Did Secondary school seriously affect you?

[blubs]

Hi,
I was wondering if you'd been affected by bullying at school, particularly secondary school & how you think the school dealt with it.
Do you think you'd be a different person if you'd not had to cope with school? I was severely bullied & am just learning about child development & weirdly in my work on possible impacts on outcomes for a child, bullying isn't even mentioned....which seems a massive oversight to me.

[Twoflower]

I was severely bullied at the beginning of secondary school, dropped out after year 7, and spent the next few years in and out of hospital and hospital schools, so yeah I'm pretty sure I'd be completely different if I'd not had to deal with all that :/

[pete993]

I got bullied through most of high school - it never got REALLY bad, it was just persistent and I had no idea how to stop it. Whenever I told the school, they just but the bullies in detention for a lunchtime, which doesn't bother them at all, in fact it just annoys them because they know you grassed them up. Whenever I tried to fight back, I ended up coming off worse and feeling very small. I'm the world champion at thinking of good comebacks an hour too late!

Generally speaking, my school didn't really deal with bullying. Perhaps it was because it was a school out in the country where there wasn't much trouble, I don't know. There was one guy who suffered worse than what I did - he was regularly beaten up - but the culprits were rarely punished, other than perhaps being put in isolation for a day, which clearly had no real effect on the bullies.

[Sadie]

My school didn't really deal with bullying either - at least not the psychological stuff. I was lucky enough not to have to deal with physical bullying so I wouldn't know about how they dealt with that. I think I went to teachers on several occasions but they didn't really pay much attention.
I dunno...I think if things at home might have been different, I might have been better prepared to cope with things at school, and the bullying might not have been so bad. But as a result, I only ended up feeling more and more worthless and it has had a long lasting effect that has resulted with the way I am today.

[STRING3R]

Oh yes.

[Fantastical]

Definitely. I was bullied during much of secondary school and the only time I confided in a teacher I was told it was pretty much my fault and I just had to put up with it.

It was never particularly bad bullying, more name calling and stuff like that but it was pretty constant and from a lot of different people. It had a massive effect on me.

Stuff got really bad when I was 14/15 (not bullying, that had started to improve) and the school's response to that was pretty much awful. A couple of the teachers tried to help but I couldn't reach out and actually let anyone in.

Yeah, secondary school and the school's response to stuff in my personal life (which I was really struggling to cope with) had a big impact on me.

[LittleMissMouse]

Oh yes. If you were to visit my school you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of sanctuary/reserve for feral children to run wild in. Most of the teachers were disillusioned, didn't really give a toss and spent most of their time smoking and drinking coffee so bullying was pretty universal, could have been a lot worse though I spose.

I made massive progress when I went to a normal sixth form.

[Alex652]

My secondary school was in Essex. Enough said

In seriousness though, bullying wasn't really bad there. I was never beaten up, but I was regularly intimidated, and I was once stabbed in the leg with a compass (which was a minor sting).

The school dealt with bullying...fairly well. Most of the students there came from, er, disadvantaged backgrounds shall we say, who were quite hard to control.
When I left, so did the headteacher, and things have got much worse since I left. He was a good headteacher and he dealt with bullying fairly well - the current headteacher is a Ned Flanders type.

I think its pretty much impossible to have no bullying in secondary schools (or primary schools). It definatly affected me though, and I think I would have preferred it if I went to a smaller school (there were about 1200 students).

Originally Posted by LittleMissMouse

I made massive progress when I went to a normal sixth form.

Same here. I made massive progress when I went to sixth form, and bullying / fighting was rare. The sixth form I went to also had years 7-11, and there was an occasion where I was bullied by a year 10, which was rather humiliating.

[Medea]

Hell, Primary School affected me. School in general was a very bad experience for me. Unfortunately my dreams seem to revolve around the last day of school.

