The
desire to survive is an instinct that was developed since the beginning of
life, which is the competition for resources against other species. “This survival instinct, along with a competitive
atmosphere, has remained the same as the human race has evolved” (Donegan,
2012). The constant drive to surpass others and surmount obstacles has become
an ideology “where bullying is unintentionally instilled as a survival
tactic from a very young age” (Donegan, 2012). Students quickly learn unethical
ways to outshine everybody in the highly competitive educational and social
environments that school conveys. However, Richard Donegan in his article Bullying and Cyberbullying: History,
Statistics, Law, Prevention and Analysis (2012) states that, “these tactics
are dangerous because once a student realizes their effectiveness, he or she
may construct a life style from them.” These bullying tactics may include
spreading social rumors, pressuring others to obtain the right answers to get
good grades, intimidating others, name-calling, stealing belongings, and even
hitting or threating another student if they tell on the bully. When a person
exerts power and intimidation over weaker students, they have the advantage to
control any situation that may arise.
In
addition, when a bully successfully maintains control over the other students,
he or she can manipulate them to do homework for them, and can use them to
achieve higher educational goals and ultimately better job opportunities. On
the other hand, most students are not properly taught to deal with peer pressure
and bullying at schools, which may lead to depression, terror, loneliness,
anger, anxiety, pain, low-self-esteem, physical, emotional and psychological
damage, and lastly suicide. A few decades ago parents would teach children to
stand up for themselves, or teach them ways to handle the pressure from being
bullied, survival tactics. Also, if any of the bullying methods were happening
to you, you went and told your parents so they could go to the school and help
you deal with it. However, now a day there is a growing strain in communication
between parents and kids. Children are not communicating with their parents
about any issues, and part of this is the due to the ample amount of free information
that is easily accessible online; but what kids don’t realize is that, yes,
they might get information on the issue, but it doesn’t really teach them how
to put everything into context and act on it. Survival tactics are not being
passed on from generation to generation anymore. Parents figure that kids will develop
their own tactics and that they will come to them if they cannot find a
solution, but this is not the case anymore.
Furthermore,
it is only in recent years that bullying has been recognized and recorded as a
separate and distinct offence, but there have been well documented cases that
have been recorded over the centuries. This could be happening because the
technology is providing a new method of bullying, cyber bullying, which can be
anonymous. Also, the deterioration in communication between parents and
children can be another factor which accounts for the lack of survival tactics
on recent younger generations. Survival tactics are not necessarily malicious;
they can be learning how to outsmart the bullies and not letting the bullying
interfere with school or their emotions. In addition, children can learn what
to do to stop it on time, so it doesn’t develop into a severe problem. In an
effort to raise consciousness in parents and children, in October 2006, the
PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center initiated the awareness week; this “event has evolved into a month’s worth of
events and activities to raise awareness and provide the latest resources to
those who need it” (Temkin & Holmquist, 2012). Programs like this one can
help guide children, parents, and teachers on how to deal properly with
traditional or cyber bullying. Next, to
help put bullying in a historical content, a timeline with a short description
of each event will be illustrated.
The following timeline
was taken from the website article Amanda
Todd Suicide Reminds Us of Bullying Problem, by K. Gilmour.
v 1838 First Use Of Bullying In Literary Work
– In literary works; children have been singled out and harassed since the
beginning of time. Written by Charles Dickens and published in 1838, Oliver
Twist was one of the first novels in the English language to focus on the
bullying and criminal mistreatment of a child protagonist.
v 1862 First Report Of Bullying – First report
of a bullying victim turning violent and shooting his tormenter was also a
soldier. The story of John Flood was detailed in an article in The Times
(London) in August of 1862. Flood had been the victim of “long, malignant and
systematic bullying”. Flood was convicted and sentenced to death but because he
was known to be a man of kindly disposition by everyone he came in contact with
his sentence was overturned by the Queen.
v 1897 First Characterizing Of Bullying Behavior -
Bullying behavior was first characterized as part of the experience of children
in an 1897 article entitled “Teasing and Bullying” published by Burk in the
Pedagogical Seminary. The article sought to expose behaviors of tormenters and
victims, and provided strikingly horrific examples of victimization among
children. The examples involved all of the four Ps- power, pain, persistence,
and premeditation. Power was involved because all of the examples were of an
older tormenter and a younger victim; both physical and psychological pain were
clearly explained for the victim; persistence was evident because the bullies
continued the behavior (becoming increasingly more delighted) until their
victims cried or ran away; premeditation was involved because the tormentors
always had a plan and intentional targets.
v 1970 First Bullying Research - In the early
1970s, Dr. Dan Olweus initiated the world's first systematic bullying research.
