I'm a little surprised at the posts I see on Facebook saying that instead of preaching against bullying, we ought to teach our kids to man up and fight the bullies. I replied to one of the posts, saying:
"Maybe the answer is not an either or. Teaching kids to stand up for themselves can be a good thing. But, it is not wrong to teach kids not to pick on each other. I'm a little surprised at how people oppose teaching children not to bully each other. What am I missing? What is wrong with teaching this?"
I then took a moment to study a little on what anti-bullying laws actually call for. Every state has one. I did not like a law I found in Utah. It requires local education agencies to develop plans of action against bullying. While having a plan of action against bullying can be good, it seems this law probably creates a burdensome bureaucracy, as the education agency has to spend time coming up with a program, and has to report on it and fill out so much paperwork.
Why make it so difficult?
Either just make the rules yourself, spelling out what is right and wrong and what the punishments are, or, just give the school agency authority to make the rules without either requiring that it make the rules if it doesn't want to, or requiring any paperwork showing it is compliant.
http://www.rules.utah.gov/publicat/code/r277/r277-609.htm
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