School bullying


School bullying is a type of bullying, that occurs in any educational setting.
For an act to be considered bullying, it must meet certain criteria. This includes hostile intent, imbalance of power, repetition, distress, and provocation. Bullying can have a wide spectrum of effects on a student, including anger, depression, stress, and suicide. Additionally, the bully can develop different social disorders, or have a higher chance of engaging in criminal activity.
If there is suspicion that a child is being bullied or is a bully, there are warning signs in their behavior. There are many programs and organizations worldwide which provide bullying prevention services and information on how children can cope if they have been bullied.

Criteria

It is widely agreed that bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized by the following three minimum criteria:
The following two additional criteria have been proposed to complement the above-mentioned criteria:
Some of these characteristics have been disputed ; nevertheless, they remain widely established in the scientific literature.

Prevention

Bullying can threaten students' physical and emotional safety at school and can negatively impact their ability to learn. The best way to address bullying is to stop it before it starts. There are many different groups that can intervene to address bullying in schools: parents, teachers, and school leadership. The most commonly used strategies by teachers to prevent it are to communicate, mediate and seek help. Training school staff and students to prevent and address bullying can help sustain bullying prevention efforts over time. There are no federal mandates for bullying curricula or staff training. In addition to addressing bullying before it occurs, a great prevention strategy is to educate the students on bullying.
Examples of activities to teach about bullying include:
Multicomponent programs which have multiple practices to address the various internal and external factors of bullying and which involve all students and parents in each class are effective to prevent bullying. It is required that such programs are implemented at all schools in each country.

Effects

A victim, in the short term, may feel depressed, anxious, angry, have excessive stress, learned helplessness, feel as though their life has fallen apart, have a significant drop in school performance, or may commit suicide. In the long term, they may feel insecure, lack trust, exhibit extreme sensitivity, develop a mental illness such as psychopathy, avoidant personality disorder or PTSD, or develop further health challenges. They may also desire vengeance, sometimes leading them to torment others in return.
Anxiety, depression and psychosomatic symptoms are common among both bullies and their victims. Among these participants alcohol and substance abuse are commonly seen later in life. It is known that people suffering from depression feel much better when they talk to others about it. But victims of bullying may feel reluctant to talk to others about their feelings for fear of being bullied for doing so, which can worsen their depression.
In the short term, being a bystander, who witnesses a bullying episode, "can produce feelings of anger, fear, guilt, and sadness.... Bystanders who witness repeated victimizations of peers can experience negative effects similar to the victimized children themselves."
While most bullies, in the long term, grow up to be emotionally functional adults, many have an increased risk of developing antisocial personality disorder, which is linked to an increased risk of committing criminal acts.

Negative impact on educational quality and outcomes

The educational effects on victims of school violence and bullying are significant. Violence and bullying at the hands of teachers or other students may make children and adolescents afraid to go to school and interfere with their ability to concentrate in class or participate in school activities. It can also have similar effects on bystanders.
The consequences include missing classes, avoiding school activities, playing truant or dropping out of school altogether. This in turn has an adverse impact on academic achievement and attainment and on future education and employment prospects. Children and adolescents who are victims of violence may achieve lower grades and may be less likely to anticipate going on to higher education. Analyses of international learning assessments highlight the impact of bullying on learning outcomes. These analyses clearly show that bullying reduces students' achievement in key subjects, such as mathematics, and other studies have documented the negative impact of school violence and bullying on educational performance.
Bystanders and the school climate as a whole are also affected by school violence and bullying. Unsafe learning environments create a climate of fear and insecurity and a perception that teachers do not have control or do not care about the students, and this reduces the quality of education for all.
Being bullied is associated with greater academic difficulties.
A systematic review of longitudinal studies found that, compared to non-bullies, the likelihood school bullies will commit future offenses was much higher. In fact, bullying perpetration is a risk factor for later offending, regardless of other major childhood risk factors. These findings suggest anti-bullying programmes may be viewed as a form of early crime prevention.

