Bullying in Schools

School bullying takes various forms:

• teachers bully pupils
• older pupils bully younger pupils
• children of the same age and in the same class bully each other
• pupils bully teachers
• teachers bully each other

All of these are unacceptable and the fact that there is so much misery inherent in the school system should have provoked some serious changes long before now.

This page contains basic advice about what to do if you are the victim of bullying. For a related article on The Solution to the Problem of School Bullying click here.

What should you do if you are being bullied?

This is what you should do if you are being bullied:

• Tell your parents. (If you are not living with your parents tell your guardian or whoever is responsible for looking after you.)
• If your parents don't sort it out, tell them again. Keep telling them that you are being bullied until the problem is solved. Remember that they will not know what is happening to you at school unless you tell them.
• If your parents cannot stop you being bullied at school, remind them that they do not have to send you to school - they can teach you at home.

How can you tell that your children are being bullied?

Part of being bullied is that one is made to feel that one is oneself to blame.

This means that you have to be very sensitive and aware when they do tell you things:

• If they keep talking about one particular teacher or one particular child at school, it is a sign that this person is preying on their mind. If you listen carefully, you may find that that person has been mistreating your child.
• Do not ask direct questions. Children feel guilty about being bullied and will clam-up if asked direct questions.
• If your child does not want to go to school on a particular day each week, it is a sign that something is happening on that day that is making them unhappy.
• You have to respect your child. If they do not want to attend a particular lesson and you tell them not to be so silly, who can they then turn to for help?

Action to take:

• The first step is to approach the school - either your child's teacher or the head teacher. It is probably at this point that you will see your child's school clearly for the first time. If it is a small school, reasonably well rooted in the local community, the teachers may be able to resolve the problem by talking to all the children involved and mentioning it to their parents etc.
  It is more likely, however, that the teachers will have no real contact with the pupils and that they will either over-react or under-react and thereby make matters worse for your child in one way or another. 
• If the school is not able to solve the problem, you have to resolve it yourself. Parents sometimes leave their children to endure terrible situations for weeks and months in the hope that things will improve of their own accord or when the child goes up into the next class. There can be no justification for putting a child under this sort of stress, instead you have to do what is necessary to protect your own child.
  • This does not mean threatening or bullying the bully. Bullies will find a way of revenging themselves against your child if you use aggression against them.
  • It means that you have to face up to the fact that you should not be sending your child to an institution that considers bullying to be an acceptable and inevitable part of everyday life.
  • In the case of young children in particular, it may be best to teach them at home for a while and let them decide when they want to start going to a new school.

   

   

  How Big is the Problem?

  No one can say how big a problem school bullying actually is. Most children experience some problems with other pupils being unpleasant or aggressive or some teachers being too overbearing, but they decide to put up with it.

  The question is where the line should the be drawn. The practical answer is that when children are made unhappy by the things that take place in school, then things have gone too far.

  The uncomfortable truth is that this is the case far more often than it is convenient for us to admit and that the whole modern practice of mass schooling would become untenable if we were serious about stopping children being bullied.

   

  Links:
  School Bullying - advice and information for people who are being bullied.
  Bullying Online - charity specializing in helping people who are being bullied at school
  http://www.bully-off.co.uk - A new site with forums, links and information about bullying by someone who knows all about it.

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