Again I agree, often it is just muckin around not even serious anyway (though I admit not always). It's different when it becomes physical, however when it's just petty name calling, you can say shit back too, or just not let it bother you.
Emotional abuse in many instances can be far more detrimental to a child's development than physical abuse. If a parent were deriding and name-calling on a daily basis it would be very much frowned upon.
Children spend a great deal of their lives in their school environment, and feeling unsafe and ostracised is bound to affect a child considerably. Teachers are caregivers as well as educators, and if they were to ignore a child who is highly emotionally distressed they would be failing to give that child any sense of security in an environment that, along with the home, dominates how their world is shaped.
Im not saying its not serious, Im saying that this is not a solution. How about you answer the questions I posed, cause guess what, we don't have unlimited time and resources to spend dealing with cyber bullying, and what actually crosses the line is extremely subjective and difficult to determine.
Perhaps its not a good idea to teach children to run to the authorities every time someone upsets them. The internet is a perfect example of where people you don't like have an off button, and its a good lesson that sometimes people will be difficult and often the best thing to do is simply not to associate with them.
As above, it is not about authorities punishing people or saying who is good and bad; it is about the caregiving figures in a child's life making an effort to ensure a child's sense of safety and security.
In some cases, the fact of simply acknowledging that a child is being bullied and dealing with an immense amount of pain, and doing something to make their life at school a little easier (a life which they cannot avoid because, legally, children must attend school) could be all that is needed to ease the situation.
Being overly extreme and saying that we should give everyone carte blanche to say what they want, whenever they want, is a lazy solution that doesn't resolve anything.
Being emotionally hurt is extremely subjective. If we are to say people have a right to not have their feelings hurt online (when browsing sites they can easily just close if they don't like) we can start to ban all sorts of things.
I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to protecting free speech, and that means preserving a right to unlimited free speech.
If that results in some kids getting away with being mean to each other, then so be it.
It's also extremely difficult and expensive to interpret all the millions of pieces of communication that could potentially be the subject of litigation.
How does a court, or a school principal, determine if a comment was a lighthearted joke between friends or a serious jab.
How serious must bullying be before it can be dealt with in such a way. Is a minor insult like "you're fat" enough?
Is it a good use of limited resources of schools and/or the legal system to be considering such matters?
Of course being emotionally hurt is subjective; physical pain is, too. However, it's a very basic level compassion to respect that others have different pain thresholds (emotionally and physically). Just as we wouldn't go around cutting people just because we, personally, can bear that particular pain, we should understand that not everyone has the exact same emotional thresholds as we do.
(Not that people should be constantly wrapped in cotton wool or anything, but you certainly don't need to bring about pain unprovoked just because you know you can.)
In making the original statement the onus is on the slanderer to prove their accusation. For example if I called someone fat, ugly or stupid then I would need to substantiate that claim when I made it. "My god that fat bastard weighs 85kgs and he's only 11", etc etc.
Concepts of defammation/libel create the impression that everything which is published is true and must be disproved by the slandered person. Remove the concepts entirely and the discourse is seen for what it is. And it is not always true.
In the case of children and school yard bullying, there is very little need for "proof" before a rumour or a rude nickname gets out of hand.
How many 8 year olds do you think request hard, empirical evidence when someone spreads a story that a fat kid shit his pants one day?
