AHHHH WHY AM I SO EMOTIONAL TODAY

>> ^turboj0e:

AHHHH WHY AM I SO EMOTIONAL TODAY


MANoPAUSE

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"Kids will be kids, boys will be boys," - Sounds like something the republican candidates could get behind.

Wow, this movie looks powerful as hell. I was going to comment with some skepticism about how they were able to capture this on camera, but then I read the Q&A. Apparently they asked the school's permission to film there all year round and they just moved around as flies on the wall. They filmed a lot of different events/kids so that they didn't seem to be focusing just on the main character. Although they were surprised that the bullying continued in their presence, they weren't that surprised because the kids had been getting away with it forever. Also, they were filming with cameras that looked like still-shot cameras so the kids might not have thought they were being taped. The producers also say that they think the worst acts happened off camera.

Here's a link to their notes (good stuff):
http://www.thebullyproject.com/assets/pdf/BULLY_Production_Notes.pdf

I honestly don't know what I would do if my kids had to go through this. I feel like I'd go into rage mode and start just kicking kids asses, but that's easy to say and certainly doesn't solve anything. I don't know why - I certainly was never violent to anyone else - but whenever I watch videos of bullying or meet a kid with no friends, this huge sense of guilt passes over me. I guess I just wish I would've taken chances back in school to stand up for people or even more importantly hang out with someone who was always on their own.

TL;DR: gonna watch this movie

>> ^transporter:

Wow, this movie looks powerful as hell. I was going to comment with some skepticism about how they were able to capture this on camera, but then I read the Q&A. Apparently they asked the school's permission to film there all year round and they just moved around as flies on the wall. They filmed a lot of different events/kids so that they didn't seem to be focusing just on the main character. Although they were surprised that the bullying continued in their presence, they weren't that surprised because the kids had been getting away with it forever. Also, they were filming with cameras that looked like still-shot cameras so the kids might not have thought they were being taped. The producers also say that they think the worst acts happened off camera.
Here's a link to their notes (good stuff):
http://www.thebullyproject.com/assets/pdf/BULLY_Production_Notes.pdf
I honestly don't know what I would do if my kids had to go through this. I feel like I'd go into rage mode and start just kicking kids asses, but that's easy to say and certainly doesn't solve anything. I don't know why - I certainly was never violent to anyone else - but whenever I watch videos of bullying or meet a kid with no friends, this huge sense of guilt passes over me. I guess I just wish I would've taken chances back in school to stand up for people or even more importantly hang out with someone who was always on their own.
TL;DR: gonna watch this movie


You're adorable I know exactly what you mean, it's so irrational, but whenever I hear a kid has been really mean to one of mine, I want to go ahead and kick that brat hard in the shin or something. I cannot abide bullying, I was always an inbetweener at school and I could dip into both sides of the crowd. I remember even at the age of about 7 or so, making a point of playing with the louse ridden, rotting toothed girl, because all she ever got was rejection. It made me sick to my stomach. I tell my children now, go and talk to those kids that everyone hates, even if you hate them too (so easy for them to fall into that trap of disliking others for no good reason), because often, they turn out to be really cool and not only that, you're in the simplest of ways making that child's life a bit easier.

<edit> No clue how I made it bold...

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what? no comment yet from someone saying how bullying "toughens you up and prepares you for the real world"? COME ON!

See, this is where I get pissed off. I cannot speak to how to parent a kid, but I can speak as someone who had a shit time in school.

In my adult life, I am a liberal socialist. I believe violence should always be the last resort. I am genuinely conflicted about this, but I think penny arcade sums up my feelings on this.

Sometimes violence really is the answer. Turn around and punch that coward motherfucker. It doesn't matter if they're bigger. Yes, you will take a beating for it. Do it anyway, then get up and hit them again. You'll probably get in trouble with school, parents, etc. Fuck all those people if they don't support you. They are not in your position.

Now this is clearly not a long term solution. What's needed is to address the root causes.
Despite my advice, I genuinely believe that sometimes the bully is something of a victim themselves. They probably have a shitty home life. Or maybe they're just a spoilt little fucker who thinks they can do what they want. From the POV of the kid getting bullied, it's irrelevant.

> Yes, you will take a beating for it

Probably not even, actually. Bullies don't expect fists to come flying in their direction.

