The Pros And Cons Of Bullying In Schools

were the major bullying acts during our child’s first year of schooling. Size-bias, sexism, and racism are, unfortunately, fairly common. We felt that the teachers, the administration, the parents, and the children themselves responded to Helena being called “fat” fairly well, as demonstrated by the lovely letters of apology. The second scenario of racism was more volatile and remains unresolved. The third incident was only communicated to me and even the mother involved, who was so startled by the boy’s comment, didn’t intervene in any way. These incidents, though, did begin to open up conversations and new awareness of bullying within this small K-8 school.

There is a tremendous amount of research around the need of creating safe communities

This is a tiny, partial list of young children who have committed suicide over the last couple of years as a result of being bullied in school. The kinds of bullying were diverse: Phoebe was bullied by several girl classmates because she had started dating a boy in their school; Jaheem and Carl Joseph were bullied because classmates saw them as gay, although what that meant is that they were physically small for their age; many of the children on this list – most, actually – were bullied because they were gay; Asher was bullied because of his religious beliefs; and Ashlynn was bullied by her classmates and called “slut, ugly, and

For instance, a mother at our school recently shared with me that her third-grade son had been called into the Principal’s office multiple times for aggressive behavior. In one scenario he, another boy, and two girls were supposed to make a mini-movie on their computers as part of a technology class and her son suggested that they cuss and/or take naked pictures of each other. The girls told their parents that his comments had made them uncomfortable and the boy was called into the office. The mother didn’t think it was a big deal at all, but when she shared it I pushed back that it was, indeed, a very big deal and fell into the category of sexual harassment. Bullying, on the other hand, tends to be an accumulation of many small incidents over a long period of time. For example, if my daughter was repeatedly called “fat” over the course of months and years by the same two boys, that would be an example of bullying, or in the case of the new terminology, harassment. On their own, each incident might be considered trivial, but the collective nature of these small incidents leads up to a person being bullied (Field, 1996) and certainly to a possible school-wide negative climate. It is commonly understood that the four most common types of bullying are (1) physical bullying, which includes