| Bullying - What is it? | | Print | |
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Bullying in schools is a worldwide phenomenon. It exists in Western cultures as well as in Asian cultures. A recent worldwide survey (2008) of Year 4 students (9 year olds) found that Kuwait, Qatar, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia were ranked the top five countries with the worst bullying record. Your daughter tells you that her peers have informed her that she is ‘out of the group.’ She is mystified. She might also receive an email message saying ‘horrible things’ about her as a person. She is mystified. Yesterday, everything was fine in her relationship world; today everything is sour. Your son doesn’t want to go to school and resists all your attempts to get him ready in time for the bus or train. He is a bright student, the sort of student that every teacher would like to have in his/her class. You discover that he is being teased, called certain names by his peers, some of whom seem to be ganging up on him. Why does this occur? It is not enough to have strict Policies concerning bullying. Schools that have such Policies still find that bullying behaviours continue to take place, perhaps in more subtle ways. Girl- bullying is much more difficult to detect than boy-bullying. Girls bully with their eyes, their silence, their whispers, their gossip, their short sharp remarks. Boys bully with pushes, punches, loud comments that ridicule another boy in public. It is not sufficient to simply exhort children and teens to refrain from such behaviours. The need is to assist them to discover and articulate why some of them engage in this behaviour. |
