FB / Congrats, Pam / Bullying / Intrinsic-Extrinsic

[catlady_de_los_angeles]

In case I forget to ask on the main list, my friend asked: "Does the 
British edition of FANTASTIC BEASTS give their sizes in cm (or inches 
the way the USan one does)?"
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Pam, hurray for Thomas Henry "Harry" Hugonnet!
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Shaun: "I was a victim of serious bullying. I required hospital 
treatment, ambulances had to be called, I have permanent injuries - 
thankfully not too serious - based on attacks at school when I was 
12." "They used physical violence on occasion - but used other less 
obvious methods at other times."

Tabouli: "I might have well have tattooed "victim" across my forehead 
in primary school. I was a terribly timid, desperate to please, 
self-conscious and uptight little kid, which was a bad start. Worse, 
I did well at school,"

Catherine: "During Primary school, I remember when I was 6 years old, 
being held up against a wall by two 11 year olds, while their 
ringleader kicked me." "Secondary school...useless at PE, top of my 
class in every subject, spoke differently from everyone else ... "

Oh, dear, so many people who were bullied worse than I was! (And 
*they* didn't come down with Social Phobia because of it...)

I understand why being small or weak or fat or easily moved to tears 
makes a person a target for bullying, and I suppose that being 
'weird' (i.e. socially inept) is offensive to the innate human 
instinct of conformism, but I *don't* understand *why* being 
intelligent/bookish and/or getting good marks make a person widely 
hated. 

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Jenny: "I've heard too many stories of teachers who turn their heads 
the other way and parents who say "my child would never do that!"." 
"Kids who are bullied are often afraid to tell their own parents 
because they think their parents will not do anything or will make 
the situation even worse"

Shaun: "indeed, the *victims* of bullying were routinely punished for 
not making an effort to fit in." "When a child is told to hit the 
bully, to fight back, that child is being told that dealing with the 
bullying, dealing with the victimisation is *their*  responsibility. 
It shouldn't be their responsibility - there is a duty to protect 
them from it, not to expect them to protect themselves."

Well, OF COURSE it's the child's responsibility to protect 
him/herself. Of course the school will punish a child who fails this 
responsibility, and so will parents if the child lets them find out. 
Self-reliance is the highest value of the American Way, right? And 
the best way to arrange life is as an endless competition, right? 
I'm sure there are parents who encourage their children to beat up 
other children, reward and praise them for it, and instead of "my kid 
would never be a bully", don't they ever honestly say: "I'm proud of 
him being strong and aggressive. I'm proud that other children are 
terrified of him. Your weakling deserves to be beaten up."?

Shaun said something about learning to act in a way that doesn't 
provoke the bullies (especially pretending to be stupid in order to 
fit in) means learning to act not like oneself. Go through life with 
one's real self concealed as a shameful secret and one's presented 
self an impersonation. Yes, it is an unpleasant experience; I don't 
like doing it; I don't like that good people must imitate jocks and 
brutes ... but it is necessary. Without the right social skills, you 
can't pass any job interview but the most desperate. And the 
obsolescence of non-temp jobs means that salesmanship (marketting 
oneself) is THE most important job skill for EVERYONE. 

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Tabouli: "<< Why do you waste your time discussing Harry Potter on an 
e-mail-list when you could be writing a book or earning a graduate 
degree instead? >>
Actually, I think this sort of thing is *exactly* what I was talking 
about. It's social value (extrinsic motivations, wealth, status in 
society) versus intellectual value (intrinsic motivations)."

The thread started in the main list discussion of social class. A 
food-service witch with a "common" accent who is growing herbs and 
experimenting with them in order to write a book of herbology is 
considered to be in the process of "bettering" herself; if she were 
'merely' growing and experimenting with herbs and discussing them on 
a newsgroup, she'd be considered an eccentric, perhaps an amusing or 
charming eccentric, but still infinitely lower than a person from the 
'educated classes'. The intrinsic motivation gets a person at best 
patronized, at worst beaten into a pulp (thus linking this topic to 
the previous one).