Chapter 7: Why Current Anti-Bullying Strategies Fail
My greatest inspiration for writing this book was to bring some more insight about truths we find hard to recognize or speak about. Having been introduced to the less obvious aspects of bullying and the less visible types of bullies, the reasons for the fiasco of some of the current anti-bullying strategies are probably becoming clearer.
Regardless of all reason of civilization, humans are still irrational beings. It is unrealistic to expect that we can all behave in a rational way all the time. We err and act irrationally. We produce unsuccessful anti-bullying weapons. We fail to tackle bullies because:
We base school anti-bullying methods on quick fixes and band-aid solutions. We avoid getting deeper into the problem and seeing the problem for what it really is. When someone who is an adult doesn’t have the necessary skills to deal with bullies, it is difficult to nurture a child who knows better!
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It is linked with weakness and fear. A lot of the powerlessness comes down to perceptions and to missing the right set of skills for seeing, discovering, using and developing our personal empowerment. There is a massive amount of wrong perceptions about one’s real powers estimated by multiple social comparison scales and perpetuated by persistent social pressure from large social machines, such as the media and the businesses. Social machines are created by people, and not all people have a healthy aggression useful for social change. On the contrary, many powerful people who make important decisions affecting millions have a sad relationship to their own power and thus effectuate and support distorted power
In the essay “Fighting Bulling with Babies,” David Bornstein’s goal is to “present the world through a ‘solution frame,’ rather than a ‘problem frame’” (Bornstein 204). He shows us that children from as young as eight years old can be taught to care for one another rather than bully one another. By writing this essay Bornstein hopes he can inspire schools to try this new approach to prevent bullying. David Bornstein argues that we need to teach our children how to care for one another and reward them, instead of punishing them for doing something wrong.
6 When a child turns to bullying, there is almost always a cause and origin to this behavior. 10, 8, 6, Studying the psychology of these children, the impulse to exhibit this dominance has been connected to many factors: with the lack of affection, abuse, and poor role models, the lack of control in their lives can be accommodated by bullying. 3 Vulnerable individuals are a satisfactory outlet for their emotions; moreover, they seek dominance through the humiliation of those who most likely have no one to come to their defense. 10, 5 Likewise, Twain observes similar behaviors in individuals who pursue superiority, revealing humanities flaws from their tactics. 10, 2, 4
Bullying is a phenomenon existing as long as humans exist. The fact that it didn’t have a name for years doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a widespread way of behavior, in cases where two different types of people were involved ; the strong and the weak ones. Although bullying is considered as a form of aggression, or in some cases as an infringement of the human rights, “bullying is commonly regarded as an aspect of aggression”. (Roland and Idsoe, 2001), there are significant differences between them , the most important of which that “bullying is different from peer conflict. It is conflict between individuals that do not share equal physical and / or psychological power.
Bullying is an undesirable, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves actual disparity of power. According to Megan Brooks bullying is a serious public health problems, with significant short-and long-term psychological consequences for the child who is bullied and the child who is the bully. This only tells us that bullying can lead to difficulty that a certain children may experience and will have either short or long term problem. “Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents, but it has lasting, negative consequences and cannot simply be ignored.” Committee chair Frederick Rivera, MD.
Annotated Bibliography Sarahi Ali Gutierrez Nevada State College Annotated Bibliography Annotation 1 Piskin, M. (2002). School bullying: definition, types, related factors, and strategies to prevent bullying problems. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 2(2), 555.
Recently, bullying has been becoming more and more of an issue. It’s gotten so bad that one out of four kids deal with it. Currently, bullying is worldwide. There’s no place where it began, because it’s pretty much human nature. Many people are trying to stop it, whether by using zero-tolerance policies, small punishments, and more, however, nothing has worked so far.