Social and economic costs

The 2006 UN World Report on Violence against Children shows that victims of corporal punishment, both at school and at home, may develop into adults who are passive and over-cautious or aggressive. Involvement in school bullying can be a predictor of future antisocial and criminal behaviour. Being bullied is also linked to a heightened risk of eating disorders and social and relationship difficulties.
Other studies have shown the longer-term effects of bullying at school. One study of all children born in England, Scotland and Wales during one week in 1958 analyzes data on 7,771 children who had been bullied at ages 7 and 11. At age 50, those who had been bullied as children were less likely to have obtained school qualifications and less likely to live with a spouse or partner or to have adequate social support. They also had lower scores on word memory tests designed to measure cognitive IQ even when their childhood intelligence levels were taken into account and, more often reported, that they had poor health. The effects of bullying were visible nearly four decades later, with health, social and economic consequences lasting well into adulthood. For children, "peers are a much more important influence than has been realised. It is a terrible thing to be excluded by your peers".
The economic impact of violence against children and adolescents is substantial. Youth violence in Brazil alone is estimated to cost nearly US$19 billion every year, of which US$943 million can be linked to violence in schools. The estimated cost to the economy in the USA of violence associated with schools is US$7.9 billion a year.
Analytic work supported by the United States Agency for International Development shows that school-related gender-based violence alone can be associated with the loss of one primary grade of schooling, which translates to an annual cost of around US$17 billion to low- and middle-income countries.
In the East Asia and Pacific region, it is estimated that the economic costs of just some of the health consequences of child maltreatment were equivalent to between 1.4% and 2.5% of the region's annual GDP.
In Argentina, the forgone benefit to society from overall early school dropout is 11.4% of GDP, and in Egypt, nearly 7% of potential earnings is lost as a result of the number of children dropping out of school.
A study has shown that each year Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria lose US$974 million, US$301 million and US$1,662 million respectively for failing to educate girls to the same standard as boys, and violence in school is one of the key factors contributing to the under-representation of girls in education.

Statistics

According to the American Psychological Association, "40% to 80% of school-age children experience bullying at some point during their school careers." Various studies show that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and students with disabilities experience bullying more often than other students. The following statistics help illustrate the severity of bullying within classrooms:

Victims

Statistics referencing the prevalence of bullying in schools may be inaccurate and tend to fluctuate. In a U.S. study of 5,621 students ages 12–18, 64% of the students had experienced bullying and did not report it.

Bullies

Proactive aggression is a behavior that expects a reward. With bullying each individual has a role to defend. Some children act proactively but will show aggression to defend themselves if provoked. These children will react aggressively but tend to never be the ones to attack first.
There have been two subtypes created in bully classification; popular aggressive and unpopular aggressive. Popular aggressive bullies are social and do not encounter a great deal of social stigma from their aggression. Unpopular aggressive bullies, however, are most often rejected by other students and use aggression to seek attention.
In a survey by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, students were asked to complete a questionnaire.
A total of 10.6% of the children replied that they had sometimes bullied other children, a response category defined as moderate bullying. An additional 8.8% said they had bullied others once a week or more, defined as frequent bullying. Similarly, 8.5% said they had been targets of moderate bullying, and 8.4% said they were bullied frequently. Out of all the students, 13% said they had engaged in moderate or frequent bullying of others, while 10.6% said they had been bullied either moderately or frequently. Some students — 6.3% — had both bullied others and been bullied themselves. In all, 29% of the students who responded to the survey had been involved in some aspect of bullying, either as a bully, as the target of bullying or both.

According to Tara Kuther, an associate professor of psychology at Western Connecticut State University, "...bullying gets so much more sophisticated and subtle in high school. It's more relational. It becomes more difficult for teens to know when to intervene; whereas with younger kids, bullying is more physical and, therefore, more clear-cut."