[Toxic]

erm..yes

id be a completely different person if id attended a different school (a mixed one for starters)
im not even going into it all ive said it before but ohhh yes, mass bullying..and the place was a shithole, everyday i made it home i felt id returned from war

[ynwa247]

High schools ruined me, my anxiety problems started when I joined in year seven and along with new problems its gotten worse and worse over the years (Im in year 11 now). People make snide comments still but the things that get me down the most are the bad things I see about me, not the things that other people say about me. (Earlier on in high school when I was about 12/13 I used to get down about comments but I didn't really react at the time so people usually left me alone.)

Ive never had physical bullying though and I can't think of any examples of it in my school but verbal bullying is usually ignored by teachers or they actually join in with it, someone in my old year 7 and 8 form got bullied throughout both and I can only remember one teacher who stopped it, but it didn't end it. He got bullied by people from every year of the school as well but nothing was done about it (Some days he would be outside on the yard and by the end of lunch he would be crying with almost all of the people on it laughing at him and picking on him.) I think after year 8 he started hitting people for it though so that stopped most people from bullying him.

Past year 11 the future scares me, unless theres a miracle I can only see things getting worse. If I stay on for sixth form at my school it will be more of the same, but if I don't ill get lonely and shut in for days which will end up in me getting more and more depressed than I already am. Im underachieving already so if I do get into sixth form (I need 6 bs) ill probably end up where I would of been if I didn't stay on, just two years later.

Im not sure how related that last bit is btw ^

Im also at an all boys school, so i might be even worse if I talked to a girl :S

(Post is a bit long because I got carried away with it.)

[Misanthrope]

I was seriously bullied in secondary school and pretty much shunned by everyone, It was pretty bad I even had to leave school at about 14. Yet I would say it was good for me and it taught me valuable lessons about how the world works which I have been able to use to stop people from walking all over me. It toughened me up and helped to prepare me for the world and the people in it, the one bad thing I can think of is that its left me with a rather short fuse and so while I am smart enough to resolve problems without violence often times when I think someone deserves it I would rather just kick the shit out of them.

[Golz]

Originally Posted by pete993

I got bullied through most of high school - it never got REALLY bad, it was just persistent and I had no idea how to stop it.

Generally speaking, my school didn't really deal with bullying.

Can at least agree on them parts for my own experience, secondary school turned me from chatty to quiet in the 5 yrs there, mostly through that. If I think back on it now it did actually ease off in the last two years but that's mostly through not having any classes in common with the people than anything (simply put, being smarter helped).

[tryinghard]

I wasn't exactly bullied at school, more isolated, but I don't really blame the other kids for that. I was very different from the other kids in my class when I was in primary school and that was just a matter of luck. I had friends in other schools and there were people in the year above I would have got along great with (we're now friends), but I think the experience of feeling out of place in primary just positioned me in a way where I didn't really believe anyone could possibly really want to be my friend in secondary school. So I could act pretty erratically and often self-sabotaged. I also ended up in a controlling relationship with an older guy when I was 16 and lost all my friends. At the time, I thought it just proved that I really was too weird and everybody hated me. I later found out it was becuse they hated my boyfriend. But they thought I was happy and didn't want them, because when people tried to hang around with me or be nice, I thought they just pitied me and I felt humiliated being a charity case so I would politely refuse. At the time, I felt I was preserving what was left of my dignity, but I probably seemed standoffish.

So all in all, yeah school had a massive effect. But in my case, it was more like a series of unfortunate incidents and misunderstandings than actually being targeted!

[Puppet]

I have always thought genetics has had maybe a minor influence on my SA. However, I do think being bullied throughout school is the biggest contributor. I had every single one of my classmates bully me in school, making me believe I was weird, abnormal, ugly... It was like hell. Those feelings definitely made me how I am today. It is so upsetting, because if I was in a better school then I could be someone completely different now. So many opportunities have been given to me, but I haven't had the courage to go through with them. My paranoia around other people is so frightening for me. I definitely blame school for what it has done to me.

[Eklipse]

Originally Posted by blubs

Hi,
I was wondering if you'd been affected by bullying at school, particularly secondary school & how you think the school dealt with it.
Do you think you'd be a different person if you'd not had to cope with school? I was severely bullied & am just learning about child development & weirdly in my work on possible impacts on outcomes for a child, bullying isn't even mentioned....which seems a massive oversight to me.

