - first of all, there are plenty of selective schools in NYC they could go to instead, and I'm not convinced "bully the smart kids" is the rule at every last one of the non-selective schools. Secondly, however you look at it, a school where you get bullied (and it's not that bullying can't happen anywhere) is not really objectively worse than one where everybody "knows" that the administration won't let anybody out on the balcony because they're scared of suicides and where the options for tests are a. study your life away b. conspicuously not study so that you can blame your poor grades on laziness instead of failure to learn c. cheat d. set fires in the bathroom (we spent so much time shivering in the cold that year due to those impromptu "fire drills"). There are lots of ways for a school to be a toxic environment.

4. I don't even care anymore, I just want everybody to agree to settle this next year and let us get our application results from round one now.

Comments

[siderea]

a school where you get bullied (and it's not that bullying can't happen anywhere) is not really objectively worse than one where everybody "knows" that the administration won't let anybody out on the balcony because they're scared of suicides and where the options for tests are [...]

Respectfully, I disagree. Strenuously. I've done both. And I'll take the suicide school any day of the week over the "bullying" school - or more accurately the assault-and-battery school.

I do not mean to say that suicide schools are perfectly fine. I had the good sense to drop out of the one I attended. But just how bad the things that pass under the banner of "bullying" are cannot really be overstated. The problems it causes for its victims and witnesses are... lower down Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that those caused by suicide schools.

I have no comment as to your larger point.

[conuly]

If by bullying we do mean assault and battery then yeah, I'd have to agree with you. It's hard to tell what random dipshit on the internet I'm pissed at means because they're not gonna be clear if they can at all avoid it, so I assumed they meant - as most people do if they're not being clear - verbal harassment. Not okay, not great (definitely something that happened to me at Stuy too, same as at literally every other school I ever attended from kindy on up, so there goes his argument anyway) but somewhat less likely to end you up with bruises and broken bones.

Edit: Oh, hey, you know what? Not only was I, personally subject to verbal harassment as always but I was also witness to the sort of painful racist/classist/ablist microaggressions that I didn't have a word for then but knew were damn wrong and offensive. Not which were directed at any groups I was part of, but if I had been part of them I'm sure they would not have made me thrilled at the school I'd chosen.

Edit again: Thinking of a few specific ones, some were less micro than the word implies.

[siderea]

Sorry, I'm gonna be a nudge about this. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

so I assumed they meant - as most people do if they're not being clear - verbal harassment.

When I was growing up in the 80s, the canonical, idiomatic example of bullying was "shoving people into lockers". There was also the "taking someone's lunch money". Also "swirlys" and "wedgies", as in "giving a -". And then there was just good old fashioned school-yard beatdowns, tripping someone passing in the hall, knocking their books out of their hands, and throwing spit balls.

All of which are assault and battery.

I have been saying for decades now, the term "bullying" is a special term we use to sanction and minimize the sort of interpersonal violence among children (including teens) we would never ask an adult to tolerate. Part of how that term functions is be lumping together violent criminal acts – including sexually violent acts – along with verbal harassment.

Furthermore, regarding verbal harassment, the term "bullying" does this sanctioning work the same way men's dismissing of catcalling and public come-ons of women – "aw, can't you take a compliment?" – does. Verbal harassment of the type called "bullying" comes with an implicit, if not explicit, threat of violence. It is a demonstration, "I can say anything I want to you, I can do anything I want to you."

[conuly]

Pedantically, I feel I should note that nobody gets shoved into lockers at NYC high schools because NYC high schools don't really have those.