Types of bullying

There are four basic types of bullying: verbal, physical, psychological, and cyber. Cyberbullying is becoming one of the most common types. While victims can experience bullying at any age, it is witnessed most by school-aged children.
Direct bullying is a relatively open attack on a victim that is physical and/or verbal in nature. Indirect bullying is more subtle and harder to detect, but involves one or more forms of relational aggression, including social isolation via intentional exclusion, spreading rumors to defame one's character or reputation, making faces or obscene gestures behind someone's back, and manipulating friendships or other relationships.
Pack bullying is bullying undertaken by a group. The 2009 Wesley Report on bullying found that pack bullying was more prominent in high schools and lasted longer than bullying undertaken by individuals.

Physical

Physical bullying is any unwanted physical contact between the bully and the victim. This is one of the most easily identifiable forms of bullying. Examples include:

Emotional

Emotional bullying is any form of bullying that causes damage to a victim's psyche and/or emotional well-being. Examples include:
Verbal bullying is any slanderous statements or accusations that cause the victim undue emotional distress. Examples include:
Cyberbullying is the quickest growing form of harassment of school campuses in the U.S. and 40% of adolescents report being a victim. Most definitions of cyberbullying come from definitions of school bullying. Thus, this conduct is often described as an intentional aggressive behavior that takes place via new technologies, during which groups or individuals hurt classmates who cannot easily defend themselves. Cyberbullying events can occur via cellphones or computers, by means of text messages, e-mails, online social networks, chatrooms or blogs. This form of bullying can easily go undetected because of the lack of parental or authoritative supervision. Because bullies can pose as someone else, it is the most anonymous form of bullying. Like the bullying that occurs in school, the following four profiles have been identified: cyberneutral, cyberbully, cybervictim and cyberbully-victim. Many who are bullied in school are likely to be bullied over the Internet and vice versa. Since students have become more reliant on internet, the advancement in social media and technology has altered the fear of in-person bullying away from schoolyards but has rather increased cyberbullying. Studies have shown almost half of cyberbullies are repeat offenders and harass others as few as three times. Males are more likely to be active cyberbullies than females. Cyberbullying can happen 24 hours a day and seven days a week and reach a child even when they are alone.
Deleting inappropriate or harassing messages, texts or pictures is extremely difficult after being posted or sent online.

Prevention

According to the website Stop Cyberbullying, "When schools try and get involved by disciplining the student for cyberbullying actions that took place off campus and outside of school hours, they are often sued for exceeding their authority and violating the student's free speech right." They suggest for schools to make revisions to their policies that would allow for disciplinary actions to take place even if off campus or after hours. They say if the act is likely to affect a student mentally or physically while in school then the revision of the policy would allow for the staff to intervene without violating the student's constitutional rights. Many principals are hesitant to act because school discipline codes and states laws do not define cyberbullying. According to professor Bernard James, "educators are empowered to maintain safe schools, the timidity of educators in this context of emerging technology is working in advantage of the bullies."
Cyberbullying has become extremely prevalent; 95% of teens who use social media reported having witnessed malicious behavior on social media from 2009 to 2013. As sites like Facebook or Twitter offer no routine monitoring, children from a young age must learn proper internet behavior, say Abraham Foxman and Cyndi Silverman. "This is a call for parents and educators to teach these modern skills... through awareness and advocacy." Per Scott Eidler, "Parents and educators need to make children aware at a young age of the life-changing effects cyberbullying can have on the victim. The next step for prevention is advocacy. For example, three high school students from Melville, New York organized a Bullying Awareness Walk, where several hundred people turned out to show their support."
Clara Wajngurt writes, "Other than organizing events, calling for social media sites to take charge could make the difference between life and death. Cyberbullying is making it increasingly difficult to enforce any form of prevention." Joanna Wojcik concludes, "The rapid growth of social media is aiding the spread of cyberbullying, and prevention policies are struggling to keep up. In order for prevention policies to be put in place, the definition of cyberbullying must be stated, others must be educated on how to recognize and prevent bullying, and policies that have already attempted to be enacted need to be reviewed and learned from."
Researcher Charisse Nixon found that students do not reach out for help with cyberbullying for four main reasons: they do not feel connected to the adults around them; the students do not see the cyberbullying as an issue that is worth bringing forward; they do not feel the surrounding adults have the ability to properly deal with the cyberbullying; and the teenagers have increased feelings of shame and humiliation regarding the cyberbullying. Nixon also found that when bystanders took action in helping end the cyberbullying in adolescents, the results were more positive than when the adolescents attempted to resolve the situation without outside help.
A systematic review found that individuals who defend victimized peers either from offline or online bullying tend to be girls, have high empathy, low moral disengagement, are popular and well-liked by their peers, are supported by their parents, teachers and schools.

