Ay form of BULLYING is wrong no matter how where or why...

Bullying in all of its forms is despicable. The way to deal with it is to give it a social and psychological fix much as drink driving was dealt with. It needs to be frowned on by the vast majority and the culprits made pariahs.

If that means that a bully has to be arrested then so be it. Clearly at ten years old its hardly going to be a criminal record issue but if they re offend time and time again then it should be a criminal offence. Its certainly has a criminal effect and sometimes fatal on the victim. How many child suicides are the result of playground bullies?

No no no not corporal punishment. never again should it ever be seen.

I do think that bullying shouldn't need to be dealt with by the police though, certainly not amongst 10 year olds anyway. If you can't keep a close eye on a 10 year old, you shouldn't be in the job.

There is no simple answer to this is there.

Caning: i think parents perhaps feel the indignity of a caning more than pupils do.
Deep down I believe it is probably wrong to cane, but I'm an adult now (I think).
When I was a kid I accepted it as a logical thing and it certainly made me think twice about certain actions.
And there was never any instance of a teacher caning the whole class. Punishing the whole class yes, but not by corporal punishment.

Who is to blame: isn't bullying down to a personality defect rather than poor parental control? Are bullies bullies by nature?
I can understand that some parents are simply too weak to control their difficult children. What do they do then?

There seemed to be a lot more discipline when the cane was used at school as to now when its the kids who assault the teachers.

next you'll be telling us its wrong to smack your own kids

I disagree, headteachers being beaten up, stabbed, kids selling drugs, truancy at an all time high, kids too scared to go to school because of bullying, this didn't happen when I was at school, the odd kid sniffing evo stick or smoking round the back of the youthy yeah but nothing as extreme as now!!

I remember getting the cane once for being late 3 mornings in a row, I wasn't late again!!!

And yes, I have smacked my daughter on the hand quite a few times in the past, and i'd do it again if it had the desired effect of telling right from wrong, but she's 8 years old now and a good kid.

I got bullied when I was 10,it wasn't good,the main lad involved was a scally hit me over the head with a pool cue,nice.me dad though, instead of going off it ,made the 2 of us get together later on,in fact he came to pools with us a few times(that was punishment enough).
anyway his family were tossers and he'd had a pretty bad life and he was just carrying on what he saw at home,I don't know if it helped the lad long term but it helped me appreciate the other side of the story and we got on pretty well afterwards.

I think it's a lot worse for kids now as well, I'm glad I'm not a kid in 2007. Bullying has always happened in schools, at some point in our lives I'm sure all of us have either been victims or even bully's at some stage. Nowadays its much worse though, when I was at school if some kid was giving me a bit of chew at least when the bell went at the end of the day it was over, now with texting, YouTube, and the likes of msn and myspace for some it's almost 24 hours of grief they can't even have sanctuary in there own home.

Unfortunately its something that always has and always will happen, I'm not sure there's a solution. At least schools do take it a lot more seriously than they used to.

I HATE BULLIES ... We had one piece of arrogant shit at our school who was very good at using his size to intimidate the class for years, when someone actually did something about it and a parent complained, he was 'warned off' by the headmaster and his activities curtailed. However, because he was a popular lad with the teachers he then became a 'victim' who had been 'grassed' by cowardly pupils who should have 'stood up' to him

I think prosecuting 10 year olds is the thing to do if there's the evidence. Which there is in many cases.

eg filming yourself assaulting someone, then putting the footage on Youtube. If I did that to my next door neighbour, I would expect a musker to knock on the door pretty sharpish.

A 10 year old is criminally responsible in the eyes of the law. Therefore should be prosecuted.

Bullying doesn't stop when you leave school either, I have worked at a couple of places with a bullying culture which were extraordinary. In one place there was a particularly sad IT/admin manager who was the supervisor of two teenage female office juniors. He regularly used to have them in tears, but as he was an arse-licker the management left him to it.

One day he threw a letter at one of them in the face. At this point I felt I had to get involved as it was an assault as far as I was concerned. So, I sent him an email telling him he was out of order and to wind his neck in.

For some reason, management then deemed it was me who had a problem!? Apparently I had abused the email system, so I had to move offices. Despite my explanation of the events and the bully's behaviour, no action was taken against him. Almost like they were frightened of him. I got a job elsewhere pretty sharpish.

He was left to carry on his behaviour for a couple of years, until a new office junior started and stood up to him. Basically she invoked the grievance procedure after she collected loads of evidence agaisnt him - times, dates, incidents etc. Only then did the company do anything about it, because the had a legal obligation to.

He was stripped of his management duties, and put in an office on his own for a couple of months. However, last I heard he had moved back into an open plan office and was again being a bounder to people around him. Apparently situations like this are not uncommon. For whatever reason teachers/headteachers/employers do not want to deal with bullies, and they are left to spread their shite unchecked.

Now this bloke is in his 40s. I've got a good idea he has been like this all his life. If he had been punished/counselled/given a bit of attention as a kid he may not be the way he is now. I've no idea how many people he has affected along the way, but I know of several young lasses whose confidence was in tatters after working with him.

So Mr Offshore in answer to your question, get the police involved as early as possible, nip it in the bud and you may save plenty of misery down the line for many including the bully themselves.

Spot on

They banned corporal punishment in schools whilst I was at Tunstall.

Overnight the balance of power shifted from the teachers to the kids.

If they brought back slippering at school it would be a good start to restoring order and discipline.

Slippering? I wasn't allowed to wear any slippers at school.

we wore sand shoes/plimsoles or non stop dancers as everyone used to call em