Bullying: Schools' Not-So-Little Secret

Bullies and their victims also keep it secret. The bully doesn’t want to be punished; the victim fears reprisal. Victims feel pressured to deal with it on their own (“Be a big boy!”), and believe no one will aid them if they do seek help. More often then not, the victim’s parents are unaware of the bullying. They may wonder why she comes home during the school day to use the bathroom, how his clothing got torn, or why she seems so hungry at supper (her lunch money was extorted earlier). Just what are the facts, and what can be done to make this frequent, nasty behavior more public and less damaging?

Several experts estimate that between 15-20% of all school children are regularly bullied. The bullying may be verbal, taking the form of threats, insults, teasing, starting rumors about the person, or trying to isolate or intimidate him or her. Often it is physical: pushing, tripping, kicking, hitting. About two-thirds of the bullying is done by boys, and quite often, is physical. Bullying by girls is usually more covert, consisting of gossiping, shunning and the like.

Bullies tend to be hyperactive, domineering, impulsive, attention-seeking boys with little empathy for others. Frequently, they bully not only fellow students, but also teachers, parents and siblings. They often come from homes in which the parents were (and frequently still are) bullies themselves. They commonly are parents who are strong believers and users of corporal punishment, yet who are quite inconsistent in how they discipline--sometimes very strictly, sometimes very permissively.

Being a bully is bad for its victims and bad for the bully as well. Research shows, for example, that elementary school bullies are very likely to grow into antisocial adults with few friends and poor marriages who get into trouble with the law. One study, on this last point, revealed that 60% of the bullies in grades six through nine had at least one criminal conviction by age 24!

The victims, sometimes known as whipping boys or hostility sponges, are typically children who are physically weaker, socially insecure, anxious, and/or lonely and abandoned by other children. As one school expert put it, they sit small in their seats. To the bully, that sort of behavior and demeanor signal that the person is an easy mark, unlikely to retaliate.

Since it so often is a hidden event, happening most commonly on a playground or in a school corridor or other site with low adult supervision, the bullying may continue for a long time, even years. Its consequences are several and often severe. Its chronic target will often suffer in academic performance and will increasingly avoid people, places and even school itself (truancy and dropout are not unusual). As it becomes more extreme, the victim may begin bringing a weapon to school or seek to join a gang for protection. At its most severe, suicide or homicide may occur.

A good start in dealing effectively with this widespread form of aggression is using any and all steps to bring it into the open. We have to seek it out in order to root it out.

School administrators and teachers should plan and carry out a zero-tolerance policy for bullying. Announce what bullying is, why it is wrong, why it won’t be tolerated and what (nonviolent) punishments will be used with all who bully. Schools need to set a climate of positive adult involvement and firm limits on unacceptable behavior.

A few weeks into any school term, and usually before the teacher knows it, most of the children in the class know who the class bullies and victims are. Here is how some countries are responding to bullying:

Both of these sound like workable ideas that could be transported to America.

Eighty-five percent of schoolchildren are neither bullies nor victims, but they can certainly help reduce bullying, not only by informing adults when they see it, but also by being urged to welcome and include those students who are chronically left out of play and work activities. Bullying is bad business: for the victim, for the bullies, for all of us. Let’s get it out in the open and start dealing with it. Every student has the right to learn in a safe environment.

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