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Who is the Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander? Essay

Decent Essays

In Chapters One and Two of The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystanders, internationally recognized speaker and author, Barbara Coloroso (2010), draws readers into the complex and tragic world of the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. In Chapter One she explains that she uses the terms the bully, the bullied, and the bystander not to lock children into labels, but instead to identify the role that the child is playing in a particular scene (p. 4). Moreover she describes the all too common scenes or patterns that occur in bullying situation and how each “character” develops or responds (pp.5-8). Chapter Two then strictly focuses on the bully. She defines bullying including four critical elements (pp. 12-13), distinguishes between verbal, …show more content…

Google Scholar shows that The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander has been cited in 293 scholarly sources. Likewise, Baker (2013) noted the importance of studying bullies, the bullied, and the bystanders in order to understand the issue of bullying (p. 8). Furthermore, the presentation of Chapters One and Two was excellent. Coloroso organizes the information well, supports her assertions, and makes the topic easy to understand. She also steers clear of sticking permanent labels on anyone, by keeping the focus on the “roles” the participants are playing in a specific situation, and noting the potential to “rewrite the script and create alternative, healthier roles that require no pretense and no violence” (Coloroso, 2012, p. 4). With that said, if this student was writing about bullying for conflict resolution students, she would use much of the same terminology and foundational points, but would structure the text differently. While Coloroso chose to focus Part One of the text on delving into each character and then Part Two on dealing with the problem, this writer would prefer to include techniques for handling bullying throughout the whole text, rather than saving that part for the end. In addition, this cohort member would reference more scholarly sources and provide citations at the end of each chapter to encourage further study for readers. Nonetheless, Coloroso's

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