Who’s Bullying Who?
School bullying is again in the media spotlight. “They ought to do something about it!” is the new catchcry. Like it’s a new phenomenon and a sad reflection on the state our state school have sunk to.
This time some of the private schools have also come in for some criticism and it is therefore quite clear that education standards across the board have dropped.
As usual, few explanations are offered and still fewer practical solutions.
Adelaide academic, Professor Phillip Slee (Flinders University). among other experts in this field, has spent over two decades looking at bullying.
So what does this tell us?
Obviously that it’s not a new phenomenon but an ongoing social issue.
And, almost as obvious, that there no one, easy solution. If there was, the good professor and his colleagues would be deploying their talents in other areas.
Bullying in the workplace has been legislated against, but that only deals with the tip of the iceberg.
Society complacency (except when individuals are directly effected) is the norm. So called role models in the media, entertainment, sport and politics regularly exhibit bullying behaviour and are often lauded for it. Just check you TV guide and you’ll find plenty of programs that rely on bullying for their ratings success. We also have a community that appears, on the surface at least, more aware of their rights and less interested in or aware of their responsibilities that ever before.
By and large our schools in both government and private sector are working hard to deal effectively with the issue at the school level. My point is that this is not a school specific issue and needs more than school based solutions.
It’s another example of unfairly blaming schools as the cause or source of the problem and them demanding that the education budget fund a solution.
Before you jump on the bandwagon check what your school or college is actually doing about bullying. Have a look at the resources avaiable on the DoE website.
If you’re interested to go further, there are 14 million links to “Bullying” on the world wide web. If there’s an answer in there somewhere, perhaps you can help us find it.
At ASCIV, we’ve long been advocates of Margaret Thorsborne’s Restorative Justice program as one important tool in dealing with a range of unacceptable behaviours in schools in an alternative way to traditional retributive model which has proved mostly ineffective and often counter productive.