A : The main purpose of this board is to provide help and information to others. It is not to enter into petty personal conflicts with other posters

B : But they attacked me first

A : I understand that but your responses don’t include a lot of practical advice for perspective teachers. Name calling and labeling is not acceptable behavior for anyone.

B : But ‘they’ get away with it all the time

A : That may well be the case but such behavior towards others is not suitable for a board whose main aim is to help others.

Well, until that double standard is addressed, I see absolutely no reason to tell them what I think of them and their idiotic opinions.

Quite a few of my posts have included practical advice, however they get just as attacked as anything else. So why bother? This is not a forum for teaching discussion, I wish it were, but until those posters are stopped from attacking people who have a different opinion to them, how will that ever happen? Or are you seriously saying it's fine for them to treat people the way they do and not have a soul say a word about it?! It's not like anybody else ever admonsihes them for their disgusting behaviour.

Yes, LondonGirl is right. She was insulted in another thread by at least one poster here, who, out of the blue, started attacking her as "second rate" based on her gender and nationality. Other people making very reasonable and intelligent posts have been labeled as GWs or (grovelling weasels). If the bad-boys club here weren't out insulting and attacking people, they wouldn't find people hashing out insults back. What I've seen is people using rational argument getting shot down by a few bullies who gang up on them with insults and mindless repetition of already refuted arguments.

Further, because the little bully brigade gangs up on people, especially woman, it is far more likely that the person who is being attacked from all sides with bullshit is going to eventually lash out back.