The Anti-Bullying Campaign Across America

It is important to define the term bullying accurately because that term alone can be adversarial. With that being said it can mean intimidation, aggression, hostile behaviors, and pestering the weak. Bullying takes place in schools, work, and in your own home. It can pretty much happen anywhere. Bullying in my terms is anything that can make a person feel weak minded, and has to submit.

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.

Schools are the most well-known settings for bullying. This is the place where students learn and socialize for most of the day. A school is a place meant to feel safe, not afraid. However, studies have shown us this is not the case. More and more students are reluctant to come to school. Why? Their peers may criticize them and abuse of them both verbally and physically. Bullying is more serious than most think. Many people just think it’s a simple hoax that was taken too far but this simple joke can lead to indelible emotional and physical scar that could hunt students for life eventually lowering their self-esteems and even ruining their lives. Schools and teachers have failed tremendously at stopping this.

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)

28% of students in the U.S. have experienced bullying in 6th - 12th grade. Bullies are

The anti-bullying movement is a social movement that tries to end all types of bullying including bullying in the workplace, school, and elsewhere. Through the Durkheim’s and Weber’s ideals, one can figure out why this social movement is important, and bullying is not needed in our society. Using functionalism, one could deduce that bullying is necessary to keep society in equilibrium. However, that is probably not the case. The victim of bullying is not socially integrated into one group (or integrated into a group of victims). Being bullied can be due to social and economic differences, which is against the idea of organic solidarity, as this means that people are accepted due to their differences. This act is not “socially or biologically”

Bullying is progressively seen as a enormous problem in the United States and around the world and unfortunately for many, numerous research has started to prove that its consequences are real and can have long lasting impact for both victim and those who love them. Throughout or society Homosexuality is deemed unfavorable in religious and cultural circles of people in the United States. Thus providing those to be outcast and making them even more of targets for the hostility of others. Bullying it its own right has consequences that are far reaching especially for those in the LGBT community.

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.

Nowadays, schools and private assemblies are working together to talk to students and parents to minimize the instances of bullying by persistently educating them on the effects of bullying and actual instances that have happened around the world. The world is evolving rapidly each and every day through research and there still seem to be many questions unanswered but through each experience of bullying there are new questions

Companies may not have initiated an anti-bullying policy, since not every workplace experience bullying; not to mention, the misunderstanding of what is considered as bullying. According to Porteous (2002), “organizations without codes of conduct or policies of behavior may encourage bullying by omission;” however, the various forms of intimidation is difficult to define as bullying (Gumbus, 2011, p. 373). By the way, culture does play an important role in the interpretation of bullying.

When one thinks about social injustice, usually what comes to mind is discrimination, human trafficking, abortion, etc., but what about bullying? A large number of people are oblivious to the fact that bullying indeed is truly a social injustice. The majority of states define bullying differently from how the federal government defines it (Clark). When defined, bullying is, “... [an] unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance… Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose” (Clark). However, bullying is much more complex than individuals conceive it to be. Not only are the

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.

According to “Stopbullying.gov”, bullying can threaten students physically, emotionally, and can negatively impact their ability to learn. The best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts.

Bullying is a big issue in the world these days. It is our job as teachers to address this issue in our classroom and teach children that bullying is not ok.

About twenty-eight percent of student’s ages 12-18 reported being bullied at school during the school year according to the Indicators of School Crime and Safety report, by the Bureau of Justice statistics. Across thirty-nine states survey, 7.2 percent of students admit to not attending school because they do not feel safe. The importance of bullying can’t be undermined. Teachers and parents must understand the importance of looking and listening for signs and behaviors of bullying. This will help tackle the issue before it gets serious and someone gets hurt.