Bullying: Is an Answer Teaching Self-Defense?

I haven't yet written on the bullying topic, but since it was in the news recently because the incident involving Darnell "Dynasty" Young and it will be a topic on Saturday's Civil Discourse Now, I thought I should devote at least a few lines to the subject.

I have to admit, I don't 100% understand the bullying subject.  Perhaps that is because I don't recall ever being  bullied in school, either physically or emotionally.  Although I was then more shy than I am today,  I was fairly popular in school and other students didn't tease me. While I wasn't tall, I lifted weights and was pretty strong.  Growing up on a farm with four brothers, I think I could have defended myself against virtually anyone in the school should I have been physically assaulted.  I can't imagine I would have ever tolerated bullying.  Rather than turn in the bullies, which even back then was frowned upon, I would have retaliated physically against anyone who attempted to bully me.  Being the son of a Marine, I would have been much more bothered not retaliating to bullying than anything that might have happened to me should I have tried to defend myself.

I am sure bullying went on around me, but I recall very little of it.  I do remember a quiet, nerdy type kid who rode the same school bus I did and how some of the other kids teased him.  I made a point to befriend the boy, sitting by him on the bus and talking to him.  The others saw me befriend him and the teasing stopped.  He eventually came out of his shell.  Looking back, that was one of the things I am most proud of.

In college, I remember a trio of thugs who lived in one of the dorm room who everyone was scared of.  One of them had been in the military and another supposedly kept a gun in his dorm room.  They tore up the the bathroom on our floor one evening and the dorm apportioned damages to everyone who lived on the floor.  I didn't have a lot of money and was really ticked that I was being asked to pay for their damage.  Everyone was scared of the thugs, but I,  in a fit of insanity, went to their room and told them in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to pay for their damage to the bathrooms.  Looking back, that confrontation was probably not the smartest thing I ever did.  But when it came time to pay the damage bill, I was the only one who did not have to shell out any money.  The thugs paid my bill.

I know my experience is probably not the norm and that others had it tougher than I did.  I wonder though if taking the possibility of retaliation away makes the bullies more likely to commit their bad acts.  Maybe we should be teaching people to defend themselves and not punish them when they choose to do so?  From my Internet research (a dangerous phrase post Rep. Morris), it seems like I'm not alone in the thought that teaching children self-defense techniques can be a way of stopping bullying.