Speak up for all the children who are bullied at school

CHILDREN are bullied at school for wearing spectacles, having red hair, cross-eyes, freckles, spots and facial ­deformities without anything like the media attention 
given to complaints from organisations like Stonewall, who have considerable public funding and can afford to commission regular surveys (News, 9 ­November).

In all my time at school I never bullied anyone for any reason but saw, on occasions, bullying or teasing for all of the reasons I mentioned above, but not homosexual bullying because, to the best 
of my knowledge, I didn’t 
encounter any homosexual children, who would require to be behaving in an unusual way for others to know they were homosexual.

With all the media and political talk about equality, let’s have equal attention paid to all kinds of bullying, not just one of the less frequent forms.

The redefinition of the little word “gay” was first under­taken by homosexuals through applying it to themselves as particularly attractive, so they can hardly complain if some people now choose to use it as meaning gross or unattractive.

The Teachers’ Report 2014 presents the findings from 260 respondents in Scotland. A 
total of 122 primary staff and 138 secondary staff were surveyed. Statistics based on such a small survey are suspect.

Michael Creechan, Glasgow