School banning banter

I agree with many posters that genuine cases of bullying are passed of as 'bantz' and that clearly needs to stop.

The children would be much better served by the school providing education on what constitutes banter and what constitutes bullying, and how the way in which someone has banter may cause harm and actually be bullying. Have discussions on where that line is.

Banning banter though is just ridiculous. Can a lad not gently rib his mate when his football team loses or is fantasy football pick was a dud? The job of parents and educators is to prepare children for adult life. I'm not sure going around like the care bears will do that.

Probably both tbh.
Some folk are so used to being the butt of other's jokes that they don't realise they can speak up. Ideally the bystander might ask them, privately, if they are ok with what's happening and remind them that it is ok to speak up.

Micro aggression is a nonsense term, either something is offensive or it isn't.

In my workplace a lot of “banter” would be classified as offensive and we’ve all had active bystander training to speak up against these micro- aggressions.
Who gets to decide if its a micro aggression? The person who it's being directed at or can someone else in the vicinity such as the 'trained active bystander' decide and report off their own back?
E.g my colleague calls me a short-arse, because I can't reach a shelf.. not offensive to me, but could the active bystander report them?

Imagine normalising consistently calling someone an idiot and not considering if we maybe want to discourage that? I know kids whose lives have been hell because of supposed 'banter'.

“Banter” is a way of blaming the “victim”, for thier own bullying. It’s “your fault” as you have no sense of humour, you should find it funny .

The sooner Bantz disappears the better

we have recently seen on here a post where a child who was a football team star said to his friends "I'm not joining the choir because they are all gay" I could well imagine the respose to being corrected being "aww miss it was just banter"

DS is 15 and has a lovely group of friends that all seem to genuinely care for an support eachother BUT I hate some of the things they say to eachother at times. They all have eachothers backs and teachers/parents all say what a nice group they are and they seem to hoover up anyone new or who is feeling a bit lost but it still seems as if they are a bit harsh sometimes with nicknames etc
I have spoken to DS about it and told him to make sure nobody crosses a line but I have been told that I don't understand that its just how boys speak to eachother and unlike with girls its just banter with no malice behind it.
So while I DO think this is a good idea in principle I would hate DS to get into trouble for using a nickname for his best mate who he has spent hours helping through his first break up for or his other mate who he arranged a day out for after the loss of a Grandparent for example.

I think it’s not really ok to police this stuff. You can’t just stop people talking about things or direct what is appropriate discussion or not (within reason). If a child has an issue with things that are being said then of course that should be dealt with on a case by case basis but you can’t just have an arbitrary blanket ban on “banter”

I’m a teacher. On our safeguarding training this year, there was a section about banter and how it can be viewed as bullying. I imagine the school is implementing a “no banter” policy because banter can be subjective. The recipient may not enjoy it but may not feel they can say they don’t as it’s “banter”.

Would you be ok with your 11 year old calling his best friend racist and homophobic names?

And then call the lot of them silly cunts 😂

Imagine you're eleven and you jokingly call your best mate an idiot four times and school calls the police. The officer tasked to deal with it would probably die laughing.

Majority of banter would fall within misogyny, sexual harassment, racism etc. It is referred to in school safeguarding documentation when talking about child on child abuse.

I would say that the school have a bullying problem and are trying to stop it. I’m sure plenty of children happily take the piss out of each other without an issue but for a school to have a policy on it that is so intolerant and involves police action, there has to be more to it than perhaps many parents are aware of.

I think in our culture it would be impossible to actually ban 'banter'. It's ingrained in us to be sarky and take the piss. However the school are making it clear that students will no longer to able to excuse bullying with the feeble excuse 'it's only banter/we were just having a laugh'.

I think young people sometimes don't actually realise when a running joke or banter crosses the line into bullying. Hopefully this might make them a little more aware of the power of words.

Even amongst a group of friends, there can be one kid that is the butt of the majority of jokes. Individually... its banter. Over time, it builds up.

What kind of banter is going on that the police would get involved @Citrusblast92u?

I don't teach any more but I taught for twenty years until last year.

I regularly heard boys being sexist, racist etc and passing it off as banter.

One boy in my class said to a girl "I'd like to rape you" and then when she was upset and accused him of sexual harassment said it was just banter.

It's what all the bullies say when accused of bullying. It's just banter miss!

Not to the people you're bullying it isn't.

If your son only does it with his friends and it's never sexist racist etc etc then he's ok.
Plenty go too far.

I agree, and it makes things miserable and muted for everyone else.

I think schools should robustly deal with bullying rather than banning banter. Having said that, not condoning clear cases of bullying as banter would be a good start. However, real banter is affectionate and a way of people connecting. I do think some people need to learn to be less sensitive, though. People who are constantly offended are tiresome in the extreme

Agree wholeheartedly with this. That is the difference between banter and bullying.

Yeah, I think you know what I mean and that what I’m referring to above is a 99.9% male socialisation problem.

Are teens the snowflakes? The term has been around for quite a while, I thought they'd all be late 20s/early 30s by now.

OP, what examples of banter does your DS and his friends use? I hear my DS joking around with friends sometimes, and what he says to them (on the XBox) works as banter with them, but would not be ok if he said it to people he was not close to.

Here you go…from KCSiE