BLOG POST #7
Cyberbullying
Bullying is on the minds of all educators and an important aspect of the lives of our students. Multiple factors are at work, and I have always been curious about some of the causes of the increase in bullying. Has bullying really increased or are the number of occurrences the same but more people reporting instances of bullying? Developing a “thick skin” seems to no longer be the go-to response for bullying, and no longer do we say, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Reading through some of the material answers some of this in part. In the article “From the sandbox to the inbox” cultural differences may play a role in instances of bullying.
The more feminine/egalitarian Scandinavian culture places greater emphasis on the quality of interpersonal relationships and, thus, leaves less room for conflicts such as bullying and cyberbullying. (2015, pg. 117)
This led me to believe that our society or our culture places less emphasis on relationships thus creating instances where bullying can occur. This did not help with understanding how bullying has changed over the years and verbal, or cyber bullying is on the rise. The research indicates that there is not much data on the subject prior to the 1970's. Physical bullying was the predominate form and verbal bullying was not really addressed or studied until the late 80's. This answered my question of the increase of bullying and yes, it is on the rise and the definition of bullying is being adjusted as well. A comment I read in a paper by Hyojin Koo really resonated with me. It was noted the "the attitude towards it has been changing; it used to be considered as a part of children’s growing up but now is considered to be a social problem which has to be controlled." (Koo, 2007) This made sense to me as to how our society or culture has changed how bullying is approached and handled.
Awareness of bullying is no longer enough so how do we approach ending or reducing bullying? The simplest answer is teaching kids to be kind. (Faucher, 2015) This is repeated through many articles and personal experience. The biggest contribution an educator can make to help reduce bullying is education about the definition of bullying, encouraging kinder behaviors, and modeling correct behaviors. Educating our students about what behaviors are wrong helps but encouraging all students to change their behavior is hard and we must also help those who are bullied by educating them on ways to avoid situations where bullying may happen. A resource found on WikiHow could be a good way to help students develop ways to avoid or reduce bullying opportunities. (Lin, 2022) Bullying education cannot only revolve around changing bullies but also helping victims find ways to handle those situations and develop the confidence and understanding that the words spoken by others do not define us.
Faucher, C., Cassidy, W., Jackson, M. (2015, August 27). From the sandbox to the inbox: Comparing the acts, impacts and solutions of bullying in K-12, higher education, and the workplace. Journal of education and training studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.11114/jets.v3i6.1033
Koo, H. (2007). A timeline of the evolution of school bullying in differeing social contexts. (EJ768971). ERIC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ768971.pdf
Lin, N. (2022, September 23). How to avoid being a victim of bullying. WikiHow. https://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Being-a-Victim-of-Bullying
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I am so glad you added the quote by Koo about how the collective societal views have changed concerning bullying. I have watch movies from the 50's-80's that illustrate bulling as a regular childhood trauma. I am glad that now a days we are trying as a society to change that view and try to prevent bullying. One of our class mates, Meg Glock, really focused in her post how we can fight against the spread of cyberbullying. When students form a group of their peers and these groups go around promoting positivity in their schools. Both of you capitalized on spreading kindness. I really enjoyed your post this week. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteErin Castle
I appreciate that you called attention to the old saying about sticks and stones and how this is not an accurate reflection of the issues we are dealing with today. Words can absolutely hurt us, and young victims of cyberbullying need help learning how to handle this. I also like how you mentioned that we need to help kids understand that these words do not define us. That can be very hard for kids, especially when the hurtful words are spoken by their peers at a time when they are still so impressionable. Hopefully, by continuing to educate our students about bullying and kindness, we will be able to further reduce cases of bullying within our schools. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete-Christina Lunetta
Yes, I agree that kindness is the key to life these days. I think with compassion and kindness, it is important that students see the adults practicing it on a daily basis. This includes all adults in their lives. Promoting kindness at all school functions so parents can be more involved is another great way to unite the school community. It always saddens me when students start to believe that their bullies are right...undoing that negativity is hard for children and even adults. But building relationships with all students and being a positive role model are a good start in helping with the bullying crisis.
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