School Bullying Resources

In another life, I have a list of resources related to school bullying.  Figured I toss them out here in the event they are of assistance.

Let me know if any links end up broken.  If you have a good suggestion, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

Anti-Bullying Network. The Network was set up by the Scottish Executive at the University of Edinburgh so that teachers, parents, and young people can share ideas about how bullying should be tackled. http://www.antibullying.net/
ADL Good resource with a number of articles on cyber-bullying. http://www.adl.org/education/cyberbullying/
Back off Bully. http://www.backoffbully.com/
Bullying in Schools. An Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) Has an excellent collection of journals and links related to bullying. http://www.eric.ed.gov/
Bullying Information for Parents and Teachers. Includes causes and consequences of bullying, classroom suggestions, advice for parents, gender differences in bullying, current bullying research. http://www.lfcc.on.ca/bully.htm
Bullying.org. A Canadian site with an international following that allows victims of bullying to share their stories and know that they are not alone. http://www.bullying.org/splash_page/bullying.cfm?sRes=768
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence was founded in 1992 to provide informed assistance to groups committed to understanding and preventing violence, particularly adolescent violence. Since that time, its mission has expanded to encompass violence across the life course. Their homepage can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/index.html and information on bullying can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/safeschools/bullying/overview.html
Child Abuse Prevention Services: Child Abuse Prevention Services (CAPS) is a not for profit, volunteer organization founded in 1982 to respond to the growing problem of child abuse and neglect on Long Island, New York. In 1995 CAPS created the Child Safety Institute, providing innovative and comprehensive child safety and child prevention programs and materials. http://www.capsli.org/
Connecticut State Department of Education. The SDE has a page in its “Parent and Community” section, covering School Climate, Bullying, and Character Eduction. It include bullying resources, including recent legislation, summaries of key information, and links to bullying resources. It may be accessable here. If that link does not work, go to the SDE homepage here and click down through the menus.
Maine Project Against Bullying. The website is intended to keep the reader informed of Maine’s efforts to impact the issue of bullying in its schools and to provide links to other resources relevant to bullying. http://lincoln.midcoast.com/~wps/against/bullying.html
National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center. This is a federal resource for communities working to prevent violence committed by and against young people. It has a page on bullying numerous links to a wide variety of resources. http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/index.asp
Stop Bullying Now. A site of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Contains a variety of resources, including animated podcasts. http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/index.asp
The Bully Project. Information on prevention, intervention, and support for victims of bullying in schools. http://www.stopbullyingnow.com/
The National Campaign Against Youth Violence. The National Campaign Against Youth Violence (NCAYV) is a nationwide public awareness campaign that works to reduce youth violence by and against youth. Created by America’s top business, academic, community and youth experts, NCAYV’s mission is to create a safer America for all youth to live, learn and grow. www.noviolence.net

Chopped Liver and Paris Hilton

I never thought I’d hear myself say it and it took only one minute and fifty seconds to happen.  I’ve become an unabashed Paris Hilton fan.  All cheap glamor, shallow videos, bared breasts, and other superficialities are forgiven.

I might have expected it from Lewis Black but not from Paris.  In just 110 seconds, she skewers two presidential candidates, pokes fun at herself, and probably picks up placement payments from Traveler Magazine.  I don’t even care if someone else wrote the video, at least she hires well.

For fans of irony like myself, I am most tickled that the superficial star exposes the superficiality of the so-called differences in the Obama and McCane energy policies.  One is stumping on the short term, the other on the long term.  In truth, no matter who ends up in the White House, real options are going to be severely constrained by global and environmental factors outside the control of both the president and the country.  They both better be trying to figure out how to get divergent interests to collaborate.

So let’s hear it for the chopped liver.  I stand in awe.

If anyone was lucky enough to have missed John McCane’s “celebrity” campaign ad, find it here.

Catch Paris’s reply here.

Healthy Food, Healthy Image, Healthy Fearmongering.

I know a lawyer who tells her clients that a time comes when the client needs to stop listening to her.  That is, do what’s right and damn the whining lawyers.  The California Milk Processors Board might want to heed her advice.

Got Milk?  Healthy message, right?  Not the message the Milk Board’s lawyers are sending to Talkeetna, Alaska artist Barbara Holmes.

Remember that guy in the cartoon, Snidley Whiplash?  The Milk Board is doing its best to imitate him.  It is bringing a cease and desist order against Ms. Holmes.  It seems that Ms. Holmes embroidered a handful of baby shirts for a church auction.  The fuss you ask?  She hand embroidered each shirt with the message, “Got Breastmilk.”

Her act, according to the Milk Board’s attorneys, is a clear copyright violation.

A nice summary of the situation here.

The website of the local Talkeetna lawyer who is defending Ms. Holmes against the Milk Board is here.

To me, it looks like some healthy stuff had been going down.  That is, some healthy fearmongering by the Milk Board’s legal counsel.

Update: July 30.  If you have more free reading time than me and prefer Hiaku with your intellectual property law, check out the coverage at f/k/a.

Just another casaulty

I can add nothing of value so I provide just the link.  [Via]

Ethics within Ethics?

I have a folder of unread RSS items. I poke through it from time to time. So It was that I found a May 23 blog entry by Daniel Altman.

I like Mr. Altman’s blog. I like his insights on globalization. Consequently, I was disappointed with a note he added to the bottom of his article. He blamed his staff for losing a computer file.

Ironically, the May 23 article focused on the value of socially ethical investing, with allusions to Enron. Is not Mr. Altman’s action in blaming his staff the same type of behavior we saw from Enron’s senior executives?

An organization’s culture flows from its top. Whether it is ethical or organizational behavior, the behavior of an organization’s leaders serve as a template for that of the organization’s employees.

