Two sources to prevent bullying

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.

Farrington, David P. "Understanding and preventing bullying." Crime and justice (1993): 381-458.