>> ^berticus:

what? no comment yet from someone saying how bullying "toughens you up and prepares you for the real world"? COME ON!


ok i'll start. im all for moderate measures to be taken to monitor and disrupt bullying (man, that almost became full alliteration). that being said, the bullying scandal and the myriad documentaries and specials and exposes on the subject are just redundant. as someone who works in the school system bullying really isnt any different than when i was in school, or when my parents went to school, or their parents, etc. bullying isnt anything new. calling it an epidemic is laughable and just plain absurd.

does my heart go out to individuals who have been bullied? absolutely. i myself was constantly bullied growing up (both at school and at home). now berticus, what you said is true even if you were being facetious. being bullied forced me to quickly develop social skills needed to diffuse confrontations among other things. it sharpened my wit, even as an adult. the point isnt that we need bullies to make men out of our children. the point is bullies arent anything new, and they will always be with us. react accordingly

additionally, where is the problem? kids must be held accountable for their actions just like adults. but kids, for the most part, will not hold themselves accountable. enter parents. like that bimbo who was like "theyre as good as gold". that silly tart has no business being employed in the school system after that hog shit

/me sighs.

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If somebody bullied my kid, I'd go to the bully's father and find a way to start a fight then I'll blast him in the face until either my knuckles are broken or his nose is broken.

>> ^smooman:

>> ^berticus:
what? no comment yet from someone saying how bullying "toughens you up and prepares you for the real world"? COME ON!

ok i'll start. im all for moderate measures to be taken to monitor and disrupt bullying (man, that almost became full alliteration). that being said, the bullying scandal and the myriad documentaries and specials and exposes on the subject are just redundant. as someone who works in the school system bullying really isnt any different than when i was in school, or when my parents went to school, or their parents, etc. bullying isnt anything new. calling it an epidemic is laughable and just plain absurd.
does my heart go out to individuals who have been bullied? absolutely. i myself was constantly bullied growing up (both at school and at home). now berticus, what you said is true even if you were being facetious. being bullied forced me to quickly develop social skills needed to diffuse confrontations among other things. it sharpened my wit, even as an adult. the point isnt that we need bullies to make men out of our children. the point is bullies arent anything new, and they will always be with us. react accordingly


I downvoted your comment and I just wanted to explain why.

First off, while you may technically be correct in that the amount of bullying has not changed over time, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) allow that bullying to continue 24-7 so that there is no refuge from it, even after you get out of school. In other words, while the rate of bullying may not be changing the severity and impact is--it is more invasive, harder to escape, and therefore is NOT the same as when you were a kid.

But even disregarding that, I think the term "epidemic" is appropriate when you look at the fact that over the past 50 years crime among teens has consistently been decreasing in the U.S. (according to FBI statistics a drop of over 44%) and yet the rate of bullying appears to remain the same. To me, that says there is a huge problem that is not being addressed by either our society or our school system. And taking the attitude that "bullies aren't anything new, and they will always be with us" does not seem to me to be the way to go about solving that problem. Rather, it virtually guarantees that in the next 50 years we will see bullying to continue at the same rate as bullies find ways to circumvent the "moderate measures [...] to monitor and disrupt bullying" that you advocate.

Documentaries like this are critically important because they expose just how deep the problems are--you have school officials claiming the bus is perfectly safe while the documentary filmmakers are capturing multiple acts of violence and bullying on the bus. We need more documentaries like this and much more research into how bullying manifests and how to prevent it because we're clearly doing a piss-poor job of it right now.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Massive institutional schooling systems. It's like prison. That's where bullying breeds. modern schools are just awful, awful places. Keep your kids home or put them in an alternative school if you can afford it.

what you said at the end, that i think is the real issue. youve got a documentary crew filming bullying on a bus and yet the officials (whoever that lady was, principal i presume) are in complete denial instead of looking into it further and taking appropriate disciplinary action.



by and large children are products of whoever raises em, whoever their adult influence is. you could take virtually any "bully" look at his parents and find the root cause (most of the time anyway). i know a lot of the boys who bullied me in jr high and high school i later came to find out almost all of them had no father figure. do you really think anti bullying rules or something is gonna stop that? the problem is deeper than that, much deeper. do you think bullying stops after high school? do you think it doesnt take place at work, at college, at a park, at the movies, at anywhere?