While I'll concede to your definition of bullying (although I may ask random dipshit what they think they mean by that) on the rest I can only speak to my own experience which is that I believe my general mental health improved somewhat (and the environment for my classmates was less toxic) when I was at the school where the student body didn't considered it self-evident that the administration thought any one of us might off ourselves at the slightest provocation. (I doubt they really did think so - they certainly didn't do anything resembling suicide prevention or show any concern for our general mental health while I was there. Which now that I think about it is really odd. Even if, as I assume, their stats showed that we weren't really more prone to suicide than anybody at any other school, they surely all knew that we talked as though we thought they thought it, which can't be healthy and certainly would alarm me if I ran a school or taught in one. But the only time I remember it even tangentially brought up was after Columbine. JFC that school was badly run.)

[conuly]

Edit: No, wait, after Columbine and my one bio teacher who thought I was actually crazy based on I don't even know what and made a big stink with guidance. Both my mother and my sister, having met her, swear it was personal and that she simply hated me.

[marahmarie]

I'll aver you didn't even go to school if misogyny (from early grades on) wasn't also part of the mix (boys are better at math/sports/breathing ad infinitum).

At my main early school bullying came in the form of verbal taunts *and* physical aggression/torture (an eye poked at unexpectedly, boys dragging me down a field alone, which believe it or not I was more worried about the boys than about being dragged, repeatedly (almost daily) being thrown off a weird spinning ride for the lulz (and that covers just a few instances of torture and none of the other equally or more serious/painful physical aggressions, as *that* would take hours), teasing or conversely being frozen out/snubbed, condescending treatment from students *and* teachers, and on and on including into things you mention (microagressions: I got a lot of flak for allegedly being the only person who *wanted* to befriend our only black student, and even more for doing so during school hours yeah, howdareI), so when I read anything that implies bullying is inherently preferable or better than x I'm inclined to proceed super-cautiously and poke at it with very big sticks, because while ymmv, what bullying can involve is scary and can cause lasting mental scars.

Also, just read sidearea's points re: calling it "bullying" to dismiss what are essentially crimes when adults commit a sizable portion of them, and completely agree. This comes down to parents and teachers: I'd go as far to say it starts and ends with them. In my day (about 10 years before yours in elementary - roughly) teachers mostly looked the other way, or if the students responsible were smart or popular or rich enough, outright condoned or dismissed it, and parents...it was pretty much the same. School was very Darwinian "survival of the fittest" bullshit. I survived, not because I was fittest (the least fit, as far as my body went, by far) but simply because I was too stubborn to die or not see a reason to carry on, somehow.

(I've tried to figure out the latter and simply can't. I think I was just too *naive* to settle on any reason besides my health, which got me quite a few times, to give up (sometimes I wish I was still like this, but in this world...). I always started the next day like it was pretty much the first one I'd ever had and whatever happened before meant nothing. I don't get that now, but it got me through it, I guess.)

[conuly]

Oddly, if misogyny was present in my school environment I never noticed and it didn't touch me. Which would be an unremarkable statement for a male-appearing student, but I recognize it's a striking one from a cisgender woman. All the shit I got in school, that was one massive thing I didn't witness either from the teachers, the peers, or the structure of the place.

(It is entirely possible that I was completely oblivious to this. I certainly noticed racist/classist elements present in the entire structure of my school career, though, and those didn't directly touch me either. So I don't even know.)

[mindstalk]

Plus I would guess that even "verbal harassment" bullying is its own suicide risk factor.

[conuly]

Well, there's no denying that.

[gwydion]

I had a scholarship all the way through from age 4-18 at a super prestigious prep school. There are a million ways a science/math heavy school with extremely high academic standards, high pressure, and a lot of extremely bright kids can be a special sort of hell.

It doesn't surprise me even a tiny bit that this is the same in the public system.

The districts I taught didn't have elective schools, and I like academically integrated systems for a fucking reason,even with all their faults.

[conuly]

The specialized science high schools get so much undue attention, too. I am utterly sick of hearing about them by now. I wonder if that makes the cultures at them - especially the BIG THREE - that much worse, really.

[nocowardsoul]

I love reading these posts.

[conuly]

I am just so sick of hearing about those schools you have no idea.

[nocowardsoul]

It's all so foreign to me.