Bullying has gotten a lot of air time lately, and rightly so. I certainly don’t think this is a new phenomenon by any means but the way that technology is being used may have made what is going on more visible. It also seems to have given more people the opportunity to join in and participate in bullying behaviors.
I started off this weeks readings with an NYT’s article about a dad who completely cut his kids off from texting. The article didn’t really deal with bullying directly but did make mention of it. I’m not sure I totally agree with the way the father handled the texting situation in his home. It’s hard for me to say as I don’t have teenage children but completely banning a behavior because you don’t like the way your child has been acting doesn’t seem to me to solve the actual problem. Once the child can start texting again they will probably pick up where they left off. It sounds to me like the daughter may understand that her use was maybe irresponsible or a bit excessive. At least in the article it stated that the daughter came forward with what she saw as possible solutions to what her parents saw as a problem. It appears that her suggestions fell on deaf ears.
When the video of the exchange between Richard Gale who was perceived as the bully and Casey Heynes who was being bullied made its way around the world via YouTube it got quite a reaction. Here is an interview with the two boys.
As you can see no story is cut and dry. A lot of times we hear about bullying “behavior” and I think it’s important to take note that we are talking about behaviors. As most teachers or parents will tell you behavior doesn’t change over night. And often times behaviors are learned and therefore need time to be unlearned. The person first has to be aware of the behavior in order to begin to address it. I think the author Danah Boyd does a great job addressing this in her article [“Bullying” Has Little Resonance with Teenagers”]. When kids are witnessing or watching people on TV behave in such a manner what’s to discourage them from behaving the same way? It doesn’t seem that this stuff starts or ends at school. I think that’s one shift that the internet and texting has given rise to. Schools are sometimes stuck in the middle. The article entitled “School heads called parents in cyberbully case” addresses this conundrum.
Schools need to be a place for kids to learn. In order for this to happen they need to feel safe. If a student or students are making another student feel unsafe they are impinging on that students right to learn. Almost every school no matter where it is has a mission statement or creed that guarantees every child’s right to learn. It’s when someone takes away that right when you have an issue. Even if a person or student does something outside of school time that affects this right to learn, a school should to step in.
I have to wonder if all the focus on standardized testing has pushed out the time in schools where you could work on projects and units that taught these skills. It may have not been a direct goal of a teacher to teach working together, working through disagreements, and treating people with respect but it seems the prepackaged, pre-approved and ready made curriculum that is guaranteed to boost your standardized test scores may be lacking in this respect. Just a thought.
Irregardless of how or why we are seeing more of this bullying behavior we need to address this issue as it definitely affects the ability for some kids to learn in our classroom. I think we need to start early because if we are addressing these issues after the fact then we’ve missed the boat in a lot of respects. I think discussing these sorts of bullying behaviors could dovetail nicely with the conversations we should be having with our students about responsible internet use and online privacy education.
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