Yes I was badly affected by the way I was treated at secondary school. It affected me for a long time. The teachers didn't do anything at all except make it worse by informing the bullies that I'd told my mum and they knew that she'd gone to the school. This made me out to be a baby and these kids got worse.

I've no idea what the teachers said to them. The teacher, who was my head of year at the time, said "I can't make others like you."

During a school play, I was in the fifth form and sitting in the audience. A boy from my class made a joke about me and everyone laughed. What really upset me the most was seeing my teachers laughing too.

I look back on this thinking how cruel they were. I wonder if these kids remember it and do they feel guilty? All of my old teachers, except one, are retired or left the school. My old school's changed its name now and it looks so different, well flashy. They do proms but never did that when I was there.

[gingercat]

Originally Posted by blubs

I was severely bullied & am just learning about child development & weirdly in my work on possible impacts on outcomes for a child, bullying isn't even mentioned....which seems a massive oversight to me.

Interesting you should say that, I've wondered about the same thing... I've never studied it formally but I've done quite a lot of reading to try to understand (psychological literature and self-help books) and bullying barely seems to get a mention as something that can have long term effects on children (as opposed to e.g. parental neglect or sexual abuse)... yet I know loads of people who have been affected by it and threads like this one always get plenty of replies! weird

It certainly affected me pretty badly but I'm undecided how I feel about it really. It's complicated in my case as I had problems at home that probably left me not very well-prepared for dealing with bullies. On the other hand the idea that it was up to me to be "well-prepared" rather than up to the bullies not to do it or up to the school to stop it makes me uncomfortable... seems a bit like the idea that women should avoid being raped by not wearing revealing clothes.

[Geoff]

I was bullied a lot in school, and there's no doubt it's been a big influence in the way I grew up, and how I am today. I can't blame the bullies for everything........but most of it!

What was very bad in those days was how bullying wasn't taken seriously by teachers or Parents. My teachers would show frustration if I mentioned it and say things like, "Stay away from them then". One of my teachers was actually as bad as the bullies, and I wish I'd had the guts to have her dealt with at the time. Even my Parents couldn't give a hoot and never believed other children were picking on me. Everything was always my fault somehow, and I was always wrong about the fact they were bullying me. Come to think of it, it's not a long way off how things still are today.

[warmness]

I was always being badly bullied since primary school, it wasnt so bad at secondary school untill my last year when I was best friends with a girl, we fell out, she took away every single one of my friends and then ontop she started stalking me, police got involved etc..
not something I want to re-live.

[blubs]

Hi, Thankyou for all your replies. I have honestly just written loads about bullying, but had to leave the room so many times to do things, by the time I'd finished the site had logged me out! so I will write it again, but not right now as I really just wanted to ask for some particular advice on bullying, so I'll put it in another thread.

[Ubyse]

I went to one of the roughest secondary schools in my area, everybody thought I would be bullied and everything else, to the point that they were ready to pull me out at any time necessary.

During my first week of the 1st year I remember sitting in the canteen at dinner time, and the deputy head standing outside at a distance with my father, watching. Sure enough a 'big bad' 5th year came up to me and said words to the effect of you're in my seat get up. I then proceeded to floor him and I remember seeing the Deputy head laughing his head off. Nobody would go near me for the next 5 years. I had the best time in secondary school, personally. Primary school however was a different story, I was treated like a leper the entire time I was there.

[humourlessness]

I was hardly ever bullied at school as a student. Bullying started for me in the workplace.

[DanTheMan]

I was bullied severly in junior school, and then onwards until i dropped out in my final year, just before my GCSE'

It started when what i thought were my "best friends" turned on me, i had no idea why, but they would ridicule me over everything i did, from what i ate, to how i dressed, even to the house i lived in, despite it being bigger and better than all of their council houses D:

I used to hide in the toilets at break time because i knew if i went out i'd be picked on by a million different kids, eventually i started to skip school and go up town or to the local park to hide away.

