Bullying is a problem our society has faced for a long time. Even after so many years of advocacy on this issue, our schools still don’t know how to handle bullying as well as they should.
The anti-bullying website DoSomething.org reports that two out of three students who have been a victim of bullying believe their school didn’t do as much as they could have to address the problem.
I will freely admit that I am one of those students.
Through my years in elementary school, I was the victim of bullying. It felt like there wasn’t one person I could keep as a friend. My classmates made up names for me, refused to touch anything I touched for fear of catching “Jenni germs,” and spread horrible rumors about my family.
My teachers never did anything to stop the harassment. “Kids will be kids,” they remarked. “Sticks and stones” was another one of their favorite phrases, said all too often. It took one of my teachers punishing me for causing a “disruption in class” because of the bullying before I finally broke down and told my parents what was happening.
I was lucky, though. Everything worked out in the end for me. The bullying ended with elementary school and since then I’ve met accepting people who are still in my life. And here I am now, studying at a wonderful university where I’ve met some amazing friends.
Some victims of bullying, however, are not so lucky. We hear all the time of students taking their lives because they didn’t know how to handle being bullied. Amanda Todd, a girl who was severely cyberbullied, Josh Pacheco, a Michigan teen who was bullied for being gay, and Phoebe Prince, a girl from Ireland bullied in the U.S., are only three of the countless teens who were driven to commit suicide from being bullied.
It’s so important for teachers to take charge of this issue because they’re the authorities of the classrooms where most bullying takes place. So why are our teachers not stepping up to be more proactive about these situations?
Coming from experience, there are plenty of things my teachers could have done. It wouldn’t have taken much effort; a simple acknowledgement that they understood what was going on would have been better than nothing. A lesson on the negative effects of bullying would have also been helpful. We can’t blame teachers for the issue, but they certainly could do more to help.
But this problem is not confined to the school day. Statistics from DoSomething.org show that 54 percent of school bullies are victims of abuse at home. The sad part is that those abusers were more than likely bullied during their life, too. Bullying is a vicious cycle.
As a society, we need to work together with teachers, parents and students alike to help the world realize the problems we face with bullying. Everyone has said something mean-spirited to someone else; it’s just a part of being human. Negative words go a long way, and unless we start thinking before we speak, the cycle of bullying will forever be continued.
