When I was teaching in both primary and secondary schools (some years ago) students would tell me that they had been bullied. At the time my response was usually “just ignore the bullies and find someone else to play with or talk to.” Bullying was then considered a childhood rite of passage, even character building.
Now from research which I and many others around the world have been doing for the last 20 years, we know this is not true. In my present role as a professor of educational psychology, I now understand the negative consequences of students being victimised. However, in our modern day culture of ‘cotton-wool’ kids, students are sometimes using the word bullying when the actions are not bullying. Parents will often come to a school and say my child is being bullied when it is actually a fight between students. Or a student has been unintentionally left out and they think they have been bullied.
The word bullying seems to be used for every fight, every conflict, every disagreement. It sometimes feels that people are looking for something to be offended by. This extension of the word is harmful because it takes the focus off what is true damaging bullying, where a student experiences an unprovoked, unjustified, intentional attack, repeatedly which they cannot get to stop. The experience could be minor, such as having their hat taken off and thrown on the ground, but it is the repetition of this behaviour which causes the student to be fearful that it will escalate.
Students can tell you the text book definitions of bullying, of an intent to hurt, repetitive behaviour with an imbalance of power. Schools have taught students this but applying this definition to what actually happens is difficult. My research has shown that most primary school students cannot apply all three concepts at once to an actual incidence and even many teachers and parents have difficulty.
Most students who are actually bullied feel they must be to blame. That there is something wrong with them. This lowers their self-esteem and actually leads to more bullying. If the bullying goes on for years then some students can develop long lasting mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. Some will even stay away from school because they are so afraid.
In Australia, bullying is taken seriously, especially by schools and even governments. There is a national day of action, there are calls for bullying to be criminalised, there are programs taught in schools such as Friendly Schools and the PEACE pack. Schools have anti-bullying policies. Teachers attend in-service sessions to learn how to respond to student bullying. However, from the studies done in Australia bullying in schools is not decreasing overall. Why?
I think that it is because there is no co-ordinated efforts which involve everyone. Bullying is a complex social relationship problem which is deeply embedded in our society. Domestic violence is a form of bullying and workplace bullying is common. Adults do not always model kindness and good social relationships. Look at the number of TV programs that portray drama and tension, not kind respectful relationships. Even some school communities are still hierarchical, driven by leadership which does not treat staff and students respectfully.
Students are encouraged not to be bystanders but upstanders. But they need the protection of their peer group to do this.
Of course for every complex problem there is a simple solution, which is usually wrong. We are trying buddy benches, to allow kids to form friendships, we are trying punishing students who bully, we are trying programs to reduce racial tension and some schools have had some success in doing these things. But because we have no national annual survey of the prevalence of bullying which includes those schools who are reducing bullying, then we don’t know if what we are doing works. There is no obvious ripple effect because it is all so piecemeal and individual.
In Canada, in the last ten years, school bullying has declined by 30 per cent. This is attributed to a co-ordinated organisation called PREVNET. The organisation started off with researchers in bullying all over the country and includes schools who want to participate and governments who fund them to try to find out what works, when and for whom. There is no one size which fits everybody. Each community must work out what works for them. But there are some things which we do know work.
Students are encouraged not to be bystanders but upstanders. But they need the protection of their peer group to do this. The school culture must be right for this to happen. Students are told to tell a teacher. But teachers need to be empathetic and not interrogate. The student needs to be confident that the teacher will keep the situation confidential and do what the student asks and not have their own agenda and make things worse.
Parents, sports coaches, youth club leaders, media, government, the whole community need to be involved to prevent bullying.