i think overall the point im getting at is it really doesnt matter what we do or dont do, we cannot prevent bullying. it will happen, it always has and it always will, and thats not a "swept under the rug" answer to the issue, its the reality. so how can we resolve it? by changing not only our mindset as adults, but positively influencing the mindsets of our children as well.

as a side note, as far as the 24-7 thing is concerned, i was bullied at school and at home almost a full decade before the internet and looooong before myspace and facebook. i had an older sister who was such a tomboy growing up she was practically another older brother. but i mainly got picked on by my older brother who was just a year apart from me. i got shit from him and his friends at school, i got it from him and his friends when we'd play in and around our neighborhood and i got it from him at home. in a way, thats infinitely more invasive and inescapable than e-bullying. i lived with him, and for a number of years i had to share a room with him. so ya, to me, it isnt different at all. and while my testimony may be a special case, its far from being unique and youd be naive to think so.

if teen crime rates are declining and bullying is pretty much a constant, that certainly doesnt suggest bullying is becoming worse or even that its a "huge problem". all that suggests is what ive been saying; bullying isnt anything new, and it will always be with us.

maybe im not articulating myself in a compassionate way. im certainly not advocating turning a blind eye to bullies or bullying. i squash it pretty quick when it happens in class, and whenever appropriate i try to talk to the bully one on one in hopes that i may discern what the issue really is. is he picking on that kid cuz he's just a shitty kid? or is he lashing out over emotional/mental issues he's unprepared to cope with? or is he compensating for severe self esteem issues? those are the things we should be addressing to "prevent" bullying, not creating this bizarre subculture war where its us vs them.
>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^smooman:
>> ^berticus:
what? no comment yet from someone saying how bullying "toughens you up and prepares you for the real world"? COME ON!

ok i'll start. im all for moderate measures to be taken to monitor and disrupt bullying (man, that almost became full alliteration). that being said, the bullying scandal and the myriad documentaries and specials and exposes on the subject are just redundant. as someone who works in the school system bullying really isnt any different than when i was in school, or when my parents went to school, or their parents, etc. bullying isnt anything new. calling it an epidemic is laughable and just plain absurd.
does my heart go out to individuals who have been bullied? absolutely. i myself was constantly bullied growing up (both at school and at home). now berticus, what you said is true even if you were being facetious. being bullied forced me to quickly develop social skills needed to diffuse confrontations among other things. it sharpened my wit, even as an adult. the point isnt that we need bullies to make men out of our children. the point is bullies arent anything new, and they will always be with us. react accordingly

I downvoted your comment and I just wanted to explain why.
First off, while you may technically be correct in that the amount of bullying has not changed over time, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) allow that bullying to continue 24-7 so that there is no refuge from it, even after you get out of school. In other words, while the rate of bullying may not be changing the severity and impact is--it is more invasive, harder to escape, and therefore is NOT the same as when you were a kid.
But even disregarding that, I think the term "epidemic" is appropriate when you look at the fact that over the past 50 years crime among teens has consistently been decreasing in the U.S. (according to FBI statistics a drop of over 44%) and yet the rate of bullying appears to remain the same. To me, that says there is a huge problem that is not being addressed by either our society or our school system. And taking the attitude that "bullies aren't anything new, and they will always be with us" does not seem to me to be the way to go about solving that problem. Rather, it virtually guarantees that in the next 50 years we will see bullying to continue at the same rate as bullies find ways to circumvent the "moderate measures [...] to monitor and disrupt bullying" that you advocate.
Documentaries like this are critically important because they expose just how deep the problems are--you have school officials claiming the bus is perfectly safe while the documentary filmmakers are capturing multiple acts of violence and bullying on the bus. We need more documentaries like this and much more research into how bullying manifests and how to prevent it because we're clearly doing a piss-poor job of it right now.

If someone bullies your kid, you can make it abundantly clear to that kid, that far more powerful people can bully him to if it doesn't end immediately.

>> ^dag:

Massive institutional schooling systems. It's like prison. That's where bullying breeds. modern schools are just awful, awful places. Keep your kids home or put them in an alternative school if you can afford it.


