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

• School bullying is the psychological, emotional, social or physical harassment of one student by another.
  
• The most common form of bullying for both sexes is verbal eg teasing, harassment and name-calling. It is also the most painful type of bullying and has the longest lasting impact.
  
• Other forms of bullying include extortion, threats, malicious rumours, physical violence, damage to property.
  
• Bullying includes behaviours that are verbal, physical, cyber instigated or anti-social, such as exclusion, gossip and non-verbal body language.
  
• The nature and extent of bullying can vary from direct to indirect harassment, from minor irritation to major assault, from "just having a bit of fun" to breaking the law.
  
• Cyber bullying is the latest form of bullying; often it can be traced and blocked.
  
• 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.
• It occurs at school, in transit between school and home, at local shopping centres, parties or parks.
  
• The playground is the most common place for bullying to occur.
  
• The majority of children have the potential to be bullies and/or targets.
  
• Both parents and teachers can bully or experience bullying within the school community.
  
• Most children believe that bullying cannot be stopped.
  
• 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 is that the target feels powerless. They regard themselves being bullied.
  
• The critical issue is the 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.

• 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 bully both boys and girls. Girls generally bully other girls.
  
• Boys bully more openly and experience more physical bullying and threats.
  
• Girls can be physical, but prefer indirect methods such as verbal, emotional and social bullying. This includes persistent teasing, taunting, devaluing, isolation from the group and spreading malicious rumours, all of which are less obvious to teachers.
  
• Boys use bullying tactics to make a reputation and girls use bullying tactics to protect their reputation

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. Some are bullied occasionally.
  
• About one in five children can bully.
  
• In American schools, an estimated 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. 

Causes - There are many reasons why school bullying occurs.

School and community –

• Reflects the attitudes towards bullying in the wider community eg on the sports field, in parliament, 
  
• Limited state legislation inadvertently condones school bullying or limits funding programs,
  
• Restricted funding reduces training for teachers 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 you their policy but don’t actually implement or intervene effectively when kids report bullying. They even allow staff to be bullied.
  
• Many teachers are handicapped by a lack of support from senior management at 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. eg how can a bullied teacher help a bullied child?
  
• Most schools don’t place formal expectations upon the onlookers/peer-group/ witnesses to intervene, challenge, report or support both
  targets and bullies. Evelyn believes that when the peers say,
  “Bullying is out” - IT IS OUT.
  
• Many schools adopt the latest fashion 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 spoilt children who never experience any 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
  
• Don’t know how to stand up for themselves because they live in caring environments
  
• 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 can expect others to treat them as
  carefully as their families do. But other kids don’t care how
  they feel and take advantage 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

1. 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 successful) 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 be 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 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. 

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.

In summary:  

• Schools have a legal and moral duty of care towards their students and an obligation to reduce all forms of bullying around the school.
  
• Parents are responsible for teaching 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 teasing, bullying and harassment.
  
• The peer group needs to know how to take action to protect vulnerable kids and intervene respectfully.
  
• The target needs to learn how to communicate what they think, feel and would like. They need to distinguish between friends who care and those who don't. They need to look for true friends rather than belong to a popular group. They need to use their survival instinct to choose true friends and whom to avoid.
  
• The bully needs to learn more effective ways of relating with
  empathy. They also need to learn how to show frustration,
  displeasure and disinterest in appropriate ways.

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