When
I was thinking about the topic I was going to choose to write about I thought
about the recent suicide that a young middle school girl had committed to herself
because she was being bullied at school by a few girls. This brought up the
memory I have when my own daughter was being bullied in school by a little girl
in the second grade. I can now see that this is a huge problem in this day in
age and very common all over the world. We as the adults need to find a way to
prevent this from happening to our children or anyone at that but how?
The first source that I found that I feel will help me with
my research on helping to prevent or possibly stop bullying is a book I found from
Google Scholar called Bullying at school:
What we know and what we can do. By Dan Olweus. In this article Dan speaks
about statistics of weather this problem happens more in urban or rural areas,
smaller or larger schools, between boys or girls more, weather victims or aggressors
can be identified, and most of all weather we can or cannot do anything about
it. He tells about how to recognize patterns and behaviors or other characteristics
to determine who is a victim of bullying and who is being the bully. Dan
promotes an anti-bullying campaign that is looked at from different levels such
as the school level, class level, individual level bully and victim, and at the
parent level.
The second source I found was an article also found through
Google Scholar called Understanding and
Preventing Bullying By David P. Farrington. In this article David starts
off with a bold description of what bullying is. He states “Bullying is a repeated
oppression, psychological or physical of a less powerful person by a more
powerful one”. I felt this was a very powerful statement and gives you a quick
visual of how bullying works. Most bullies are aggressive, tough, strong and impulsive.
Most victims are unpopular, lonely, rejected, anxious, unwilling to retaliate,
depressed and have low self-esteem, making them an easy target for someone to
bully them. This can lead to someone wanting to commit suicide since they were previously
already emotionally distressed and adding the problem of the bully making it
worse for the victim is how bullying can lead to suicide of the victim.
The solution that I found between both book and article is
that we need to first identify the problem and understand it before we can try
to fix it. Then decide where to start to help this situation get better.
References:
Olweus, Dan. Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Wiley-Blackwell, 1993.
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Farrington, David P.
"Understanding and preventing bullying." Crime and justice (1993):
381-458.
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