I can't help but feel like this is hiding from the problem rather than addressing it. Also, the potential cost in social skills seems like it could be severe.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

But there's no "fix" for the problem if you believe the whole institution itself is wrong. Just because we've had a system of lockers and sports and proms and bells and *thousands* of kids crammed into a single building - doesn't mean this is something that needs tweaking. It needs teraring down and reinventing. >> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^dag:
Massive institutional schooling systems. It's like prison. That's where bullying breeds. modern schools are just awful, awful places. Keep your kids home or put them in an alternative school if you can afford it.

I can't help but feel like this is hiding from the problem rather than addressing it. Also, the potential cost in social skills seems like it could be severe.

none of this solves the problem of psychotic teachers and the fact that google is a better educator.

missing out on a social experience? please... missing out on how to learn to talk like a moron and be dick more like it.

Home school for kids if i ever have em, sports and hobbies for socializing

The MPAA just slapped this film with an 'R' rating, which means they won't be allowed to show it in schools:

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/02/24/Bully_Doc_Given_R_Rating_Cant_Be_Shown_in_Schools/

Being bullied a lot as a kid led me to develop severe social phobia starting at 17, ruining whatever was left of my social life during my twenties and also helped me drop out of college, twice. After two years of therapy as an adult, I can deal with social anxiety a lot better, but I probably won't be able to function socially 100%.

I was also bullied at home by one of my older brothers who, only later in life as a father of three, found out he's bipolar and now takes medication. I love him, he never physically bullied me, it was mostly psychological warfare with that guy, picking apart any shred of self esteem I had as a kid and meticulously crushing it every chance he got. He sometimes humilliates his own kids, my nephews, I'm going to have to explain that he can't just think, "I did that all the time with my kid brother and he turned out OK".

Uh, no he didn't.

@smooman

Yeah, I think the way you worded your first post led me to believe you were advocating just doing things the way they've always been done until now and that you didn't consider it that big of a problem. I think though that bullying is much more complex than just the parental/family issues you mentioned. Certainly I'm sure you going to find something there, but I think @dag has pointed out that institutional learning as it is currently carried out in most Western countries carries part of the blame as well. My question is, do things have to be this way? Do we have to be complacent with the current level of bullying? Is it beyond our control (i.e. we can't change what is happening in the homes after kids get out of school). I don't believe so, and I think Finland's school system is pointing the way for how we'll get there.

You and @dag might want to take a look at Finland's educational system, in particular their anti-bullying measures, which have been shown to a statistically significant degree to reduce self and peer-reported bullying. For an overview, check out this website: http://www.kivakoulu.fi/there-is-no-bullying-in-kiva-school I googled some of the articles cited and found them online if you want more specific information about their program and how they defined and measured bullying.

Of course, Finland's education system has introduced some other radical changes which no doubt are also contributing to the decline in bullying. See this article for more informations: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

My point is this--I agree with you that we can't eliminate bullying (within schools) entirely. But I think we reduce the frequency of its occurrence and deal with it in much better ways than we currently do when it does happen. Like you said, we need to address the causes--psychological, social, institutional, etc.--rather than put out fires after they've already been started.

im still right and youre still wrong tho, this is the internet afterall. someone must be declared a winner. im declaring myself =P

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Nice links. I like this particular section very much:

As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."

For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.

I grew up in Finland and went to school there. Yes, some kids were bullied and none of the teachers ever noticed some of that. It didn't happen in the school, but when I was on the second grade n(elementary school), I definitely had two biys bullying me for a while. After school ended and we had to walk home, they'd follow me, push me around, scare the crap out of me. I was the only child and very quiet, timid, easy to scare.

Those boys really scared me, I remember just running off and grabbing the arm of a woman walking home from the store, to make the boys think I knew her. It eventually got bad enough that I just refused to go to school. My mom didn't understand what was going on, and she threw a frigging fit that scared me even more. But still, I refused to go to school.

Eventually it all came out. I eventually talked to my parents, and my mom came to observe this after one schoolday. She grabbed the kids when they started attacking me and scared the crap out of at least one of them. He was nice after that, he just said 'please don't tell my parents, I didn't know I was really scaring her!" My dad went to talk to the other bullys parents on one night, and they had no idea he was doing that. My parents had a talk with my teacher too. I was left alone after that (and luckily thye worse kid actually moved away before too long). It wasn't anything too bad, but at that time, it was awful. Some kids maybe just not realize what they are doing. And the parents really had no idea.

Teaching kids bullying is bad should really start at a young age. You have to make them realize what they nare doing is wrong, and how wrong it can be.

