In an education journal, I came across a bullying article that was an interview between Jennie Young of the NEA’s Health Information Network and David A. Levine and Martin Fleming. Levine leads In Care of Students, and Fleming is the leader of ForKidSake.
Levine says that bullying occurs when emotional needs are not satisfied. The famous psychologist William Glasser enumerated these needs as “belonging, personal power, personal freedom, and fun” (32). These unmet needs often cause students to seek power over others.
Both interviewees say that schools should plainly identify consequences for bullying and stick with them, not putting up with aggression. Victims and by-standers need to be empowered, in part by teaching students life skills for getting through difficult times.
Levine and Fleming say that adults should not consider bullying just a normal part of life and should not handle a bullying situation in a way that makes it worse. The adult should avoid saying that the victim has tattled and instead say that the conflict mediation is the bully’s fault. They gave this example for speaking to the bully. The brackets are mine. “Say ‘I will bring [the victim] Sam in now. [Bully,] You have initiated this intervention’” (32).
Fleming and Levine stress creating a safe environment in a school, teaching the students to report bullying, and teaching them that no one has the right to hurt another person in body or in emotions.
The article concludes with many resources, most of which are available through the National Education Association.
Fleming, Martin, and David Levine. "Bullying Is on the Rise, but Intervention
Helps Potential Victims and Perpetrators." NEA Today 20.5 (2002): 32.
Print.
Helps Potential Victims and Perpetrators." NEA Today 20.5 (2002): 32.
Print.
Thank you for following up your earlier post about bullying Carol. I plan on checking out this article as well as its resources. Did it by any chance bring up cyber bullying?
ReplyDeleteThat article didn't but there are plenty that do.
ReplyDeleteGo to the JCU library databases. Pick Education Research Complete. (I like it because you can often click and get a pdf of the articles.)
It didn't seem to recognize "cyberbullying" so I searched for
bullying
AND cyber
Then in the advanced search, I clicked full text and pdf full text because it's a bummer when an article sounds good, but then you can't read it. I'd prefer to only see the articles I can access if there are enough to choose from.
That particular search came up with 53 articles. Doing it another way, you might find more or different ones.
It's a terrible, terrible problem for our kids. In the olden days only the kids in the nearby vicinity heard a kid being made fun of. Now thousands of people can read it all at once. If they did something awful to me online, I think I'd have to change schools because I'd be so shaken up!