I firmly believe that earnest efforts to suppress any and all physical violence in schools has created an environment where bullies are able to operate without repercussion.

Good kids don't "fight". It's so ingrained into the head of the good kids that they are terrified of fighting even to defend themselves.

Thus, bullies get to bully with no fear. There's no consequence. Whereas when a weaker kid fights back, even if the bully is strong enough to "win" the battle, he still gets hit in the mouth and does not like it. Bullies much prefer low-hanging fruit that doesn't fight back.

My children, when school age (maybe not 1st grade, but certainly by junior high), will be sat down and have the following explained to them:

"You are allowed to defend yourself. You will avoid physical conflict whenever possible, but should you ever be physically threatened or subject to ongoing torment, you have the GREEN LIGHT to use physical force to protect yourself, OR to assist a friend who is unable to protect themselves."

"You may get in trouble with your school. THIS IS OK. Your well-being is more important than their rules. If you get suspended for three days, then I'll take three days off work and we'll keep up with your studies. I will be on your side. Do not let concern over the school rules stop you at all from defending yourself."

"However, you will never use force to do anything but protect yourself or your friend. If I find that YOU have been the aggressor, I will smite you."

I'll probably need to work on that speech a bit between now and then, but you get the idea. :)

I was lucky. I was never the small or weak one. Even still, I can think back to a couple of situations where fear of parental response prevented me from protecting myself as well as I should have. My children will have it made known to them that they will not be "assumed guilty" when a situation comes up where they physically defend themselves. No aggression towards others will be tolerated, but they will be trusted to properly use their discretion, and until they prove themselves guilty, they will be assumed innocent.

Not even slightly controversial here.

I suffered 5 years of bullying at school; and tried everything to get it to stop, without success.

Until one day I just got fed up, walked up to the main tormentor in class and, unprovoked, hit him really hard in the mouth (I think I broke his nose, I'm not sure). Was in weeks of trouble (with the staff) :) but once that was out of the way no one touched me again.

I've never outright recommended this approach to anyone; and indeed it's probably not the right thing to do all the time. But some sort of short-sharp-shock can work just as well (so... barging them to the ground etc.) as long as it is sufficiently hard.

> The smart solution to bullying is to make it socially unacceptable.

Sure, the bullied kid — which generally has low sociability, either from the start or following the ostracization coming along with the bullying, and few if any friends — is going to make bullying "socially unacceptable".

That's a very nice feel-good declaration, but it's about as helpful as "smack yourself in the mouth to help them so the beating is shorter"

It's sort of embarrassing this is the number one story on hacker news. Especially since it's 6 weeks old and was already posted before, and mostly seems fabricated. It reads like some fat kid ender's game revenge fantasy. I guess maybe this is what happens in white suburban schools? Cuz fights in the schools where I used to teach math would end up with kids in the hospital or dead. Or, I guess I don't really know, because both parties would both never come back to school.

I guess if Bobby Bully is putting beans in your pants you can try your karate kid routine on him. Maybe Eye of The Tiger will start playing and after you make him cry by ballet kicking him in the nose you and Elisabeth Shue can go share a milkshake at Pop's and then make out at the drive in. But in real life Jesus and Jose and their 20 cousins and homies just show up after school and steal all your clothes, your bike, your money and throw you into the dumpster.

I guess I don't ever really believe these stories, because whenever i've seen someone fight back it just turned into a drawn out war, not some fairytale DeGrassi afterschool special outcome where the bully "learned his place"

Humans like talking to humans.

Humans especially like talking to humans in authority. If you're going to have to play by a rule, it's good to know that the rule is real, and not an imaginary rule made up by a fifth-level bureaucrat on a whim, or because they're looking for a bribe, or because they don't understand the company policy, or because you're small fry and only big players get to break all the rules.

And humans like consistency, closure, and clear boundaries. The hardest thing is not necessarily abiding by the rules: It's trying to avoid abiding by rules that aren't really there. The easiest way to ensure that you're pushing the envelope appropriately is to press yourself right up against the edge, and the best edges to push against are the ones that are firm, so that you don't keep having to second-guess yourself, or waking up to discover that your competition is getting away with more than you are because of some uncontrollable factor.

I don't get it. The summary is that the guy submitted an application, got rejected, appealed, the appeal process seemed to take too long, he emailed Jobs, Jobs phoned him and told him and "reiterated" (from the post) the app store rules until the guy decided he won't achieve anything.

I'm amazed at how Jobs telling the guy the same thing that he already knew (telling him 2 times actually) somehow made him go to a paragraph about Jobs with a well deserved opinion of quality products.

He still couldn't release the software, he got a "no go" for fixing the situation the way he could, he got absolutely no information about whether the issue will be fixed in the future or not. But that's ok, since Jobs called him? Seriously?

I liked this post until he started talking about fighting the Chinese mafia and jump kicking criminals. At that point I wasn't sure whether his point was, "take your own bullying into your own hands" or "watch me brag about how badass I am on the internet."

I'm reminded of what Malcolm X said to the civil rights demonstrators:

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.