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Viewing Bullying from the Perspective of Self-Empowerment

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Most studies on bullying focus on the negative aspects, pointing to the extreme cases such as when the victim commits suicide. However, there is another side of the story (lead-in statements). Bullying can be beneficial, more so for the victim than the perpetrator (thesis). The perpetrator is playing into a predictable pattern of using power to seek social status and psychological control, or perhaps as a result of mental illness as Wente points out. Focusing too much on the reasons why bullies do what they do, researchers, parents, teachers, and children have forgotten to focus on the most important issue: how to turn bullying into a positive (stance). Bullying is not going away; it is something that adults do to each other and it seems to be built into social patterns and modes of communication universally. "The anti-bullying crusade has been around for years. Yet, kids still torment kids as much as ever even more than ever, now that they can do it around the clock in cyberspace," (Wente). Human nature is mean. By viewing bullying from the perspective of self-empowerment, it becomes possible to mitigate the many problems that bullying causes without resorting to useless interventions such as legislation, policies that are overly tough on bullies, or on assumptions about the victims. Bullying can be an opportunity for growth and maturity, for positive psychosocial development, and for self-esteem building (essay map). There are many ways of reaching psychological

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