Essay on Bullying

Bullying is the general term applied to a pattern of behavior whereby one person with a lot of internal anger, resentment and aggression and lacking interpersonal skills chooses to displace their aggression onto another person. Bullying comes in many forms. Things like constant criticism, nit-picking, exclusion, isolation, teasing etc. with verbal, psychological, emotional and (especially with children) physical violence are all different ways of bullying. Recently there has been much increased awareness of bullying in schools. From the research I found, it is not that bullying in on the rise, it is that society is at last beginning to recognize just how detrimental bullying really is.

Susan P. Limber wrote a great article on bullying among children and youth in the Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Is this article they focused on the fact that bullying is a common and potentially damaging form of violence among children. Not only does bullying harm all involved, it also affects the climate of the school, which indirectly effects the ability of all students to learn to the best of their abilities. The phenomenon of bullying deserves special attention by educators, parents and children for two important reasonsFirst, most parents and children today really underestimate the damage that bullying can do. Second, most of the time the children who are bullying are much stronger kids, both physically and mentally. The children that are not as strong, or popular are usually the ones who are being bullied. Because of this, peer mediation and the standard school interventions may not be effective. Limber and Nation talked about a Intervention Model introduced by Olweus in Norway and Sweden. This intervention was inspired by the suicides of several severely victimized children. The program involved interventions at different levels. It started with school wide interventions. The school wide interventions increased supervision, school wide assemblies and teacher in-service training to raise the awareness of children and school staff regarding bullying. Classroom-level interventions was the establishment of classroom rules against bullying, regular class meetings to discuss bullying at school and meetings with parents. The last level of intervention was the individual-level intervention. Here discussion with students helped to identify bullies and victims. This program was found to be very effective in reducing bullying among students in primary and junior high schools. This anti-bullying program has been adopted in Canada, England and the United States.