I’ll bet that Mr. Altman’s leadership played a role in the loss of the computer file, even if indirectly. I believe it speaks volumes when a leader, such as Mr. Altman, tries to evade responsibility for an error in his organization. Were there similar evasions that took place in his staff?

C’mon Mr. Altman, step up and take some responsibility. Losing a set of blog comments is an embarrassment but not more. Don’t cower behind your staff. If you lead, they will lead too.

In this case, your actions not only shined poorly on you, they served as a sardonic self commentary on your own article.

On Greed

I am a lazy lout. If I post two days in a row, I know that I am mulling over things.

I return to my post of yesterday. I have alway been a fan of the old saying:

Greed is not bad, and stupidity is not bad, but greed and stupidity combined are very bad.

Here is another take on greed: it is good until it becomes sociopathic greed.

Sociopathic greed is the sort of greed that gives no consideration to its own survival. It is the parasite that kills the host — and most parasites are too smart to do that.

For example, take football. Each team is greedy. It wants to win. It is good that both teams may knock a few heads, use some elbows, and do whatever below the belt. All part of the sport.

Consider what would happen if one team arrived with firearms and offed the other team. In their own eyes, they would see themselves as the winners. On the other hand, it would not do much for the sport in general. Sooner or later there would be no more football.

I think the same may be said of societies.

The Fall of Rome

I could enjoy watching flights of hubris if they did not have the nasty habit of landing on top of pedestrians when they return to earth.

I was reading this morning an article on the Bear Stearns debacle. The pundits continue to debate the source of the subprime mess. “Did Bear Stearn’s downfall cause it?,” they ask. “No, it was the other way around,” others contend.

In all the flurry, what caught my eye was a statement attributed to Bear Stearn’s fund manager Ralph Cioffi. Ralph was the manager of one of Bear Stearn’s subprime portfolios. He reportedly earned tens of millions of dollars annually to shepard these monies. When he belatedly realized his funds had failed, he emailed a colleague and stated that he had “effectively washed a 30-year career down the drain.”

A remarkable statement. A man who has just squandered 1.6 billion of other people’s money and his first thought is to his career and, by extension, his pocketbook?

I would guess that if the pundits paused long enough to meditate on Ralph’s statement, they would find in it the answer to their questions. For I would also guess that Ralph is not alone.

Seven Dirty Words

George Carlin was one of my favorite comedians. His death got me pondering again his famous (or infamous) Seven Dirty Words. It has always struck me that his seven dirty words all relate to having sex or sitting on the toilet.

As he used to say, all the other words were acceptable for television, right?.

These words include kill, murder, slay, execute, assassinate, terminate, massacre, eradicate, cleanse, call in, dispatch, zap, polish off, ice, kavork, pop, smoke, blow away, do in, take out, postal, swat, bogart, extinguish, annihilate, slaughter, do up, hit, whack, scratch, waste, off, snuff, liquidate, butcher, lynch, dry-gulch, burke, and gank.

Lest we forget, Holocaust, Killing Fields, and Darfur are acceptable too.

I will leave it to the philosophers whether, in a world of scant resources, it is better to kill than to give life.

As I’ve said before, though, the kids will always figure it out. My hunch is that if we showed them more tits and dicks, and less whacks and hits, we might live in a different place.

Rest in peace George. You will be missed.

And then it was Obama

I ride a bicycle. I’m just a weekend warrior, which made the kind comments by New York photographer and bike courier Brian McGloin a special treat. What he does is real cycling.

A few years back, I decided to ride my bicycle over the Going to the Sun Highway. This so-called highway is a two lane road climbing through Glacier National Park in Montana. It goes up to the height of land without a break. On a bicycle and in rough numbers, it is 25 miles of nothing but up hill. For me, this meant hours of pedaling. Just pushing one foot down, then the other.

At times, the road simply ground through miles of trees, with nothing more to see. At other times, the road reached singular points of reward: an arched bridge over an impassible gorge or a stone tunnel through a barrier of granite. There was even a small cliff called the Weeping Wall.

What I found most grueling about the ride was that, for much of it, I could look literally miles ahead and see the road scratched into the mountainside, still climbing toward the pass. For all the sweat I’d put in, all I could see was more hill ahead.

At one point, however, I stopped. Focused on the riding as I had been, I had not looked back at the road behind me. I was moved to see how far I had come. Below me lay valleys and forests as far back as I could see. As others who have traveled the road will tell, it is one of the most spectacular sights in the United States. It caused me to pause and reflect that my efforts had, in fact, had remarkable results.

So I got on my bicycle and started pedaling again.

And so I think it is with hate and bigotry too. Let us pause a moment and reflect on how far we have come. Then, move forward again.

Congratulation Mr. Obama. Congratulations to all African Americans. Congratulations America.

Dumb

The New York Times reports today that the president is threatening to veto an increase to the GI Bill. Apparently he fears an exodus from our over extended military. As can be expected in an election year, this has become the rhetorical equivalent of a greased flag pole climbing contest.

The whole GI Bill thing is dumb. Please understand, I support the GI Bill. Born of political expediency, it nevertheless turned out to be one of the best pieces of legislation of the 20th century.

The whole GI Bill thing is dumb because it misses the point. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a movement to require that all U.S. citizens be provided with a free public education through grade 12. For all its ills, the U.S. education system turned out some of the best educated and most economically competitive individuals in the world. The GI Bill only improved on all that.

In the 21st century, a high school education is worth about as much as a 6th grade education was worth one hundred years ago. The sorry fact of the matter is that, as a country, we’re getting dumb. Why the debate over the GI bill is dumb is that we should not be voting to give veterans a free college education, we should be voting to give everyone a free college education. We should do this just like we voted to give everyone a high school education 100 years ago.