On junior high we had a girl who me and my friends made fun of. We thought it was just a 'fun' thing to make comments about her hairdo, or things like that. We were still 'friends' with her, but I bet she hated us. I myself never realized that little comments like 'your hair looks like a sausage roll', even when made in a 'friendly way' hurt her.

I didn't even realize that until I was way older! If I could go back in time, I'd never make those comments! We all thought we were just being funny, but little things like that can also hurt. I am not sure how one could deal with things like that, but we all should just be taught that little things can hurt. It doesn't have to be pushing and hurting, it can be just silly little remarks, and I know I will feel bad about all that for the rest of my life!

Bullying of even that kind usually stopped (mostly) after people graduated from Junior high, and went to either highschool, or vocational school. I went to highschool, so I have no idea how life in a Finnish vocational school is (we were told horror stories though, that vocational school woulod be really bad and everybody was being bullied to death, but I think it wasn't true, or at least not today).

To me watching American TV shows about high schools, and seeing kids bullying, being bullied and so on, was awful. To me, high school was a whole different planet. Kids were trying to be nice, or at least more adult-like, and bullying wasn't there. At least according to the TV shows, High school is bullying heaven! And all about cliques! Maybe because we really didn't have jocks or cheerleaders, it was better? No drama clubs, glee clubs.. You might have bene classified as a 'nerd', or a 'good girl', but at least not too many peoiple were outcasts in my school. And if they were, it was because of their personality, not because of what they wore or were interested in.

It really breaks my heart to know kids are bullied so bad they feel like the only way out is to kill themselves.

People will need to care more, to put themselves in anothers' shoes. When you are a kid, it can be hard. But I think it should start from the home, and schools should try to do whatever they can. People just need to understand how it feels, and how you'd feel if somebody did that to you, or to your loved one.

Excuse the rant, my dog has gotten me up at wee hours (around 4:30am, though this morning she graciously let me sleep until 5:15am) every night for quite a while and I am seriously lacking sleep and can be emotional and/or weirdy irritated and grumpy, not to mention insane.

More like Statler/waldorf school!

Ooohohohohoho.
>> ^dag:
They've been home schooled some and are now attending a Steiner/Waldorf school.

You guys might want to consider that the right path is not Finland, but going the other direction, with less government involvement in education. This is about putting education and its institutions in a more competitive environment, governments will always bog them down, making it more about teachers or whatever else, turning them into the massive faceless institutions that are like prisons like @dag points out. Instead, we should put on schools the pressure to compete in quality and price for those who'd normally be paying for education, the students or their parents.

Mintbbb points out that bullying does exist in Finland, even though they have a lot less of it. A finnish friend of mine once told me he never saw a fist fight in his entire life, ever, not even as a kid. However, just because they had the decency of adopting anti-bullying measures, doesn't mean letting government educate and make choices for our kids is any better, don't let that fool you. Bullying has been going on for so long it's become an institution in itself, public schools in America and elsewhere have little incentive of stopping or even acknowledging it as a problem.

>> ^renatojj:

You guys might want to consider that the right path is not Finland, but going the other direction, with less government involvement in education. This is about putting education and its institutions in a more competitive environment, governments will always bog them down, making it more about teachers or whatever else, turning them into the massive faceless institutions that are like prisons like @dag points out. Instead, we should put on schools the pressure to compete in quality and price for those who'd normally be paying for education, the students or their parents.
Mintbbb points out that bullying does exist in Finland, even though they have a lot less of it. A finnish friend of mine once told me he never saw a fist fight in his entire life, ever, not even as a kid. However, just because they had the decency of adopting anti-bullying measures, doesn't mean letting government educate and make choices for our kids is any better, don't let that fool you. Bullying has been going on for so long it's become an institution in itself, public schools in America and elsewhere have little incentive of stopping or even acknowledging it as a problem.


For-pay schools exist. Gasp! If you want to send your kids to one, you can do it. Bullying still exists in them.

>> ^direpickle:


For-pay schools exist. Gasp! If you want to send your kids to one, you can do it. Bullying still exists in them.
I agree, and possibly for-pay schools would have more competition if there weren't so many free public schools crowding out the education market. With time, parents would less likely send their kids to for-pay schools where bullying happens the most. I'm not saying these things would just magically happen, just that there are more incentives to seek out solutions when you get government out of the way and give students and parents more power and responsibility.

