The Importance Of Solving Issue Of School Bullying - Essay Example

The Importance Of Solving Issue Of School Bullying The issue of school bullying has gained a huge public reaction in American society so far. The problem resulted in a lot of kids’ traumas and unwillingness to visit school, because of the fear to become victims of bullying. Thus, the issue has to be solved and prevented as soon as possible, but all the sides of the conflict should work on its solution. The learning resource of BBC asserts certain definition of school bullying in order to demonstrate parents how their children can be assaulted during school sessions. It turns out that bullying is a kind of harm and intimidation caused by one person to another (“Understanding Bullying”). The types of school bullying can be multiple and usually they are classified into the three, which are verbal, physical and emotional offences. As far as kids are pretty inventive, the particular actions they do in order to offend someone can be various from spreading dirty rumors to straight hitting. Although, it is important to take note of the fact that not only school students are those bullies, but even teachers and parents can become stakeholders of the conflict. In fact, this tendency is rather strange, because adults are expected to be rational and moral, but, unfortunately, it appears that grown up people can often use kids in order to boost their self-esteem. According to Newman, “Among 12- to 17-year-olds, 47 percent of girls and 34 percent of boys report having been bullied either face-to-face or online, according to a survey by Mintel, a market research firm. And prominent cases of teenagers committing suicide after being harassed on social media networks have, along with strengthening the resolve of antibullying organizations, prompted brands to take up the issue” (Newman). Indeed the cruel treatment of peers has always been a problem of children’s communities and, perhaps, the reason for this is that in such way kids learn how to survive later in the adult society. The main issue here is that bullying might become rather contradictory issue and might play a role of social identifier of stronger and weaker personalities or even work like a kind of natural selection. On the other hand the kids being treated cruelly can gain many mental traumas and complexes which afterwards influence their social functioning or even can destroy it preventing them from self-realization. Coughlan comments: “Described as "easily provoked, low in self-esteem, poor at understanding social cues, and unpopular with peers", these children grew into adults six times more likely to have a "serious illness, smoke regularly or develop a psychiatric disorder" (Coughlan). It is important to note that as far as the subject of the issue is actually the bullying that happens at schools, a reasonable conclusion is that bullying doesn’t allow children to study normally and have good marks. It turns out that the main educational function of school is being interrupted, because kids are simply scared of going to school. The reason why the bullying should be prevented is because even though it can sometimes be treated as a part of natural selection, still we don’t live in the wild environment and the traumatized kids are going to stay in our society and form it. Thus, if their amount is growing every day, it is hard to imagine what our society will look like in a decade. Recent researches revealed an unfortunate statistics that 20 to 30 percent of school-age children are involved in bullying situations (“Bullying and Teasing: No Laughing Matter”). The essential thing in the problematic area is the consequences bullying may have. First of all, it was already mentioned kids that get traumatized, but more important thing is that majority of these children will never be able to recover from the mental traumas they’ve got in humiliating situations. In the article “Childhood Bullying ‘Damages Adult Life” Sean Coughlan asserts that the both sides of bullying, including not only a victim but also a bully, gain serious mental damages and frequently can’t live a decent social life. Indeed, it turns out that those kids who used to be victims of school bullying often have psychiatric disorder and feel uncomfortable being in society, because they lose their belief in humanity. It can be easily proved by the analogy that when a person gets traumatized by somebody, the victim remembers the offence that led to the pain, so in order to prevent the same situation in the future the person will avoid certain category of people that may seem dangerous. Mental traumas like this lead the bullying victims to serious physical illnesses as a consequence of the negative inner state. Furthermore, even bullies themselves later suffer from their actions, claims (Coughlan). Most of them keep aggression and cruelty inside for a long time; they don’t stop on school bullying and try to expand their brutality as much as possible. Eventually, they even become criminals and this role of bully becomes their profession. It turns out that there is no side in the bullying situation that actually wins, because finally the both sides suffer. There are a lot of arguments why school bullying should be banned and nowadays society realizes the danger of bullying tendency. In the United States the problem has gained serious attention from authorities; 49 states have already passed anti-bullying laws, and the number of schools using anti-bullying programs continues to grow (Brackett and Rivers). Governmental actions are quite reasonable and correspond to the core values of American people and their rights set in the Constitution. Indeed as far as all the people, citizens of the United States in particular, are equal by their nature, they deserve to be treated accordingly. Unfortunately, still there are no effective measures of bullying prevention. Brackett and Rivers argue in their article: “It is true that bullying-prevention efforts are on the rise. In fact, 49 states now have anti-bullying legislation in place, and the number of schools using anti-bullying programs continues to grow. These legislative and programmatic actions demonstrate a commitment to addressing a critical problem. They have cost our nation billions, and, yet, according to nationwide surveys, bullying rates have not declined. The results of six meta-analyses confirm that current anti-bullying programs are not working” (Brackett & Rivers). If to think what exactly each of us can do in order to prevent the cases of school bullying, it turns out that there are many opportunities for ordinary people to improve the situation. The very first thing is rising the problematic of the issue in public. Many huge corporations have recently taken up the issue by creating special promo-actions and asserting their position against children bullying in public (Newman). Secondly, of course, the result of public activity depends on each participate of society; especially it depends on each of us in particular. As children we can stop bullying other children. As parents we can stop teaching our children to be aggressive and judgmental and vice versa constantly tell them that they should be tolerant. Furthermore, parents should teach their children how to be socially resistant and morally strong individuals, because emotional intelligence helps a person to advocate oneself (Brackett & Rivers). Also, if we happen to meet a person who suffers from bullying, we must be strong and try to defend the offended. When most of the children understand that they have to stick together, bullies will find themselves weak and unable to offend others. Works Cited “Understanding Bullying.” BBC. 6 Feb. 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/parents/bullying/ Newman, Andrew Adam. “The Fight Against Bullying in Schools Expands to Store Shelves”. The New York Times. Web. 6 Feb. 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/business/media/the-fight-against-bullying-in-schools-expands-to-store-shelves.html?_r=1& “Bullying and Teasing: No Laughing Matter”. Scholastic. Web. 6 Feb. 2015. http://www.scholastic.com/parents/resources/article/social-emotional-skills/bullying-and-teasing-no-laughing-matter Coughlan, Sean. “Childhood Bullying ‘Damages Adult Life”. BBC News. Web. 6 Feb. 2015 < http://www.bbc.com/news/education-23756749> Brackett, Marc A. and Rivers, Susanne E. “Preventing Bullying With Emotional Intelligence”. Education Week. Web. 6 Feb. 2015. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/02/19/21brackett_ep.h33.html Read More