Sexual

Sexual bullying is "any bullying behavior, whether physical or non-physical, that is based on a person's sexuality or gender. It is when sexuality or gender is used as a weapon by boys or girls towards other boys or girls—although it is more commonly directed at girls. It can be carried out to a person's face, behind their back or through the use of technology."
As part of its research into sexual bullying in schools, the BBC TV series Panorama commissioned a questionnaire aimed at people aged 11 to 19 in schools and youth clubs across five regions of England. The survey revealed that of the 273 respondents, 28 had been forced to do something sexual, and 31 had seen it happen to someone else. Of the 273 respondents, 40 had experienced unwanted touching. U.K. government figures show that in the 2007–2008 school year, there were 3,450 fixed-period exclusions and 120 expulsions from schools in England due to sexual misconduct. This included incidents such as groping and using sexually insulting language. From April 2008 to March 2009, ChildLine counselled a total of 156,729 children, 26,134 of whom spoke about bullying as a main concern and 300 of whom spoke specifically about sexual bullying.
The U.K. charity Beatbullying has claimed that as gang culture enters, children are being bullied into providing sexual favours in exchange for protection. However, other anti-bullying groups and teachers' unions, including the National Union of Teachers, challenged the charity to provide evidence of this.
Sexting cases are also on the rise and have become a major source of bullying. The circulation of explicit photos of those involved either around school or the internet put the originators in a position to be scorned and bullied.

Higher education

According to HealthDay News, 15 percent of college students claim to have been victims of bullying while at college. In the article, "Bullying not a thing of the past for college students," Kaitlyn Krasselt writes, "Bullying comes in all forms but is usually thought of as a K-12 issue that ceases to exist once students head off to college." The misconception that bullying does not occur in higher education began to receive attention after the suicidal death of college student Tyler Clementi. According to an experiment conducted by Dr. Gary R. Walz, "21.47% of participants reported rarely being victims of cyberbullying; 93.29% reported rarely cyberbullying others. Overall, there was a low prevalence rate for cyberbullying."

Power imbalance

Bullying is usually associated with an imbalance of power. A bully has a perceived authority over another due to factors such as size, gender, or age. Boys tend to bully peers based on the peer's physical weakness, short temper, friend group, and clothing. Bullying among girls, on the other hand, results from factors such as facial appearance, emotional factors, being overweight, and academic status.
Bullies also tend to target people with speech impediments of some sort. The majority of stutterers experience or have experienced bullying, harassment, or ridicule to some degree during their school years from both peers and teachers who do not understand the condition.
Bullies often come from families that use physical forms of discipline.

Locations

Bullying locations vary by context. Most bullying in elementary school happens in the playground. In middle school and high school, it occurs most in the hallways, which have little supervision. According to the U.S Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, more than 47% of kids reported getting bullied in hallways and stairway. Bus stops and bus rides to and from school tend to be hostile environments as well; children tend to view the driver as someone with no disciplinary authority.
Bullying may also follow people into adult life and university. Bullying can take over the lives of both lecturers and students, and can lead to supervisors putting pressure on students. Bullying can happen in any place at any time.