Not sure if you're trolling or not, but if you'd read the links I posted it's clearly spelled out--with research-backed evidence--how and why Finland's system is one of the best in the world. You show me good empirical research that less government involvement produces the amazing gains not just in academic performance but overall societal well-being (i.e. happiness) that Finland has shown in the past decade and maybe we'll have something to discuss. Otherwise, I'll take well-conducted research over politically-biased speculation any day of the week.
>> ^renatojj:



You guys might want to consider that the right path is not Finland, but going the other direction, with less government involvement in education. This is about putting education and its institutions in a more competitive environment, governments will always bog them down, making it more about teachers or whatever else, turning them into the massive faceless institutions that are like prisons like @dag points out. Instead, we should put on schools the pressure to compete in quality and price for those who'd normally be paying for education, the students or their parents.
Mintbbb points out that bullying does exist in Finland, even though they have a lot less of it. A finnish friend of mine once told me he never saw a fist fight in his entire life, ever, not even as a kid. However, just because they had the decency of adopting anti-bullying measures, doesn't mean letting government educate and make choices for our kids is any better, don't let that fool you. Bullying has been going on for so long it's become an institution in itself, public schools in America and elsewhere have little incentive of stopping or even acknowledging it as a problem.

@SDGundamX so, either I'm trolling or doing politically-biased speculation, however your research could never be politically-biased, because those results were confirmed by the OECD, a respectable organization that happens to be run by members of various governments. Public servants, unlike me, would never have any political bias, specially towards statism.

Why stop at education then, why not leave newsletters, TV, and the internet with the government, so it can provide us with information and news? If we all believe in the dream of allowing everyone access to the truth, maybe the government, who is so much better at providing education, should be better at providing all kinds of information too, specially the truth, doesn't that make sense?

>> ^renatojj:

@SDGundamX so, either I'm trolling or doing politically-biased speculation, however your research could never be politically-biased, because those results were confirmed by the OECD, a respectable organization that happens to be run by members of various governments. Public servants, unlike me, would never have any political bias, specially towards statism.
Why stop at education then, why not leave newsletters, TV, and the internet with the government, so it can provide us with information and news? If we all believe in the dream of allowing everyone access to the truth, maybe the government, who is so much better at providing education, should be better at providing all kinds of information too, specially the truth, doesn't that make sense?


I read your post and I see you didn't provide any evidence that a competitive-based model is in any way, shape, or form better than Finland's model; you implied that because some (not all) of the research was confirmed by the OCED it must be biased and therefore discounted (without providing any evidence of bias in the studies under question and ignorning the fact that the studies were published in peer-reviewed journals that have no affiliation with either Finland or the OCED); you also threw out a red-herring by implying that the government ensuring free public education for all is equivalent to the government controlling the flow of information (yet again without any evidence).

Given the above, I don't see this discussion going anywhere. You're not bringing anything to the table other than your own unsupported conjecture and unfounded accusations. If you've got some links that support your position(s) by all means post them and maybe I'll have a look and get back to you. Otherwise, I won't be responding to any more of your posts on this topic.

I also noticed you didn't even contemplate my analogy because I didn't provide evidence of one thing (public education) being "equivalent" to another (public control of media). What if you tried to show me how the analogy doesn't hold somehow, because analogies are just abstractions, are they even supposed to be backed by evidence?

Did that analogy scare you?

I agree it's not possible to have a healthy debate with someone who tries to intimidate and hide behind request for evidence for anything the other side may say, even for a simple analogy.

I think it's either very naïve or disingenuous of you to accuse me of political bias, without providing evidence yourself (not that I would request it) while assuming that whatever interpretation of evidence that you gathered through the internet can't possibly have any political bias whatsoever.

However, I confess it was disingenuous of me to focus on the issue of political bias when I personally think the results are probably true regarding students in Finland having better scores, even though I don't consider that being "better" education.

You want links, you can find them using Google. Links are nothing but referring to the interpretation of someone else, whether that interpretation is based on evidence or not, whether that interpretation is biased or not, and whether the evidence is even true, is another matter altogether. So please get off your righteous evidence-supported high horse and try to talk to me as a regular person.

If you want to back away now because I have no evidence, fine, but could you please indulge me by answering about that analogy? Sorry for the wall of text btw.