Banter!

Dear Mr Dastagir,

What is the number one problem facing our community today?

“Banter”.

Hi am Aniss Kadri, I’m writing to raise awareness about the word or phrase : banter. I know you’ve had an assembly about this, however people are still using this term inappropriately. I find this a nuisance because nothing is being done to change it. Hopefully if we stop using this word it could  spread to other schools around the country. Our standards could raise dramatically.

First of all banter hurts people, it offends them also it could destroy peoples lives and we don’t want that to happen. People start it as a joke but in the end it’s just horror. Lots of children end up fighting with other students because of racist banter and when people start cussing their families. People might leave the school and I don’t think you would like that. If you wanted to keep or increase the amount of students in London Nautical then do something about it now! People go home and cry because of their day in this school. It could happen to them every day but the teachers don’t realise what’s going around in a normal school day.

When people use the word “banter” on other children they don’t think it’s a joke but the bully does which makes the victim feel even worse than they already do. This is because somebody is tormenting them as a joke when it’s really serious. It makes the victims feelings not count. It’s like they don’t matter, their opinion does not count. At times that could feel like the worst thing when you’re being left out. When you’re just as important as everyone else and when people think you’re invisible just because of who you are.

People use “banter” as an excuse, an advantage to hurt other children (menataly and physicaly) such as when they take the racism and cussing just to far, when the teacher is being very observant they discern what they are doing the bully says “it’s JUST banter” to the teacher. As you can see from my quote I put the in capital letters/bold because it plays a very important part in that phrase. Just  isn’t there because it makes sense in the sentence it’s there to verify the it’s just that they overemphasize to make it more believable so the teacher would leave them of like that (however I know the teachers wouldn’t fall for it that easily. However some might). Furthermore most of the time they get away with it and they just carry on the banter “as a joke” but I don’t think this is a laughing matter it’s infact a very serious problem not just to the victim but to everyone involved!

When the bully says “sorry” they don’t mean it because they often do it again. So instead of lying they replace sorry with banter. After that, they normally do it again and the train of sadness happens all over again. So they don’t apologise and get it over and done with they want to get in to even more trouble. There is a very well known saying “treat people the way you would like to be treated” and that’s what everyone needs to do. This is not being respectful/kind to the victim (again) and your not being very responsible to your self. However something has been bogiling my mind there has to be a reason why someone would start something like that?

Well I’ve been saying how bad banter is but what’s the point of this letter if I don’t tell you how to resolve this? What I want  and what is right is very hard sanctions ,however I’ve noticed that hard sanctions wont really change much so I think you can start of with hard sanctions, if that doesn’t work you can give them some sort of lessons where they learn what they have done wrong and why they need to stop. I want this word banta to be stopped being used in the hallways of London Nautical school unless of course you’re in lessons and your doing this type of learning. School is a place for learning, fun, for making friends. When you older you should remember those times as the good times not the bad. I don’t really know anyone who’s been a victim of banter but that’s because normally they bottle it all up (because it could be embarrassing to some people.) This is because they don’t show that they’ve been bullied but if we show them that if you tell someone it will make it better I don’t really know how but you can figurethat out. “Banter” would not be a problem for most people if you listen to my ideas. So I hope this letter would convince you to change this and if their are any problems you can repily back. Ultimately I know this is going to be a very hard job however with the effort of all the teachers we may be able to solve this problem called “banter.” I hope this letter makes you see the light and change this problem?

Yours sincerely, Aniss Kadri.