Bullying prevention
“Bullying” is defined as repeated acts of peer aggression intentionally designed to harm a person who is weaker than the bully. Bullying is an exploitive relationship between students rather than one specific event.1 Whether the bully uses fists, the Internet, threatening looks or gestures, or carefully worded threats, bullying presents a serious roadblock to student learning by creating a climate of fear. Since bullies often isolate their “victims” from other peers through group pressure, the isolated students experience rejection beyond the actual bullying. This, in turn, reduces the protective asset of other relationships. Researchers who followed 380 Midwestern children from the ages of five to eleven found that those who experienced chronic rejection by their classmates were more likely to withdraw from school activities and scored lower on standardized tests than their more popular peers.2
Bullying hurts student achievement, the school climate, and the school budget. When students fear going to school because of violence and harassment, their attendance plummets. Average daily attendance money due to the school is lost. In addition, missing class typically affects student achievement. In 2001, results from the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey found that 14percent of students ages twelve through eighteen reported that they had been bullied at school in the six months prior to the interview. The survey found that victims of bullying were more likely to avoid certain areas of the school and certain activities out of fear of an attack.3 Often students stay home rather than meet bullies or attackers in school or on their way to and from school.
In middle schools students are increasingly subject to “cyber-bullying.” Like face-to-face bullying, cyber-bullying can make students fearful of coming to school. According to a poll released by the nonprofit organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, one-third of teenagers have been subjected to threats or verbal abuse online.4 The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids (Outside Source) Web site links to resources and polls about cyber-bullying.
Following a deadly string of school shootings, President Bush and members of his cabinet convened a school safety summit on October 10, 2006. Speakers at the summit emphasized the importance of communication as a means of curbing school violence. Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, said that a school’s first line of prevention is to have good intelligence and that school faculty members need to find ways to encourage students to speak up about bullying or rumors about violent plans.5 Many schools have experimented with “hotlines” or anonymous tip boxes where students can alert school authorities to issues that frighten or concern them.
In the Spotlight
Canyon Middle School (Outside Source), a Schools to Watch™-Taking Center Stage 2007 model, Castro Valley Unified School District. Teachers and counselors at Canyon Middle School created a series of “Bully Boxes” that they placed around the school campus. Each year, they teach students to place notes in the boxes to let staff know of physical, verbal, or cyber-bullying incidents. Students have indicated that they feel safer knowing that teachers and counselors take bullying threats seriously and deal with them in a positive and timely manner.
California Department of Education Resources
External Resources
Previous Section
Conflict resolution
Next Section
Violence prevention
Footnotes
1Getting Results Fact Sheet 6: "What Does Getting Results Say About Say about Violence Prevention and Safe Schools?" (PDF; 230KB; 3pp.), Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2004.
2Gary W. Ladd and Sarah L. Herald, “Peer Exclusion and Victimization: Processes That Mediate the Relation Between Peer Group Rejection and Children’s Classroom Engagement and Achievement?“ (PDF; Outside Source). Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 98, No. 1 (2006), 1–13.
3Jill F. DeVoe and Sarah Kaffenberger, Student Reports of Bullying: Results From the 2001 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (Statistical Analysis Report) (PDF; Outside Source). Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, July 2005, pp. 9, 10.
4"1 of 3 Teens and 1 of 6 Preteens Are Victims of Cyber Bullying" (Outside Source), Fight Crime: Invest in Kids (August 17, 2006).
5"How to Stop School Violence: Communicate" (Outside Source), eSchool News (October 11, 2006).