At the age of 11 i ran home one day telling my mother i wanted to die, this resulted in going to the local umm, i dunno what its called but it was free and you could speak to counselors, thats all that was ever done, nothing more.....

[humourlessness]

.I will never ever forgive them for that, not even now that they are both dead.

I can totally understand!!

[IsabelClare]

Originally Posted by gingercat

It certainly affected me pretty badly but I'm undecided how I feel about it really. It's complicated in my case as I had problems at home that probably left me not very well-prepared for dealing with bullies. On the other hand the idea that it was up to me to be "well-prepared" rather than up to the bullies not to do it or up to the school to stop it makes me uncomfortable... seems a bit like the idea that women should avoid being raped by not wearing revealing clothes.

I agree. I don't think you can really look at that as the reason why you were bullied, as it makes it seem like being bullied was your fault. No one deserves to be bullied

[GoldFish]

I was bullied in year 7 and year 10 daily. So that meant the group i was spending time with would push me into walls. Flip me over. Bruise my knuckles with the game "knuckles". The reason is i was shy, the other reason is that i was groomed to look like a mummies boy. This means, very conservative and neat hair cut. I also looked very sensitive, which was a big problem. I looked like a target because i was awkward and nerdy. I wasn't very smart because the bullying distracted my ability to concentrate in classes. So i started to skip classes alot. Somehow i made it through to the final year, but i didn't pass the final exams so i just went straight into a full time job instead.

It was the opposite of what a genuine high school experience should be like and it sapped all the life out of me and just made me bitter about everything.

Then i would go home to very narcissistic and controlling family.

So there wasn't much laughter or fun going on.

How has this affected my 20s?

Ups and downs, mainly downs. Very reclusive, liar, and probably have Aspergers and some mild Agrophobia. So i don't fair well socially around groups and find it difficult joining in at all. I had 2 friends but haven't spoken to them for 6 years. One girlfriend which lasted a month.

I am still thin but I eat alot of sugary foods. It helps numb the pain.

Highs? Played sports for a few years. Earnt a Diploma level certificate. Have worked almost every year of my 20s in some job, the catch? No real career path or progress because i don't seem to have the confidence of being a leader in a job situation. Not yet. I can't rule it out, I dont want to give up.

I just haven't got the breaks like others have. I also have not put myself into enough situations where i could potentially find the big breaks!

It's actually very sad. As a guy it somehow feels very painful. You are meant to be arrogant, strong, a leader, have a great career, lots of friends.

Part of my feels like maybe i was just brought up in the wrong environment for me. Maybe the people who are really happy and successful simply have the talent, the look and the environment to suit them. So they get that trifector of green lights and the world is theirs. All cylinders fire for them.

Someone above me mentioned they went to school in a rough area? Same here. I feel that this was the wrong choice. Had i had a bit more independent thought back then i would have argued against signing up in that area and would have looked to go to school in a more mild location, perhaps even a private school. Then again maybe the result would have been the same because of my personality at the time. But you just never know.

I just wish i had of been a cool looking nerdy student that wasn't bothered by others with a sense of entitlement and acceptance, was that so much to ask.

[GoldFish]

Originally Posted by DanTheMan

I was bullied severly in junior school, and then onwards until i dropped out in my final year, just before my GCSE'

It started when what i thought were my "best friends" turned on me, i had no idea why, but they would ridicule me over everything i did, from what i ate, to how i dressed, even to the house i lived in, despite it being bigger and better than all of their council houses D:

I used to hide in the toilets at break time because i knew if i went out i'd be picked on by a million different kids, eventually i started to skip school and go up town or to the local park to hide away.

At the age of 11 i ran home one day telling my mother i wanted to die, this resulted in going to the local umm, i dunno what its called but it was free and you could speak to counselors, thats all that was ever done, nothing more.....

Precisely what happened to me.

Looking back i think we did well to go that far without leaving too early.

I remember sitting in Geography and the two bigger guys next to me started wacking me over the head non-stop for no reason. I then started to hyper ventilate, as in choking, in front of the whole class and just ran home. The teacher walked out to see how i was, I just said "That's enough, i'm calling it a day", she understood.