The results of his studies were published in a Swedish book in 1973 and in the
United States in 1978 under the title Aggression in the Schools: Bullies and
Whipping Boys.
v 1981 First Proposition Of Anti-Bullying Law -
Dr. Dan Olweus has long seen school safety as a fundamental human right.1 As early
as 1981, he proposed enacting a law against bullying in schools so students
could be spared the repeated humiliation implied in bullying. By the mid-1990s,
these arguments led to legislation against bullying by the Swedish and
Norwegian parliaments.
v 1993 Olweus Published Book On School Bullying -
In 1993, Olweus wrote Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do, and
is now widely considered to be the world's leading authority on bullying
behavior. Olweus's groundbreaking research and intervention programs have
played a significant role in increasing awareness that bullying is a growing
social problem, one that must be taken seriously by researchers, educators,
lawmakers, parents, students, and society in general.
v 1999 Columbine - On April 20th 1999,
two teenage boys who had been relentlessly bullied brought 50 bombs to school,
and then went on a shooting spree wounding twenty-three, fatally shooting
thirteen, and taking their own lives. Children, parents and school officials
around the country were shocked, and no one could deny the need for more
pro-social and accepting school environments and a way to combat bullying among
students.
v 2000 Cyber Bullying - With the increase of
access to the internet and cell phone us cyber bullying has become an epidemic
among teenagers in school. Cyberbullying is the use of technology to harass,
threaten, embarrass, or target another person. By definition, it occurs among
young people.
v 2001 Statistic On Bullying (2001) -
In 2001, The Journal of the American Medical Association reported that more
than 160,000 students skip school every day because they are anxious and
fearful of being bullied by other students. School is supposed to be a safe
haven where learning takes place not where a student has to defend themselves
from peers because of differences.
v 2002 School Shooting Statistics - In
2002, a report released by the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of
Education concluded that bullying played a significant role in many school
shootings. In fact, one key finding was that in 37 incidents involving 41
school shooters, many of the attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by
others prior to the attack.
v 2003 Cyber Bullying Leads To Teen’s Suicide -
Ryan Halligan was bullied so relentlessly at school, he finally learned
kickboxing to defend himself from the physical assaults. But when the attacks
moved online, he had no way to fight back, and no refuge. October 2003, Ryan
hanged himself in his family's bathroom. He was 13 years old. Now, Ryan's
father travels to schools around the country to share the events that led up to
his son's suicide and to warn educators and students about the dangers of
cyberbullying.
v 2004 Cyber Bullying Statistics (2004) -
Cyber Bullying Statistics
•
42% of kids have been bullied while online. 1 in 4 have had it happen more than
once.
•
35% of kids have been threatened online. Nearly 1 in 5 have had it happen more
than once.
•
21% of kids have received mean or threatening e-mail or other messages.
•
58% of kids admit someone has said mean or hurtful things to them online. More
than 4 out of 10 say it has happened more than once.
•
53% of kids admit having said something mean or hurtful to another person
online. More than 1 in 3 have done it more than once.
•
58% have not told their parents or an adult about something mean or hurtful
that happened to them online.
*
Based on 2004 i-SAFE survey of 1,500
students grades 4-8.
v 2006 Federal
Las Passed Against Cyber Bullying - In January 2006, the
US Congress passed a law making it a federal crime to “annoy, abuse, threaten
or harass” another person over the internet.
v 2007 Top 5 Bullying States - School
bullying statistics and cyber bullying statistics in 2007 the five top worst
states to live in to avoid bullies in K – 12 were: 1. California, 2. New York,
3. Illinois, 4. Pennsylvania, 5, Washington.
v 2008 Cyber Bullying Law Passed - One
of the first cyberbullying laws is passed in California; Assembly Bill 86 2008
gives school administrators the authority to discipline students for bullying
others offline or online.
v 2009 Megan’s Law Proposed – Introduced. Megan
Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act - Amends the federal criminal code to impose
criminal penalties on anyone who transmits in interstate or foreign commerce a
communication intended to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial
emotional distress to another person, using electronic means to support severe,
repeated, and hostile behavior. This prevention act came to be because of a 13
year old girl who committed suicide after being a target of cyberbullying.
Megan developed a relationship on MySpace with an individual who she thought
was a new boy in the area, but turned out to be a group of other individuals
from the neighborhood, including adults. The group created an elaborate hoax to
make Megan believe that she had a flourishing relationship with the boy. When
the plot was revealed for all to see, Megan was unable to deal with the
humiliation and took her own life.
v 2011 Bully Prevention Conference - The
President and First Lady Michelle Obama discuss how we can all work together to
end bullying as an accepted practice and create a safer environment for our
kids to grow up in. March 10, 2011.
v 2012 National Day Of Action Against Bullying And Violence
- On Friday 16 March 2012 schools throughout Australia will join together to
celebrate the annual National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence. The
focus of the 2012 day will be on parents and families taking a stand together
with school communities and recognizing the important role everyone plays.
To
sum up, bullying incidents have been happening for centuries, but it is recently
that the brutality of few events has brought this issue to surface making it
one of the most talked about issues worldwide. For example, the death of
Matthew Shepard a 21-year-old (1998) who was tied to a fence, tortured and
murdered because of how the perpetrators felt about LGBT (Shepard, 2010), Columbine
High School Massacre (1999) (Gilmour, 2012), the suicide of Ryan Halligan, a
13-year-old (2003) victim of cyberbullying (Littler, 2011), the suicide of
Megan Meier another 13-year-old (2006) victim of cyberbullying with a fake
MySpace profile (Littler, 2011), suicide of Tyler Clementi an 18-year-old
(2010) victim of cyberbullying to LGBT youth
(Unknown, 2011). Due to violent events like these ones, law and new school
policies have been passed here in the United States to cease bullying by making
everyone aware that this issue must be tackled because of the physical and
psychological damage it involves with either the victim or the offender. Parents
as well as educators need to engage with the children while at an early age, so
a trust bond can be developed and kids feel free to talk about what they are
experiencing in school and on social environments whether they are real or
virtual. In this new age and era is time for us to stop bullying once and for
all, and use innovative methods so everyone has an equal opportunity to
succeed.
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