People used to behave foolishly and make a lot of mistakes during their life. For the most part, three years of Middle school is considered to be exactly such period of time. Middle school is also believed to be a quite dangerous territory. Children unnoticeably transformed into “teenagers”, a new title they are not fully aware of. Some misunderstand this title as the right to admit themselves better than the rest and even humiliate or offend weaker people. On the one hand, due to the maturity, many pupils began to notice considerable differences between people. On the other hand, the lack of maturity induces them to apprehend that difference as something bad. As a result the school stops to be a friendly playground and is gradually turning into some kind of jungle, where the best and strongest start to rule over less confident and impudent ones.
The very moment pupils began to neglect the Golden Rule of treating others the way they want to be treated, is the first sign of the beginning of school bullying. It does not have negative effects only on particular students but is surely reflected on the school climate as a whole. The inevitable results of bulling are long-term psychological problems its victims are suffering together with solitude, belittling self-respect, various
psychosomatic complaints and overextended depression (Rigby, 2002). People, who tended to be quite satisfied and happy with their lives before experiencing bullying, become sheepish, shy and diffident. In addition, victims of bullying may completely loose their confidence, trust in human’s honesty and could even be discouraged to try new things and believe in others’ good intentions.
The person being bullied once will never be able to completely overcome this terrible experience. Later bullying may appear the true reason of pupil’s hesitating or refusing to take part in different public speaking or sport competitions. It can be explained by the permanent apprehension of being ridiculed or insulted again. Sometimes it also develops into increased risk of suicidal thoughts or even more suicide attempts in drastic cases. The fear of being bullied can force its victims to drop out of schools and cause the succession of other troubles and misfortunes. Rigby expressed idea that “victims who were often bullied at school, might experience the same kind of abuses and umbrages in their workplaces” (Rigby, 2002).
First of all, it is important to realize what bullying really is and how it is manifested in school surroundings. Bullying is considered to be any aggressive behavior characterized by deliberatelyness, repetition and unbalance of power of one or more students against a victim or victims that can lead to physical or psychological harassment. There exist two widely-known classes of bullying behavior. The first direct method of bullying includes the cases of threatening, hitting, teasing or stealing and is mainly used by boys. The second method of bullying behavior is correspondingly called an indirect one. It deals with social isolation or rumor spreading and is more typical for girls.
There are some particular characteristics of behavior that bullies are inclined to exhibit. In most cases such people have an irresistible desire to feel powerful and govern others’ lives. They tend to resist authority and are disposed to infringing upon school rules. These types of people are defined by high arrogance, little anxiety and absence of any repentance when doing harm or inflicting suffering on others. Their hard-heartedness and insensibility could be the reason of students’ physical punishment at their homes.
Speaking about victims, they are also characterized by some typical behavior. As usual these pupils are likely to isolate themselves from the rest of society and consequently do not possess any social skills or maintain friendly relations with their classmates. The extreme feeling of unrest, caution and insecurity, including the low self-esteem, keep them apart from their peers. Students with very close family ties as well as those who have overprotecting parents are proved to be victimized by bullies more frequently than others.
Let’s now dwell on two particular journal articles from peer-reviewed journals, try to analyze them and comment on their results in relation to the author’s original hypothesis. We will also attempt to explain how these results illustrate the topic of school bullying and what relevant information from researches can be then applied to solving the problem.
The first article to be discussed here is called Predictors of Bullying and Victimization in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-analytic Investigation. The objective of the study was to examine different factors that might forecast bullying and victimization in childhood and adolescence with the help of multiple meta-analytic investigations. The previous researches affirmed that bullying had significantly extended during the middle school period when children were gradually transforming into adults. Furthermore, taking into consideration all evidences from a large international research base, bullying was not believed to be an individual problem peculiar to one specific culture but was widely spread all over the world.
The careful analysis of existent literature allowed determining thirteen predictors concerning the topic of bullying. Eight of them were mainly inherent to each individual, while other five represented contextual factors. These thirteen predictors had then to be meticulously examined in order to develop some kind of programs to prevent and discourage unwanted bullying behavior.
Preceding researches on bullying were chiefly focused on individual-level predictors. It looked rather erroneous as bullying could also be found in a social context where individuals were involved in continuous relationships. The thing is that repeated aggressive acts towards other people could not simply exist without a social context (Cook & Williams, 2010). That’s why the emphasis of proposed meta-analysis was primarily to estimate the comparative strength of effect sizes, paying attention to both individual and contextual predictors.
A few individual-level predictors examined in the research included internalizing behaviours, social problem solving, externalizing behaviours, gender, self-related cognitions and other-related cognitions. Among a range of contextual factors, presented by the researchers, dominated school climate, peer influence, peer status, family and home environment and community factors. In general, research was trying to investigate the extent to which all individual and contextual lever predictors could likewise or distinguishingly prevent the bully status groups (Cook & Williams, 2010).
The second objective was to ascertain if some moderators could essentially explicate the differences in various studies. This research was mainly based on two factors: age of the sample and measurement of bullying and victimization. It managed to demonstrate that extension rates as well as predictors of bullying were greatly modifying according to the age. In fact the biggest changes in biology and social functioning happened with children when they entered an unknown adolescence and left behind their childhood. The individual or contextual factors might preclude bullying experience during childhood or adolescence to a greater or lesser degree by examining such dramatic changes and promoting some age-specific prompts for its prevention and intervention.
The main part of the research consisted in determining the population of would-be studies necessary for this meta-analysis. It consisted of quantitative information about bullying or victimization in schools, published in English from 1970 to mid-2006. Firstly, articles published between 1970 and 2006 were scrutinized for finding out the potential studies. Secondly, three electronic databases of PsychInfo, ERIC and Medline were searched for such notions as bully victim, bullying, adolescence, education, school and victimization. In order to diminish the impact of publication bias, non-peer reviewed papers namely doctoral dissertations and chapters were also inscribed (Cook & Williams, 2010).
The research proved that boys were more inclined to bullying as a bully or bully victims than girls across all bully status groups. Family environment, school climate and community factors appeared to be three biggest predictors that manifested the significant role of social context in the development and maintenance of bullying (Cook & Williams, 2010). Poor social problem-solving skills were considered to be another prevalent predictor.
Different personal challenges, children were facing along the way, induced them to step into the wrong way of involvement in bullying. Interacting with other individual and contextual predictors, such children were then determined to take the role of a bully or bully victim. Those, on the contrary, who possessed more satisfactory social problem-solving skills were able to adjust a difference with others much easier and could escape the bullying or victimization by peers.
The research showed that there existed a range of individual and social predictors that if carefully analyzed could prevent the bullying. The results of this research demonstrated the great necessity of parents and teachers to be more interested in spirit of their children, especially in such difficult period of time as teenagers’ years.
The second article that should be discussed here is called Cyberbullying, School Bullying, and Psychological Distress: A Regional Census of High School Students. The purpose of described research was to prove an extensive dissemination of cyberbullying and school bullying and their feed-forward with psychological distress. The prevalence of cyberbullying and school bullying was documented after rigorous examination of data from a large regional census of more than 20 000 high school students.
Researchers also produced evidences of the interconnection between cyberbullying and school bullying and attracted attention to extremely susceptible population such as nonheterosexually identified youth. Finally, the research managed to draw an analogy between both types of bullying and students’ advancements in school and demonstrate the substantially high risk of distress among victims of both cyber and school bullying (Schneider & O'Donnell, 2012).
The students of ninth-through-twelfth grades in MetroWest Massachusetts were asked to fill in a form of appraisement of their bullying victimization and psychological distress, including their depressive symptoms, self-inflicted injuries and suicide attempts. Though almost all schools were addressing cyberbullying in their antibullying policies, there was still a need to place greater focus on various efforts of preventing it, as in most cases cyberbullying happened outside school. Some measures, for example, could be taken to motivate students’ engagement in school, connectedness to peers and teachers as well as progress in studying. This surely had to create a friendly school environment without any place for cyberbullying.
So, all three analyzed articles confirmed the barest necessity of prevention efforts to any form of bullying. The question of bullying is one of the most vital problems all over the world. Quicker people react to it, bigger amount of desperate souls they will save and the more harmful consequences they will be able to prevent. In order to overcome this substantial public health issue, school teachers should actively cooperate with parents and other community members and engage them in all forms of antibullying programs.
The further study that will be really worthwhile in advancing knowledge, concerning the topic of bullying can be connected with organizing weekly psychological consultations for each child. The truth is that it is much easier to prevent the problem than find solution to it. That’s why the idea of such consultations may turn to a successful one. It should not be another medical examination but, on the contrary, should strive to look like a friendly chat. In order to be honest in answering the imposed questions and frankly sharing their feelings and anxieties, children have to feel that the psychologist is not just a doctor but a friend too.
In addition, parents can also be consulted for more accurate information that will be rather helpful in reproducing their children’s inward life and finding out the preconditions of their depression or other psychical problems. These consultations enable psychologists to compare different changes taken place in students’ organisms every week. I think children’s attitude towards the psychologist will eventually become friendlier and that will definitely bring perceptible outcome to the whole consulting process. At last, each consultation should aim at finding individual approach to every pupil and attempt to demonstrate them their uniqueness and gifted nature.
In conclusion, everyone should never ignore the presence of bullying in our modern world. If you do not see it, does not mean it is not happening. In reality bullying causes unbelievable pain to victims almost everywhere. The only way to stop it is to openly talk about this problem and do not make it another taboo issue. Do not be afraid of standing up for the victim and remember that bullying is everyone’s problem, so everyone has to try to solve it.
References
Cook, Clayton R. & Williams, Kirk. R. (2010). Predictors of Bullying and Victimization in Childhood and Adolescence: A Meta-analytic Investigation, School Psychology Quarterly, Vol 25(2), pp. 65-83.
Rigby, Ken. (2002). New Perspectives on Bullying, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 64 (9), 103-109.
Schneider, Shari & O'Donnell, Lydia. (2012). Cyberbullying, School Bullying, and Psychological Distress: A Regional Census of High School Students. American Journal of Public Health, pp. 3-5.
