The Bully Problem

It's 4:30 in the afternoon and you've just cleaned off your desk. You've had a pretty good day. The phone rings. Mrs. Smith is irate. She says her son is being picked on by some school bullies and is afraid to come to school.

You try to console her. You try to get some details.

But Mrs. Smith says she is not letting her son come back to "your school" until it is safe.....

How many of these calls have you fielded? Unfortunately, they have been a regular occurrence for educators for years. Lately, they have become more frequent. Perhaps more parents are on edge because well-publicized acts of school violence.

Just a few weeks ago the Chicago Tribune published an article detailing the events leading up to a complaint at a local school district. The article, "Schools' handling of bullies at issue" is reprinted with names omitted. It includes all of the ingredients for a serious problem. A follow-up article, only a few days later, made the front page of the Trib: "Schools help kids learn to fight bullies." The key word here is "fight" for, as the article explains, some schools are teaching students or encouraging students to learn "fighting techniques" for stopping the bullies.

Are there better ways of dealing with these problems?

An interesting article in Education Week is entitled "Beating the Bullies."

Debra Viadero stresses the role of teachers in identifying bullying behavior and dealing with it immediately. She points out much research indicating that often teachers "look the other way" when bullying occurs, and, in fact, they may inadvertently reinforce bullying behavior by making poor decisions about consequences.

SuccessUnlimited, a website in England, presents a brutally honest view

"There are very few programmes that will actively help an aggressive child learn to deal with his aggression. Many schools, under pressure of budgets, lack of time, overburdened with work, lack of leadership, lack of local education authority support, lack of government support and rising class sizes, either ignore the problem (in which case it gets worse), punish the bully (in which case it gets worse), punish the target of bullying when they stand up for themselves (in which case it gets worse), or expel the bullying pupil (in which case the problem is passed to someone else). All of these are short-term, short-sighted non-solutions which do not address the cause of the problem, which in all cases will get worse."

Some facts about bullies and bulling are summarized at the EducationWorld Web Site:

• 10 to 15 percent of children are bullied regularly.

• Bullying is an equal-opportunity torment -- the size of a school, its setting (rural, urban or suburban) and racial composition seem to have no bearing on its occurrence.

• As many as 7 percent of eighth grade students in the United States stay home at least once a month because of bullies.

• 60 percent of kids characterized as bullies in sixth through ninth grades had at least one criminal conviction by age 24.

An interesting book by Dan Olweus: Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do

The key points:

• Distribute a questionnaire on bullying to students and teachers to foster awareness, justify intervention efforts and establish a benchmark for later comparison.

• Conduct a parental awareness campaign through newsletters, parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings.

• Intervene individually with bullies and victims, implement cooperative learning activities.

• Step up adult supervision at recess and lunch.

• Work with students in role-playing exercises and related assignments that teach alternative methods of interaction, and develop strong anti-bullying rules.

In his article "What Schools Can Do About Bullying," Ken Rigby of the University of South Australia suggests the following:

• Express disapproval of bullying whenever it occurs.

• Listen sympathetically to students who need support when they are victimized.

• Initiate or take action against the bully.

• Encourage cooperative learning in the classroom.

• Talk with groups of students about bullying, and mobilize student support for action to reduce bullying.

"Most students are in fact against bullying," Rigby says, "and, given the chance, can provide not only active support for the school policy but also make positive proposals and undertake constructive actions to counter bullying."

But what to do?

When Olweus says we should "intervene individually with bullies" or Ken Rigby says "initiate or take action against the bully," what exactly is the educator to do?

It all comes down to the creativity and expertise of the educator. The experts can always tell us to "intervene" or to "take action," but the form of that intervention and/or action is often rather nebulous.

We think the key is in the interaction between educator and student. There will be a greater probability of a successful outcome if the educator can help the bully do the following:

• Recognize his actions as being bullying behavior
• Understand that this behavior is wrong
• Understand why this behavior is wrong
• Realize that there are alternative ways to behave
• Understand that there are positive outcomes if alternate behaviors occur
• Set personal goals for achieving those alternate behaviors