School Bullying

Definition

"Bullying involves an initial desire to hurt, this desire is expressed in action, someone is hurt, the action is directed by a more powerful person or group, it is without justification, it is typically repeated, and it is done so with evident enjoyment." Ken Rigby (1998).

Description

What is school bullying?

Psychological, emotional, cyber, social or physical harassment of one student by another at school or within the school community. This includes at school and within its grounds, in transit between school and home, local shopping and sporting centres, at parties or local parks and in cyberspace. The playground is the most common place for bullying to occur.

What are some of the forms of bullying?

• Verbal (most common, most painful & longest lasting impact) eg teasing, harassment and name-calling.
• Extortion
• Threats
• Malicious rumours
• Physical violence
• Damage to property.

What types of behaviours does bullying include?

• Verbal
• Physical
• Cyber instigated (can be traced and blocked)
• Anti-social (exclusion, gossip and non-verbal body language)

What are the extents of bullying?

• Direct to indirect harassment,
• From minor irritation to major assault, from "just having a bit of fun" to breaking the law.

When does bullying occur and for how long?

• A student can be bullied by one child or by a group for years.
• Bullying can happen sporadically or over a long period of time.
• Some children are bullied wherever they go, at any school.
• Bullying occurs in any school: small, large, single sex, co-educational, traditional and progressive.
• Bullying occurs in primary, secondary, boarding school and tertiary institutions.

Who are the bullies and victims?

• Apart from saints or sociopaths, most children have the potential to bully or be targeted.
• Both parents and teachers can bully or experience bullying within the school community.
• Some research shows that there is more bullying in the "staffroom" than the "classroom"; this creates a very negative, toxic role model.

What do children think about bullying?

• Most children believe that bullying cannot be stopped.
• They believe that if they report it that nothing is done or it gets worse.
• Most children say that they would feel happier and learn better if they felt safer at school.
• Bullying is one of the major reasons children contact help lines.

Bullying is subjective

Targets:

• The crucial feature- target feels powerless and bullied.
• The critical issue - extent of physical, psychological and other damage that injures the victim.
• The impact on the target is made worse by fear of future attacks and fear adults won't help.

Bullies:

• Many bullies don't realise at a conscious level that their behaviours are mean or abusive.
• At an unconscious level they know that they're taking the target's power away because otherwise they couldn't do it.
• Most bullies don't know that their bullying behaviours can boomerang back later on and hurt them.

Gender stuff:

Both girls and boys can be bullies and victims.

Boys:

• Boys bully both boys and girls
• Boys bully more openly and experience more physical bullying and threats.
• Boys use bullying tactics to make a reputation and girls use bullying tactics to protect their reputation.

Girls:

• Girls generally bully other girls.
• Girls can be physical, but prefer indirect methods such as verbal, emotional and social bullying.
• Girls use teasing, taunting, devaluing, isolation from the group and spreading malicious rumours to bully (all less obvious to teachers).

Statistics:

• Most children have either been bullied, bully others or witnessed bullying at school.
• More than one in five children are bullied regularly at school.
• About one in five children can bully.
• In American schools:
  • 160,000 + children miss school every day, due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students.
  • 20% of students carry weapons to school to feel safer.
  • 22% of students are victimised at the beginning of the year and 8% are victimised during the remainder of the year.
  • 50% of students knew of a student who had switched schools to feel safer.
• 40% of suicide victims had been bullied at school. (Victorian Coroner 2007)
• National School Safety Centre, USA, estimates that 525,000 "attacks, shakedowns and robberies" occur in an average month in public secondary schools.
• Two thirds of school shootings were conducted by victims of bullying.
• More than 50% of teachers report being bullied at school (BBC TV 2006, NSW Teachers Union Study 2004)
• The National Education Association USA reports that every day 6,250 teachers are threatened with bodily harm and 260 are actually physically assaulted.

How can school bullying be reduced?

• Effective anti-bullying policies, programs and procedures.
• Parents need to their children social survival skills or social resilience. Let's face it, when their child leaves school for the day or for good, bullying is everywhere, on the road, among their friends and at work!
• All students need to develop their social and emotional resilience by developing their social survival skills. Then they can create true friendships, a supportive network and block bullying.
• The peer group needs to know how to take action to protect vulnerable kids and intervene respectfully. This is the role of the school.
• Targets need to learn successful social survival and communication skills to find true friends and belong to a supportive group.
• The bully needs to learn more effective ways of relating and feeling empathy.

