Anti Bullying Program Into The Schooling System

Most kids say that they don’t see bullying around school. In just Minnesota alone there is talk about bullying and how to prevent it. Sen. Franken states, “Nine out of 10 LGBT kids are harassed or bullied in school. One-third report having skipped school in the last month because they felt unsafe” (Shah 14). Kids should not feel unsafe to go to school. School is supposed to be a safe place to go and if someone needs help there are supposed to be people there to guide them. Franken adds, “But the sad fact is that our federal laws are failing” (Shah 14). Laws have been made to try to stop bullying, but bullying continues to exist. This shows how out of control bullying is becoming.

Source: McNamee, Abigail, and Mia Mercurio. "School-Wide Intervention in the Childhood Bullying Triangle." Childhood Education 5(2008):370. eLibrary. Web. 02 Feb. 2016.

The Bullying Policy has been introduced around the world which, according to the 2014 observations , rates of bullying vary across studies from 9% to 98%. An observation of 80 studies analyzing bullying involvement rates for both bullying others and being bullied for 12-18 year old students reported an estimate rate of 35% for traditional bullying involvement and 15% for cyberbullying involvement (Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014). This means the Bullying Prevention Policy affects million of students nationwide due to the programs created. More specifically, females face a higher indication of bullying victimization than males do. To explain, high percentages of each gender are faced with the aggressive acts of violence, making it extremely hard to perform well in the school environment. Furthermore, as many as 93 percent of students hear derogatory words about sexual orientation at least once every day at school or in their community (violencepreventionworks). Negative name calling and harassment about sexual orientation can be disrespectful to all students. For an example, 3 out of 4 students who are bullied/harassed with such remarks are not identified as lesbian, gay,

The increasing debates amoungst politicians and community members about the ‘All of Us’ program run by the Safe School Coalition has people questioning the appropriateness of the program being displayed to teens. In the opinion article ‘Safe Schools Coalition: what is the Christian Right afraid of?’ published in ‘The Conversation’ on the 25th of Febuary 2016 Timothy W Jones a senior lecturer of History at La Trobe University contends that, sex education and anti-bullying programs are put into place to help young adults who identify as LGBTI feel safe and that the Right are stuck on old ideologies. In a passionate, balance and riduculing tone, Jones targets the Australian public and the Christian Right to understand the legitimacy of the program.

Bullying is bound to happen anywhere at any time but occurs mostly within school limits. Kathleen Winkler defines bulling in her book, Bullying, as “...any kind of ongoing physical or verbal mistreatment, done with the intent to harm, where there is an imbalance of power between bully and victim” (Winkler 14). Bullying has an extremely important impact on one’s everyday life and can affect their life negatively getting to the point where they can no longer take the blow. To try and prevent bullying from taking place in schools, one needs to know how bullying effects a person, what the role of each person involved in the situation is, and have knowledge of specific methods on how to prevent it. Bullying in schools is a serious problem and a handful of school do their part to prevent it; others, not as much, which means there is room for improvements.

When 11% of Australia’s population as a member of the LGBT community, having 61% of these people facing homophobic abuse is a real issue and it needs to be solved now. Since it’s first appearance in 2010, the safe schools program has helped gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender kids to feel acceptance and combat against homophobic bullying. Although the ‘Safe Schools’ program has showed extremely positive outcomes when it came to reduction of bullying and overall happiness of students, however, the current Australian Government

“In discouraging the bullying of LGBTI students, it seeks to upend traditional understandings of gender and impose cultural values offensive to most Australians.”

The article, “We must celebrate gender and sexual diversity in our schools”, published by The Conversation in 2016, written by Lucy Nicholas argues that the Safe School’s Coalition is out of touch with the science of sex and gender identity. Essentially, Nicholas claims that the Safe Schools Coalition needs to be updated and modernized to suit young LGBTI students. She explains that the only way to effectively tackle homophobic bullying is to go beyond tolerance and actually change the attitude of the wider school population.

The common thought has been bullying is a normal reaction to school. Studies show that bullying is the result of underlying issues. Traditional bullying was a common thug trying to make a place for themselves, whereas now it has gone to new heights, it now includes physical trauma and even death. We find that bullying affects the bully as well as the victim. The victims tend to have more problems in school with attendance and achievements within the academic world. This is not just about the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, it involves all students that don’t fit societies idea of normal then the person gets bullied. The amount of attention given to this issue is a direct result of this escalation in events within the school system from grade schools to universities. The most pressing problem with getting the bullying policies changed is the conservative communities that school boards serve and convincing them that these policies need to be

In the past ten years there has been an increased stress on schools to recognize bullying an issue. Some schools are implementing anti-bullying programs and schools are hoping the programs will be effective. Schools, teachers, staff, students and parents need to realize that bullying is not going to go away over night, but each program students learn will help them become more accepting and empathetic. Anti-bullying programs are effective in schools and give students lessons they will reference to their whole lives.

Although schools, agencies and pediatricians can do much at the community level to mitigate bullying and its effects, the problem is clearly societal in scope. Bullying cannot be stopped with a single intervention or by a single social agency. The use of violence to solve problems is repeatedly illustrated through television and other visual media. Many parents of bullies believe that it is appropriate for their children to learn how to compete in the schoolyard and do not see bullying as an issue (Feldman Hertz, Donato, & Wright, 2013). Too many children in our society are exposed to domestic violence directed towards parents and themselves. Too many children are born into adverse family situations, including low maternal age at the birth

Instead of asking the child to stop, a hand signal could be taught to the

Experience of being a victim of bullying can finally damage the mental health of students and motivate them to commit school violence. "According to statistics in two-thirds of cases of the recent school shootings, the attackers had previously been bullied" (Sampson, 2009, p.1). For most children learning process itself may already be a daily struggle and being a target for bullying at the same time can become "the straw that broke the camel's back", after which they consider suicide as the only possible solution. "A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying" (Detlor, 2010). So, due to the fact that problem of bullying negatively affects students' learning ability, their health and the entire school climate society should take definite and urgent measures to solve it.

Brown, E.C., Haggerty, K.P., Low, S., & Smith, B. H. (2011). Outcomes from a school-randomized controlled trial steps to respect: A bullying prevention program. School Psychology Review, 40(3), 423-443. Retrieved from: https://lopes.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edswss&AN=000296892700006&site=eds-live&scope=site

o Out of 39,356 households, over half earn less than 50,000 and less than 10% earn $100,000 or more (Harnett County Schools, NC Economic Characteristics, n.d.).