Warning signs

Victims of bullying typically are physically smaller, more sensitive, unhappy, cautious, anxious, quiet, and withdrawn. They are often described as passive or submissive. Possessing these qualities make these individuals vulnerable, as they are seen as being less likely to retaliate.
Signs that a child is being bullied include:
Signs that a child is bullying others include:
Signs that a child has witnessed bullying include:
McNamee and Mercurio state that there is a "bullying triangle", consisting of the person doing the bullying, the person getting bullied, and the bystander.
The US Department of Health and Human Services divides the people involved in bullying into several roles:
In her book, The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander, Barbara Coloroso divides bullies into several types:
Author, Les Parsons identifies school bullying cultures as typically having a web of dynamics which are much more complex than just considering bullying amongst students. These dynamics include:
is a book about intensive bullying at the English boarding school Rugby. In the story, Tom is deliberately burned in front of a fire for not handing over a sweepstake ticket which is likely to win a race.

Common misconceptions

Researchers have identified many misconceptions regarding bullying:
Studies have shown that bullying programs set up in schools with the help and engagements of staff and faculty have been shown to reduce peer victimization and bullying. Incidences of bullying are noticeably reduced when the students themselves disapprove of bullying. Classroom activities that have students self-reflect on bullying decrease the cases of bullying while increasing the communication between students and school staff.
Measures such as increasing awareness, instituting zero tolerance for fighting, or placing troubled students in the same group or classroom are actually ineffective in reducing bullying; methods that are effective include increasing empathy for victims; adopting a program that includes teachers, students, and parents; and having students lead anti-bullying efforts. Success is most associated with beginning interventions at an early age, constantly evaluating programs for effectiveness, and having some students simply take online classes to avoid bullies at school.

Effective national responses

Based on UNESCO case studies of six countries that have succeeded in reducing school violence and bullying as well as two countries that have maintained low levels over time, there are a number of factors that contribute to effective national responses.
Factors that contribute to effective national responses include:
The case studies also identified a number of factors that can limit the effectiveness and impact of national responses. These include lack of data on specific aspects of school violence and bullying and on the sub-groups of students who are most vulnerable, low coverage of interventions, and lack of systematic monitoring of school violence and bullying and of robust evaluation of the impact of programmes.

Legislation and court rulings

United Kingdom

Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 provides for an anti-bullying policy for all state schools to be made available to parents.

United States

The victims of some school shootings have sued both the shooters' families and the schools. At one point only 23 states had Anti-Bullying laws. In 2015 Montana became the last state to have an anti-bullying law and at that point all 50 states had an anti-bullying law. These laws are not going to abolish bullying but it does bring attention to the behavior and it lets the aggressors know it will not be tolerated.

Canada

In 2016, a legal precedent was set by a mother and her son, after the son was bullied at his public school. The mother and son won a court case against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, making this the first case in North America where a school board has been found negligent in a bullying case for failing to meet the standard of care. A similar bullying case was won in Australia in 2013.

Taiwan

The Ministry of Education launched a series of projects. In 2006, they started the 'anti-bully plan'. In 2008, they launched the 'prevent bully video from public project', and also building multiple informants routes, monitoring the school, in hope that it could improve the education quality.

School shootings

School bullying is associated with school shootings; the vast majority of students believe that shootings occur in direct retaliation to bullying. School shooters who left behind evidence that they were bullied include Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Charles Andrew Williams, Eric Hainstock, Seung-Hui Cho, Wellington Menezes Oliveira, Kimveer Gill, Karl Pierson, Nikolas Cruz, and Jeff Weise.

History

The first article to address school bullying was written in 1897 but then there was a long gap in time before bullying was first defined as aggressive behavior towards another living being with the goal of harming the victim in the year 1977.
Research in school bullying dramatically expanded worldwide over time, from 62 citations from 1900 to 1990, to 289 in the 1990s and to 562 from 2000 to 2004.
Unlike school bullying cyberbullying has only existed for around two decades now while school bullying has existed for a couple of centuries.

Events and organizations

Events and organizations which address bullying in schools include: