A Look at Bullying

What is bullying?

School bullying is a serious problem worldwide. It's not a new problem either; parents and grandparents can recall bullying incidents from their school years. Yet, bullying continues to be a problem. Find out more about bullying behavior at this PBS site: Bullies: What is Bullying?

Read some definitions of bullying published by The Free Dictionary.

Send your ideas.
What are some kinds of bullying behavior? How do you think bullying makes victims feel? What long-term effects might it have on them? Have you ever been bullied?

Why do some people bully?

A bully can think of all kinds of ways to make another person feel hurt, afraid, uncomfortable, or just plain miserable. It can be physical, verbal, or emotional. Often bullies torment a victim over a long period of time, increasing the victim's sense of fear and distress.

Go to CBBC Newsround to explore your own ideas about bullying. You can take a quiz, analyze bulling dilemmas, and more.
 

Your thoughts: Have you ever witnessed a bullying incident? If so, what happened? What do you think makes bullies behave so aggressively? Why do they become bullies?

Bullying moves online

A new term, cyberbullying, refers to a new trend in school bullying. School bullies say hurtful things and post photos on Websites, e-mails, cell phone text messages and photos to torment their classmates.

View an online video, Bullying Then and Now, to see how bullying has changed.

An online article in USA Today discusses this troublesome trend:
Schoolyard bullies get nastier online

Photo of the U.S. Today print issue

Read what students who have suffered from cyberbullying have to say in this online ABC News article, School Bullies Take Teasing Online.

Send your opinion.
What do you think about this high-tech way of bullying? Is this worse than physical or verbal bullying in school? Why or why not?

Film documents teen bullying

Sadly, some students are so traumatized by being bullied that they become very depressed. Miserable and unable to communicate their dilemma to anyone, they feel their situation is hopeless and sometimes commit suicide.

The film "Rats & Bulliestells the story of Dawn-Marie, a 14-year old girl who took her own life after being relentlessly bullied by three teenage girls who were her classmates. View a trailer of the movie.

Dawn-Marie left a suicide note in which she named the three girls. Later, they were held accountable for the bullying. Read a teenager's review of the movie at TeensPoint.org.

Girls can sometimes be mean (presented by the Montefiore Medical Center in Association with WNET). Girls talk about being bullied by other girls, sometimes their friends.

Send your thoughts.
Do you think it is a good idea to document a real-life bullying tragedy in a movie? Why or why not?

Teen bully convicted

Read the CBS news report, B.C. girl convicted in school bullying tragedy, to learn about the trial of the three teenage girls who continuously harassed and threatened Dawn-Marie, a 14-year old girl from Canada. Dawn-Marie never asked an adult for help and finally committed suicide.

Send your comments.
Comment on this tragic bullying incident. What is your reaction to the conviction of one of the girls who bullied Dawn-Marie? Do you think teenage bullies should be tried in a courtroom? Why, or why not?

Bullies and victims

What makes a person bully others? Find out more about what makes a bully tick at Bullies: Who's a bully? on the PBS It's My Life Website for school children. Watch the video in the Watch It section of this web site to hear what some school children have to say about bullies.

New studies on bullying find that bullies have often been victims of bullying themselves and that victims sometimes become bullies themselves. To learn more, read Vijai P. Sharma's article Profiles of Bullies and Victims in Mind Publications.

See a video: Effects of bullying.

Send your opinion.
Bullying is definitely bad for victims, but what about the bullies? Do you think bullying also has bad consequences for the bullies themselves?

TV host wants to end bullying

       
                                                                       Drawing by In Ji Seo

A well-known TV personality, Dr. Phil, hosts a TV program where he offers advice to people for solving problems in their daily lives. On his program, he talked about what motivates children to bully, how victims of bullying can fight back, and what students, parents, and teachers can do to stop bullying in their schools. He gave advice to a young girl Katie, who doesn't understand why she is being bullied in her school. On his online site, What can I do about school bullies?, he responds to a concerned mother who asks how to stop bullying in her daughter's school.

Send your thoughts.
What do you think of Dr. Phil's suggestions? What message would you send to the young girl Katie or the concerned mother? What ideas do you have for preventing bullying in schools?

Teens meet to tackle bullying

In class and online, we read a Lansing State Journal article, Teens Tackle Bullying at Diversity Conference. The article reports on a school anti-bullying conference held on March 21 in Lansing, Michigan.

The conference aimed to help middle and high school students facing hurtful bullying situations. We learned that about 12,000 students from 37 schools in mid-Michigan attended workshops such as "Bullying hurts all of us."

Last year in East Sussex, England, a whole community took steps to stop bullying. More than 100 community members—young people, teachers, education professionals, police, and health professionals—attended a conference to plan strategies for stamping out bullying in their community: County-wide bid to tackle bullying.

Send your thoughts.
Do you think this kind of conference can be successful? How can it help students who are picked on because of their race, a disability, or other difference? What do you think is the most effective way to stop bullying?

Meet 'the recovering bully!"

"My name is Andy Tomko and I am “The Recovering Bully”. For a long time in my life I was a bully! I was the guy you did your best to avoid so you wouldn’t get hurt, physically or emotionally. I was the guy your mother warned you about. I was the guy you would cross the street to avoid when you saw me coming."

Andy Tomko used to be a bully, but now he is a professional speaker who often goes to schools to talk about bullying. Be sure to visit his website at AKT Speaking and listen to his message.

Andy is joining us on our Weblog. Look for his comments to postings. He has agreed to answer questions about what he is doing to help young people deal with bullying.

Send your question.
What question do you have for Andy? Ask him here.

Putting yourself in others' shoes

Check out an online activity about bullying from Family Service Canada to get a feel for what it is like to be a bully, a victim, an intervener, or a bystander.

In this activity, you are on a simulated playground where there are different types of students, each of whom has a story to tell and is affected differently by bullying situations. By clicking on the faces of the different characters you can follow them through different scenes.

Send your comments.
Imagine you are one of the characters on this Website--bully, victim, intervener, or bystander. How did you feel about bullying from that character's point of view?

Happy slapping—a new kind of bullying?

Happy slapping is a craze in which people, often young people, slap a stranger who has no idea this is going to happen. The attackers use a cell phone to film the attack. Then they pass the video from cell phone to cell phone, and sometimes ieven post it on the Internet.

Concern about this fad is rising because some of these attacks have been violent. Many people consider this a new kind of bullying and fear it will become a problem in schools. Two BBC online articles, Does happy slapping exist? and Concern over spread of slap craze, discuss this phenomenon.

Send your ideas

Why do you think some young people find it fun to assualt people in this way? How can this kind of bullying be prevented in school environments?