I recognise that comment. Ed wrote that. :)

Maybe some independent outside source could be set up to hear from those who have been abused. The schools themselves or the people who the school gets to do this (who have the same invested interest in hiding what's going on) is how the cycle gets repeated. That's been the problem with government agencies who claim to be protecting people. They don't just not understand enough, they are motivated to prevent the truth from being told.

You know, I wasn't bullied like that in school, back in some earlier century. Partly because I was too easy a target, partly because there was less bullying back then.

I am working my way through the research on how violence in the media (tv, video games, etc.) increases the base level of violence in society, with bullying being the most common type of outcome, and I think for anyone in a vulnerable demographic group, it makes sense to go after the causes of societal violence (including portrayals of violence as "harmless" in many media) as well as try to bail the sinking ship.

I think autistic kids being bullied at school are canaries in the coal mine wrt bullying. It's not the autism, it's the bullying.

One of the reasons why Nick is being homeschooled during middle school years since he was in general ed in elem school.  Our home school for Middleschool has only a handful of white kids and I was told to get my son a haircut like the Latino kids and that it would be best for him to be on the same track as the Armenian kids. 

It is safer for him to be home.  I do hope he gets into the Zoo Magnet which is on its own campus across from the Zoo and has 300 students, but it is rigorous and college prep.

I have generally found less bullying in smaller schools, and less bullying in schools that have more diverse students (any kind of diversity). Also, the way the school handled bullying made a lot of difference.

I wasn't bullied in primary school, though in the last two years it became very apparent how much I didn't fit in. That hurt, but being treated in a civil manner even if you have few to no friends is very different from being abused (picking on or bullying seem like euphemisms).

I was bullied badly, though not physically apart from a shove here and there or people trying to trip me (which didn't work because I always look down when I walk anyway, because I fall over without any 'help' otherwise, so I tended to notice feet sticking out long before I made my next step), in middle school (age 12-18). I managed to get it to stop on my own after some years, with some friends I eventually managed to make, or rather they made me. But it was no thanks to the school, which did nothing at all about bullying and would rather pretend it didn't happen on a nice, small school ike theirs (it was rife). I too was always trying to stay home, made it clear that I didn't want to go anymore, and I wish my parents had kept me home like this father.

In my final two years, they finally adopted some programme that should minimise bullying, but it didn't work. I think this was partly because the programme wasn't very good, but mostly because none of the teachers really cared, or they even thought of the bullied children in the same discriminatory ways as the bullies. We approached one teacher once while a girl was being badly abused in the hallway as they were entering his classroom, because it made us angry to see it. He said something like: "Well, we try to stop it, but what can you really do when they look as weird as her." (She looked perfectly fine, just didn't follow fashion trends and her clothes weren't new or matched in any way.)

We had tried intervening ourselves before, but it didn't work, it just made them more vicious when we were not around, and the victim didn't exactly thank us for it. I understand that perfectly, I know how and why it didn't work, but it can get too much having to watch it happen.

But even getting the bullying to stop doesn't mean the effects have stopped. In fact, it wasn't until after it stopped that I really got very depressed and suicidal, like I finally had time for it all to get to me, before I was just trying to survive the day each day.