Bystanders, Bullying, and Our Schools

Here is a recent intriguing article and accompanying letters to the editor re: bullying in our schools. How can we stop this horrible epidemic??

April 3, 2010

LETTERS

How to Stop Bullying in the Schools

To the Editor:

Re “9 Teenagers Are Charged After Suicide of Classmate” (news article, March 30): The story of Phoebe Prince’s suicide after being bullied beyond despair is heart-wrenching.

Bullying is all about power: one person has it, one person does not. Technology accelerates bullying. Social media make it easy for bullies to enlist large, often anonymous groups to carry out relentless attacks with messages and compromising photos of the victim. Adults have been removed from the equation. We are not there to intervene.

Reluctant to seek help, victims feel ashamed and powerless, and fear retaliation should they “rat out” the bully. It is unrealistic to expect kids to make rational, self-protective decisions while under emotional stress.

Strong antibullying programs are needed to provide a means to report bullying anonymously, to train all school personnel to take reports of bullying seriously and to offer workshops for children on how to respond to being bullied.

Karen Schulte O’Neill
West Long Branch, N.J., March 30, 2010

The writer is on the executive board of the New Jersey School Counselor Association.

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To the Editor:

I applaud the decision to charge nine teenagers in the bullying case that led to the suicide of Phoebe Prince, 15.

Now let’s look at the adults who must claim responsibility. Educators are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. If it is true that some staff members were told and/or witnessed bullying and did nothing, they, too, must be held accountable in a court of law.

By natural extension, the parents or guardians of the nine accused students must be held morally and legally accountable for a lack of values that could lead to this kind of destructive disrespect.

The broader solution to bullying is to address and attack bullying in pre-school or earlier. It should be a part of the curriculum, as should self-esteem building.

Laws should reflect not only the horrific physical and emotional bullying but also the latest technology that allows for insidious cyberbullying.

Joan P. Kaufman
Hurley, N.Y., March 30, 2010

The writer is a retired instructional superintendent for the New York City Department of Education.

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To the Editor:

Re “Playtime Is Over” (Op-Ed, March 27): David Elkind raises an interesting point regarding the possible relationship between the loss of playtime and the rise of bullying. The relationship seems intuitively obvious. What is not so apparent is how to replace the important normative life experiences that result from unstructured playtime.

In the “old days,” pick-up sports (stickball, stoopball, touch football) involved any child who was outside and willing to play. That meant children of all ability levels were included. As a result, good players learned tolerance, patience and acceptance from playing with weaker and perhaps younger players, and these weaker players learned skills from the better players. In different ways, each benefited from the experience.

In the absence of these spontaneously occurring opportunities for socialization, we need to develop programs that move beyond the Band-Aid approach, like the use of recess coaches.

Over the last decade, a number of “whole school” programs have been designed in which administrators, staff and teachers work together to reduce bullying among students. But perhaps it is time to expand the whole-school concept to include school-community partnerships involving community agencies and organizations like the YMCA and the Unified Sports program of Special Olympics.

Programs in which schools and community groups work together to create new recreational sports opportunities for children and youth at all levels — not just the athletically talented — are an important next step in addressing the bullying problem.

Gary N. Siperstein
Boston, March 28, 2010

The writer is director of the Center for Social Development and Education, University of Massachusetts Boston.

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To the Editor:

I agree with David Elkind. Children learn kindness and how to get along with one another through play. I believe that the increase in bullying over the last 10 years is due, in part, to what children see and hear from the adults around them. After all, children are exposed to bullying words and tactics by elected officials, radio and television personalities, and, sadly, in some cases, their teachers.

Children take this in. They watch. They learn.

Judith Pack
Red Bank, N.J., March 29, 2010

The writer is an early childhood specialist.

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To the Editor:

I am a public defender in Massachusetts who has represented juveniles, many of them teenage girls. “The Myth of Mean Girls,” by Mike Males and Meda-Chesney Lind (Op-Ed, April 2), misses the point. Physical violence is only one manifestation of mean-girl bullying. Mean girls use verbal abuse, intimidation and exclusion, and it’s most viciously directed at girls who are liked by popular boys, as we’ve seen in the recent tragedy in South Hadley, Mass.

While it’s wonderful news that girls’ arrest rates for violent offenses are down, that statistic doesn’t begin to measure the terrible damage being done to girls by, yes, “mean girls.”

Mara Dolan
Concord, Mass., April 2, 2010

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To the Editor:

While the writers of this article may have a point, the only mean girls who mattered to Phoebe Prince were the ones who made her life a living nightmare. I know all about “mean girls,” having been victimized as a freshman at a Catholic girls’ high school in the early 1960s by five of them.

When they tried to resume their harassment at the beginning of my sophomore year, a senior (whom I did not know) stepped in on my behalf and shamed them into considering how their behavior was hurting me. They backed off and never bothered me again.

It took only one concerned person to help me; how sad and troubling that I have not heard about one student, teacher or administrator in that entire high school who had the courage to defend Phoebe Prince.

Dolores Soffientini
Holmdel, N.J., April 2, 2010