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]

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.