"Findings showed that victims of childhood bullying were 4.3 times more likely to suffer from anxiety disorders in adulthood" ("Bullying and Cyberbullying"). Since bullying can cause such a bad impact that will last into adulthood, some people want stronger anti-bullying laws. Some states have different anti-bullying laws than others, and some people feel like there should be one common law throughout all the United Sates, because it would be easier to enforce these laws and make sure that they are working (Bullying). Getting anti-bullying laws is a controversial topic that can or cannot help the school system. Bullying has been around for longer than you may think, and it is still a big problem today.
What has been done to address the problem of bullying? With addressing the problem of bullying a lot of effort has been made towards fighting bullying, for the most part in public schools. Now public schools have been the most noticeable place that bullying has occurred and with a lot of effort in preventing bullying has taken place there. There are two main insertions of anti-bullying efforts: education and punishment, which I believe are very reasonable.
Bullying has been named an “emerging public health issue requiring intervention” (Ansary, Elias, Greene, & Green, 2015, p. 27). As a major problem in schools around the world, the issue of bullying must be addressed in order to keep students physically and emotionally safe. The act of bullying not only affects the well-being of the person being targeted, but it also affects the rest of the school community too. It can be difficult for teachers, principals, and superintendents to make an ethical decision about what to do when bullying occurs because there are misunderstandings about what bullying is, leading to the improper identification of situations.
Bullying in the form of intentionally leaving kids out on purpose has always been an ethically dilemma that I have faced throughout my childhood. The elementary school that I attended from fourth to fifth grade housed all of the deaf and hard of hearing kids in the school district. One day at I noticed that one particular girl in my grade was always by herself against the back of the school during recess while all the other kids were playing on the playground. After asking my friends and the teachers I later found out that she, Veranda, was one of the deaf students and couldn’t play with the other kids because they didn’t know sign language. When I got home that day I asked my mom to take me to the library so I could check out books on sign language, in order to be able to speak to Veranda.
Students will be aware of how much damage a bully may cause to the victim, and many times a bully is a victim of another bully. According to (Psychological Association) “Educate your children about bullying. It is possible that your child is having trouble reading social signs and does not know what they are doing is hurtful. Remind your child that bullying others can have legal
Bullying is a widespread problem in our schools and communities and has a negative impact on students’ right to learn in a safe and secure environment without fear. It is a process in which one person repeatedly uses his/her superior strength or influence to mistreat, attack or force another person to do something (Van der Werf, 2014). Bullying or peer victimization is now recognized as a complex and pervasive problem (Beran, 2009). It is an ongoing problem that is not restricted by age, race, gender or class. This behavior generally takes one of four forms, physical such as assault, verbal which involves threats or insults, social which entails exclusion or rumor spreading, and cyber which includes aggressive texts or social network posts
Bullying Can Be Prevented Bullying is a form of violence to pick on victims because they are different from their bullies, have insecurity/jealousy or home problems. The hate towards their victim has something to do with the victim having an unusual gift or being intelligent the bullies has yet to become. It is important that this behavior should be prevented or it will become worse. Bullying is one of the main issues public and private schools have to face on a day-to-day basis. When the bully takes it too far, the victim snaps and retaliates by fighting him/her back physically or verbally.
By knowing the cause and effect of bullying, students can identify it and immediately report it. Students are sometimes afraid to report incidents of bullying, because they are afraid of consequences like dislike and increased conflict with the bully. To prevent this fear, students should be encouraged to speak to an adult without any hesitation. By doing so, “The adult can give comfort, support, and advice, even if they can’t solve the problem directly. Encourage the child to report bullying if it happens” (“How to Prevent Bullying”).
Bullying is defined as repeated oppression, physical or psychological of a less powerful individual by a more powerful individual, people or group. It consists of three main types of abuse which are physical, verbal and emotional. Bullying in schools is a common and worldwide spread problem that can have critical and negative implications on the general school climate as well as on the right of students to study in a safe and secure environment without fear. Many people believe that bullying is part of life, happens in all schools and so it’s not an issue to worry about and that it lets individuals know what life is all about as it toughens them but in reality bullying is a detrimental problem that affects most school going children and teenagers physically, emotionally and socially.