Benefits of Bullying

In my English class, we were told to write about bullying. Most of the class said stuff like "it is bad, here's how you handle it..." etc... I was actually told to do the same, but then I wrote another one for extra credit. This is a short essay on bullying, what specialists think, and what really is harming kids these days.

The Benefits of Bullying
If you were to walk into every Elementary school in the country, you would notice many similarities between them. First of all would be the obvious: teachers, students, and similar subjects of study. There would also be something new, something that is recently popping up in schools around the country in the past few years, ways to prevent bullying. The world has always had bullies, and will most likely always have bullies. But, should we really be pushing the idea of “No Put-Downs” on the children of today?
In order to prevent bullying, many parents and school officials believe that they must pay more attention to the students in order to stop the bully before he/she bullies the victim. Therefore, parents are paying even closer attention to their kids, which could have its benefits, but also has devastating consequences. Children are being taught to run to an adult whenever things go wrong, and are not developing skills to handle problems on their own. Helen Johnson, a Parent Relations Consultant, told Cosmogirl magazine in the November 2008 issue, “If you’ve been hovered over your whole life, it delays your maturation and it becomes difficult to forge out on your own.” Adults may believe that they are helping their children, but in fact they are doing the complete opposite.
It is true that teen suicide rates are up higher than they have ever been, and many people believe that this is from bullying. Bullying is the same as it ever was, or ever will be, so could it be that the teens are changing, and not the bullying? If we are being too protective of the kids today, could it affect this rate? Although the rates are rising, suicide is still only 1.3% of the overall causes of death of teens in the United States, according to familyfirstaid.org.
Children are being told today that bullies are actually the weak ones, and that they only pick on others to make themselves feel better. This is not true, students with low self esteem are the ones that sulk in the corners, and the smart ones know better than to make themselves a target. Bullies are actually doing society a favor, by helping to arrange a natural class of people separated by their self esteem.
Bullies are helping to make the world a better place, by weeding out the weak and helping the strong become stronger. Adults need to realize that by hovering over their children is not going to help the situation any more; in fact, it just makes the threats of a bully more frightening to the victims. When adults start realizing that they aren’t helping anything, then maybe they can sit down peacefully and realize the mess they have gotten themselves into.