School should be a safe place for children: to learn, play, and make friends. Oklahoma City Public Schools Bullying, Harassment, and Discrimination District policy have been put into place for just that, to protect our children. This policy prohibits and does not tolerate bullying, harassment, or discrimination. Bullying is when someone is specifically picked on for their appearance, actions, religion, sexuality, race or sometimes for no reason at all. Bullying has been a part of school for as long as children have been congregating. It is a worldwide epidemic hitting schools everywhere. Virtually everyone has seen or experienced bullying. With technological advances, bullying is even hitting the internet. Parents, teachers, students and government agencies alike are attempting to put a stop to bullying practices.
According to the OKC policy bullying behaviors are prohibited on school premises, at school-sponsored or related activities, events or functions, or anywhere that students are under the supervision of school personnel. This may help weed out part of the problem, but it won 't stop it completely. Bullying begins once students enter kindergarten, but many programs wait until the upper elementary grades to address the issue, despite evidence that peer group rejection in kindergarten may continue throughout the primary school years (Buhs, Ladd, & Harald, 2006). Bullying, to me, does start around the kindergarten age where the first thing we learn is to call each other
Bullying, often labeled as just a part of growing up, is a major problem in America’s schools today. Although it is such a hot topic in our country right now, it is also a long ignored problem that only seems to worsen. The complication with bullying is that no one quite understands it, and it is not taken seriously. The definition of bullying is an overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people. In more simple terms, bullying is not a onetime incident; it is repetitive and happens among individuals when there is an imbalance of power. Statistically, every one in six children are bullied, and this cannot continue to take place. Every child has the right to feel safe and have the pursuit of being happy in which bullying completely takes those rights away.
Despite the anti-bullying campaign that’s been established in every school across America, bullying still happens. For a lot of students, school is an unsafe, uncomfortable environment. Bullying happens in many different forms and sometimes it’s hard to recognize.
Bullying is defined as “verbal, physical, or psychological abuse or teasing accompanied by real or perceived imbalance of power” and is usually targets what children perceive as different (Olweus, 1993). Bullying is prevalent across the nation. It has devastating effects on students each day. Bullying is a problem for all students, regardless of race, gender or class. The National Education Association reports that 160,000 children are absent intentionally from school each day because they fear being bullied whether it is an attack or just intimidation by other students. This accounts for 15% of all school absenteeism (Hunter, 2012). Dan Olweus (1993) from the National School Safety Center tells us that bullying includes three parts: (1)
As stories like Moniques and other people demonstrates, there are policies out there that just simply do not work.. One is called zero-tolerance policies, and while these succeed at sending the message that bullying is not tolerated, there are several problems with them. Nora M. Findlay believes, “ One of the most serious problems inherent in zero tolerance is that it treats dissimilar problems in a similar way” (6). Secondly, “Students and teachers may be less likely to report and address bullying if suspension or expulsion is the consequence” (United States Department of Health and Human Services). Two other policies that are used but never works is called peer-mediation, and conflict resolution. The United States Department of Health and Human Services stresses, “Conflict involves antagonism among two or more people. Whereas any two people can have a conflict (or a disagreement or a fight) bullying only occurs when there is a power imbalance-where one child has a hard time defending himself or herself” (“Myths about Bullying” sect. 1). This difference is very important to be aware of because these strategies can make the people being bullied feel even worse. Not only that, but it sends the message that all children share equal blame, which is definitely not an appropriate message. The message to the person being bullied should be,
Bullying is something that has been going on in schools and communities for centuries. There are however, laws that have been put into place to help prevent bullying. These laws were first started in 1964. However, “under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not directly cover religion, often religious based harassments are based on shared ancestry of ethnic characteristics which is covered.”(Federal Laws 1) Laws started changing around 1995 that helped reinforce what schools should be doing to prevent bullying. Bullying is defined as a behavior that encompasses threats, physical aggression, teasing, and harassment. Since bullying laws
Having a good policy that clearly explains the procedures for preventing and responding to bullying behavior is important for all schools to have. Bullying should not be tolerated, and all staff should not allow any bullying at school to occur. All children have rights, no matter who they are, or what language they speak. All schools have a duty give children an education in a safe environment.
A majority of bullying takes place during our elementary or in high school.. Peer pressure is reported to be a frequent reason as to why students feel the need to bully their peers. Many people have experienced bullying in some way throughout their lifetime. Some people were victims of bullying, while others were the ones doing the bullying, or in some cases, they were both. It isn’t rare to hear that
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.
Bullying is an undesirable form of aggression that is mostly seen in kids of school ages in which one of the parties is less powerful. The aggressive behavior is normally repeated over a period of time. It has the power to have devastating, lasting problems. The purpose of this article is to provide a coherent analysis of the most recent research on bullying and to address the issues that still exist even when school-based programs have been implemented in schools since the 1980s.
Bullying is not as serious as people make it out to be. I mean yeah it happens. “For all students grades 6-12, “hate related graffiti” in school classrooms, bathrooms, hallways, etc. “dropped from about 36% in 1999 to about 28% in 2011. The rate of students who reported fearing an attack or harm at school at all has also dropped dramatically, from nearly 12% in 1995 to less than 4% in 2011. For black and Hispanic students, it’s an even more encouraging shift – from more than 20% of both groups of students worried about being attacked at
The school has an anti-bullying policy in place to help children to feel safe while at school. The policy states that to feel safe, secure and happy children must
Bullying has engrained in American society since the country’s founding. Bred from a capitalistic economy and competitive social hierarchy, bullying has remained a relevant issue through the years. School age children are learning skills and lessons from their teachers as well as through peer interactions. Although schools are great tools that children benefit from, there are some bad experiences, such as bullying, that may negatively affect and remain with these children for the rest of their lives. Some
In my opinion, after reading Schools Where Everyone Belongs and reading numerous articles online the most effective way to stop bullying is to take a proactive approach. Educators have to know their students by building a positive, trusting teacher/student relationship. The bully or could be bully needs encouragement and positive, constructive backing. They want boundaries and expectations. You cannot transform an aggressor by
At the state and federal level, there are many general laws currently in effect regarding bullying. Federally, there is the Safe Schools Improvement Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and 20 USC 7118, which is the federal law, not policy, about bullying – The Safe Schools Improvement Act
With school-aged children, bullying more frequently happens while they are at school, or afterward when the students are not being supervised by their teacher in places like the cafeteria, bus, lockers, playground or neighborhood. Now that kids have access to online technology, bullying can also happen on the internet. With this in mind, teachers must now research and understand what bullying is, and develop methods to help fight against bullying. Bullying is the aggressive, unwanted behavior that occurs between kids of all ages. Children that bully are using the power they believe they have over other kids to try to control and harm them. Bullying can happen via verbal, social, or physical abuses, such as name-calling, threats, spreading rumors, isolation, embarrassment, spitting, hitting, destroying personal things, etc. In order to be considered bullying, these bad behaviors are repeated over time.