Some difficulties in reducing school bullying:

• Bullying is reflected by the attitudes towards bullying in the wider community eg sports field, parliament,
• Limited state legislation inadvertently condones school bullying or limits funding programs,
• Restricted funding limits training for teachers, parents and students and limits implementation opportunities for schools to deal with it effectively.
• Many school deny bullying and refuse to confront it,
• Some schools pretend to care, show their policy but don't implement or intervene effectively when students report bullying.
• Many teachers are handicapped by a lack of support from their school.
• Most schools don't actively involve or assist the families who role model inappropriate behaviours to their children, influencing them to become targets, bullies or both.
• Most schools allow teachers or parents to bully or vice versa, creating an inappropriate role model for their children. How can a bullied teacher help a bullied child?
• Most schools don't expect onlookers/peer-group/ witnesses to intervene, challenge, report or support targets and bullies.
• Many schools adopt the latest fad in reducing bullying without considering an overall plan and evaluating it regularly, or they use band-aid approaches.

Families

Bullies are bred in homes where inconsistent parenting patterns and inconsistent consequences and abusive, bullying behaviours become the role model. Some are bullies are spoilt children who never experience behaviour boundaries.

Some come from homes where there are so many problems that they are neglected emotionally or where the relationship between their parents is poor, stressful and even abusive.

There are two main types of bullies, the malicious who have been born with psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies (their brains are wired differently to ordinary children eg they like hurting animals) and those who are basically non-malicious but use bullying behaviours.

They think:

• It's a game
• I can get away with it
• It will make me popular
• They are so weak
• It does not hurt
• Everyone does it

The target:

• Wrong place/wrong time
• Does nothing
• Reacts and becomes upset, angry, sad
• Has poor social or assertive skills
• Limited support network
• Over protective parents
• Not used to blocking mean kids
• Special child
• Doesn't know how to stand up for themselves because they come from caring homes
• Experience severe life stressors, (eg parents difficulties, financial problems) which interfere with their ability to develop social resilience and protect themselves.
• Some children believe in justice and fight back. "How dare they tease me?" "He started it."
• Sensitive children expect others to treat them as carefully as their families do. Whereas other kids don't care how they feel and take advantage of the target's vulnerabilities to play the bully game.
• Some expect to be treated with respect and regard to their feelings but have no interest in how they use, abuse or treat others. The other child retaliates and bullies back.

Injuries or Damage

The target can be affected at school:

• Girls become sad and boys become mad.
• The target can be injured emotionally, physically, academically and socially.
• They can lose motivation, concentration and their schoolwork suffers.
• This may affect their choice of career.
• They experience poor self-esteem, physical health difficulties, anxiety disorders, including panic attacks, depression, suicide attempts (some are completed) and posttraumatic stress disorder.
• Bullying can lead to shyness, social isolation or a social phobia.
• Children who are victims of bullying may become school refusers.

The damage can affect targets of school bullying later on:

• The victim's choice of partner, career, social life, physical and mental health can be affected over a long period of time.
• Adults who were severely victimised at school can be less successful in achieving satisfactory intimate relationships.
• Some victims are bullied at work.

Damage to bully:

• Many bullies find it hard to cope with their studies in higher grades; they are more likely to drop out of school earlier.
• Once the peer group have developed a sense of identity they associate with kids who respect equality in friendships. They abandon the bully because they don't want to be bossed or bullied and told what to do and say, what to wear, where to go or whom to befriend.
• Many students want a career and want to achieve at school, thus the lazy bully can be forced to hang around other losers.

The Bully's Future

According to Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today, (1995) research has found that many bullies embark on a 'downwardly spiralling course' for the rest of their lives because of their inability to deal with conflict and violence.

• Their bullying behaviours can interfere with their learning, friendships, work, intimate relationships, income, physical and mental health.
• They are more likely to become anti-social as adults and have difficulty creating close friendships.
• Male bullies are more likely to batter and bash their wives, abuse their children, abuse alcohol and drugs.
• Female bullies tend to lose their friends.
• Bully dropouts are more likely to have a criminal record by the time they are 24.
• The bully who is successful in his career can be tripped up later on, when the impact is greater.
• They are more likely to create another generation of bullies.

Sadly, bullies end up being losers in a big way.

Society as a whole pays the price for their inability to relate to others in an assertive, empathic, respectful manner. They have a basic right to live a normal life, respected (not feared) by others and able to maintain healthy, rewarding relationships.

Parents:

• Feel powerless when they are unable to protect their children.
• It can remind them of their own school difficulties or other difficulties eg shyness.
• Parents become very angry when schools don't deal with it immediately or can't do enough.
• It can be a very traumatic experience for parents.
• Become threatened if their parenting patterns are challenged.
• Don't always want to be referred for help.

Peers:

• Feel bad and guilty because they don't know what to do.
• Fear that they will become the next target.
• Torn between their friends.
• Realise that the target may exacerbate the situation but can't tell them or are not heard by the target.
• Can't confront the bullies.
• Don't want to be involved.
• Can become a secondary victim or affected by poor class morale.

The school:

• Does not like students leaving, poor morale, reduced class motivation to study, lower academic results, poor public relations, lowered school results.
• In many schools a few students leaving due to bullying can equate to a teacher's salary.