Recently, there have been a few cases of offensive name calling happening in my class. Just a week ago another fight was sparked off. One of my classmates started calling this other classmate offensive remarks pertaining to his physical qualities. The victim was obviously enraged and it was a chain reaction.
For privacy purposes, I cannot name the students specifically. Hence, let Student A be the perpetrator and Student B be the victim.
Firstly, the case was evidently sparked off with the name calling. Student B states that Student A had called him offensive remarks such as 'black' and 'chicken-eyed'. Student B felt extremely insulted as it felt very 'racist' although Student B was not exactly of any culture with darken skin tone. But still, it was an insult. Student B reacted with violence.
I feel that in this case obviously the insults were not right. We should learn to accept each other for who they are. We should not be finding opportunities to alienate anyone from the class. Bad qualities are existent and each and every person. What is important is not bad qualities. They do not help anyone, they only spoil our day! It is a lose-lose situation- so what for pick on it?
Secondly, I feel that how Student B reacted as the victim was not wise. I am sure we all have been guilty of throwing such insults at people. The ultimate goal is to see reaction by the other party. Eg. To make them angry, to make them do something. Similarly, when the other party DOES NOT react, they lose their goal. At this point, they don't see the point in continuing the attacks. Hence, sometimes, holding yourself back is very wise and clever too.
Ultimately name calling is very immoral and mean, we should not practice it. Respect is a virtue, and should not be compromised at any time!
I agree with your whole post, especially with the last statement, "Respect is a virtue, and should not be compromised at any time". In addition to respect, everyone should have the ability to control his anger and think carefully before acting. In many cases of robbery and murder, the do-er is often unaware of his behavior and committed all these crimes when he was hot in his head. Therefore, if one is able to attain these three qualities, I'm sure none of these problems would surface again.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your whole blog post. Another points I would like to raise is that rather than focusing on the flaws of others and picking on them, we should learn to look at the strengths of other people and learn them.
ReplyDeleteThis not only prevents people from unnecessarily pointing out others' flaws and offending them resulting in fights, it can actually help people to learn from others' strengths and it helps all of us to improve ourselves. Since it's win-win, why not?
Firstly, I would like to note that the two comments above started off with "I agree with your whole blog post." Pretty interesting there.
ReplyDeleteBack to the main point, about Student B reacting with violence. As we all know, patience has its limits too. What if Student B was previously insulted repeatedly and was really unable to hold in his anger anymore after a long period of time? I believe, to judge student B in this case, we have to look at the past history too, of what really happened throughout the whole story. They say you can't judge a book by its cover, but neither can you judge it with just a mere excerpt too.
Its good to hear another voice regarding this incident. I personally think name calling is not much of an issue so long as the victim is able to ignore it. For instance, a certain short boy in our class wearing red spectacles constantly likes to tease me about a certain girl which I met at a student camp. You all know the story, but I think its fine with me, and I don't really take it to heart. I occasionally chase this boy around the class, but its all about having fun.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of your story, however, the victim was clearly annoyed with the actions of the perpetrator, and the perpetrator treated the victim as a means of relieving stress. This was obviously wrong on the part of the perpetrator, and it actually got beyond name calling to causing physical hurt.
To calvin:
ReplyDeletePatience is one thing, control is the other. Let's say your family was all killed by a bomb in 1945. Then 20 years later you take a knife and stab an american, are you still going to jail - yes.
It doesn't matter what you have gone through. It doesn't matter what others have done to you. The fact is if you choose to do something the same, you are no different to them.
Respect is a virtue and should not be compromised at times. If people don't have respect for you, and you don't have respect either by punching them back in the face
How different are you from them?
I agree completely with your post. I feel that bullying is a serious issue and it should not be taken lightly. In this case, I feel that both student A and B are victims of bullying. Yes, even the bully. In today's society, bullying is a common sight even though we do not want it to be. As boys, it is in our nature to be rowdy occasionally - keep in mind that I am not justifying the bully's behaviour. I have seen many cases of bullying. Honestly, I feel that most bullies have some reason why they bully which also should not be ignored. Most of the time, the bully wants to feel better about himself so he turns to insulting others to make himself seem better. However, this is wrong! The bully should instead reflect on himself and be nice to those around him, that way those around him will come to appreciate him as a friend. However, some bullies just bully because they find "amusing" I feel that these people are the ones that we should watch out for and not interact with as they are just trouble. I would also like to point out that some bullies MAY have been bullied before which may have led to them bullying others - it's a vicious cycle.
ReplyDelete