Bullying in Schools: Are we doing enough?

Point: Schools Are Not Doing Enough

to Prevent Bullying
1 Although the media continues to raise public awareness of student bullying, many
schools are still not doing enough to solve the problem. Most teachers and school administrators
do not witness bullying. Sometimes they don’t know how to recognize it. Sometimes they ignore
it. They may also hold the age-old attitude that bullying is just something children do or go
through. They think it’s a normal part of growing up. But we know now that the repercussions of
bullying can be lasting and severe. Sometimes they even end in tragedy.
2 The fact that a huge amount of bullying still happens demonstrates that not enough is
being done about the issue. The exact number of victims is hard to determine because many
incidents go unreported. The National Center for Education Statistics reported in 2013 that one
of three students is bullied either in school or through social media. This statistic includes both
physical and emotional harassment. Either form can leave lasting scars on victims. Students
who are bullied often become very stressed. They can have trouble sleeping and begin to do
poorly in school. Furthermore, victims are at a greater risk of suffering from low self-esteem,
anxiety, and depression. These effects can even continue well into adulthood.
3 One way in which schools are failing to keep pace with the problem is in adequately
supervising school property. Bullying usually happens in unsupervised areas like bathrooms,
cafeterias, and school buses. The simplest solution would be for schools to put teachers,
monitors, or aides in these areas. Unfortunately, many schools do not have enough staff to
ensure that these areas are supervised.
4 An even harder venue to monitor for bullying is the Internet. Cyberbullying, or bullying
that happens over social media, is often extremely hard to track. It is easy to delete comments or
pictures before authority figures can see them. In many cases there is little evidence to go on.
Students, teachers, and administrators all need to be educated about how to deal with the
challenge of cyberbullying. There are not currently enough programs that address this issue.
5 Most schools also do not have a clear procedure or policy for investigating bullying. This
means that if a victim is brave enough to come forward and ask for help, he or she often does not
receive it. This is because administrators and authorities do not have a set path for examining
the situation. They do not have a plan for ending harmful situations.
6 In addition to educating teachers and administrators about bullying, schools need more
programs to help students themselves address the problem. Top-down approaches that simply
dole out punishments for bullies are not enough to solve the problem. Students need to be
taught more about the ways their words and actions can hurt others. They also need to learn that
cases of bullying are often more complex than a "perpetrator" and a "victim." Often, a situation
of perceived "bullying" is actually made up of several smaller events. Different students may
have played different roles. A student may be bullied one day and become the bully the next.
These complicated interactions and behavior can make it difficult to find a solution that will
satisfy all parties.
7 Many schools have "zero-tolerance" policies regarding bullying. These policies are often
not sensitive enough to students' particular needs and reasons for behaving the way they do.
Every school is different, and student issues can vary widely. Teachers and administrators need
to listen carefully to students’ problems and perceived injustices and be sensitive to them. If a
student is punished for being a bully when he or she has a different perspective on the situation,
that student may feel unfairly persecuted or "ganged-up on." Casting bullies as one-sided
villains can be just as damaging to a student as being bullied.
8 Another issue with these "zero- tolerance" policies is that they can often encourage
teachers and administrators to over-discipline students. Sometimes one-time or casual conflicts
between students can be blown out of proportion. Students may be punished needlessly.
9 We need more policies and programs in place to educate students, teachers,
administrators, and parents about what bullying is and how to recognize it. Policies and
programs need to show how to end bullying, and, most importantly, what causes it. Most
schools that do have anti-bullying strategies only deal with the surface of the problem. They
don't address the underlying causes. Without getting to the root of the situation, the problem of
bullying can never truly be solved.

Passages, excerpts and questions adopted from McGraw Hill StudySync 2024