Minor bullying is prevalent in elementary schools, according to the report from U.S. Department of Education (2013), more than 28% children aged from six to twelve have been bullied, but only 20 to 30% of them reported incidents to adults (Ttofi & Farrington). People usually have a misunderstanding about bullying, only recognizing hitting and kicking as bullying and viewing it is “bullying is a natural part of childhood” (PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center, 2013). The truth is that any repeated undesirable and aggressive behavior could be considered as bullying, saying mean things and hurt reputation or relationships of the other are verbal and relational bullying as well. All kinds of bullying can cause serious and lasting harms to children, despite the role of children, including but not limited to psychological disorders, abuse use of drugs and alcohol, higher crime rates and lower academic performance. Quoting from Andrew Vachss, “Life is a fight but not everyone is a fighter. Otherwise, bullying is an endangered species.” Considering the low report rate of bullying incidents by victims and bystanders in the school environment, the effect of bullying prevention is still deficient, and not all students do not feel really safe in schools (Stopbullying.gov, 2017). Children in elementary schools are too young to identify bullying correctly or intervene in bullying incidents by themselves proactively, so effort of adults around them is critical to the prevention of bullying, and it is both parents’ and school staff’s responsibility to build a safe shoot environment for children to avoid the negative effects of bullying. PromotePrevent belongs to Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), which is an NGO that “designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development.” This organization offers three-strep solutions to minor bullying prevention that have been applied in many schools and communities successfully with great improvement in the school environment (PromotePrevent, 2023). This paper describes, analyses and proposes possible improvement approaches to three stepwise solutions on minor bullying prevention in schools, which are partnering with parents by raising their awareness of bullying and improving communication skills, amending school disciplines by modifying regulations and structure supports, and increasing the prevalence and quality of long-term curriculum courses on bullying prevention.
Partnering with Parents: Raising Awareness and Improving Communication
The family is critical factor influences children social behaviors and the interaction and relationships between children and parents is related to children’s action in bullying incidents (as cited Lester, L., Pearce, N., Waters, S., Barnes, A., Beatty, S., & Cross, D., 2014). A positive family environment is not only good for ameliorating victim’s mental health but also conveying correct social approaches and healthy attitudes toward the peers to children (Bowes, L., Maughan, B., Caspi, A., Moffatt, T.E., Arseneault, L., 2010; Conners‐Burrow, N. A., Johnson, D. L., Whiteside‐Mansell, L. , McKelvey, L. and Gargus, R. A., 2009). Mentioned by Cooper and Nickerson, and Kochenderfer-Ladd and Pelletier mentioned in their researches, parents’ experience involved with bullying would foreshadow their children’ method dealing with bullying (as cited Lester et al., 2014). Because of the importance of family influence to minor bullying prevention, raising parent’s awareness of and improve their communication skill related to this issue is the most practical with almost no cost, making it could be applied to large numbers of families and communities.
Most of the parents agree with the statement that minor bullying, including verbal and relational bullying, hurt children, and they believe that school should hold the responsibility to supervise the bullying, and only a small proportion of them think that children should face the bullying alone (Holt, Kantor, & Finkelhor, 2008). About 60% of parents how no fear or little fear on minor bullying in schools, and less than 30% of them show moderate fear (Strives, K, May, Pilkinton, Bethel & Eakin, 2019). It indicates that parents actually know and give attention to this issue, but given a large number of children bullied, parents’ awareness may not improve the prevention of bullying. One possible explanation for the inconsistency between the high awareness rate and low report rate is that children are reluctant to talk about this issue with their parents.
Mothers are prone to give advice to their children bullied, and the study shows that there is no significant difference between the influence of mothers’ and fathers’, but fathers show higher preference on giving more aggressive strategies countering bullying confronting bullying (Lester et al., 2014). In agreement with the study of Stives et al., the participants from his sample shows that 75% of the parents who take the role to communicate with their children on bullying is the mother. The results of these two studies may indicate that children in grade 2 to 6 have a close relationship with mother, and they prefer softer and more social proactive approaches dealing with bullying, as mothers are more likely to offer this kind of advice. When giving advice, help-seeking is the first choice of parents and an only small percentage of parents would give aggressive suggestions, such as fighting back (Lester et al, 2014). Considering one of the main causes of minor bullying is the imbalance of power, especially physically, keeping children safe is the priority, and the popular choice among parents is correct and effective in preventing more harm. The key to communication is strengthening the first thing to countering bullying is to tell an adult and giving them soft pro-social advice to interacting with others. For parents who have the awareness of helping children prevent bullying, they could simply enhance their current strategies by communicating more and encouraging children to be pro-social, such as reporting incidents to teachers and speaking up for themselves in the public.
Limitations to the studies support this solution include the tendency of people to hide their true attitude by offering more positive self-report information and the variance of families and communities’ environment. Children from minority groups, single parent family and less safe community are bullied more, and their parents show greater fear to the situation; Contrarily, parents from the Caucasian family in the middle-class show almost no concern to bullying and their children are less bullied indeed (Stives et al., 2019). It is hard to determine whether it’s the family environment or the social-economy and safety contributes to the differences. One improvement could be made is to encourage parents to use the kits provided by schools or communities with children, which raise awareness for both and build a firm trustworthy to support children. Another improvement is for organizations and schools to offer the update to the kits, as the two studies discussed do not include cyberbullying, which is a relatively new form of bullying while might be ignored due to the anonymity and prevalence of the internet.
Refining School Structural Support: Regulating Bullying by School Disciplines
Along with the educational approach been applied, more and more schools are making zero tolerance policies associated with state law related to preventing bullying (Gerlinegr & Wo, 2016). Because of the relatively complicated and procedure to amending school policies and discipline, the administrators of school may prefer security measure, such as placing cameras and assigning supervisor in the hallway, over a structural measure to countering bullying. The effect of security measure to prevent bullying is in dispute, but according to multiple researchers, an improvement in making fair and clear school policies and disciplines might be helpful to minor bullying prevention in schools (Cited in Gerlinger & Wo, 2016). While some researches demonstrate concerns on schools with zero tolerance and more supervision and there are potential negative outcomes due to the inordinate punishment to study, but clarification and regulation to bullying in school policies are important because it signals to students and staff the correct attitude toward bullying. This solution for bullying prevention involves amending school policy for a consistency with state law and respect to diversities and discipline and training school staff to carry the written school codes fairly and efficiently.
The findings in Gregory et al. tell that schools have less victimization, but without clear written codes or fair enforcement of disciplines, students could not recognize the values of school disciplines and fail to respect healthy relationships with other students, which is the goal of amending school disciplines (Cited in Gerlinger & Wo). The data from Gerlinger and Wo’s study proves that security measures have a positive effect on preventing serious physical bullying, which makes great sense because the metal detector and locker check could ensure that no one could bring dangerous objects into schools so that fatal abuses barely happen in school-wide. However, this method shows no significant effect on preventing verbal and relational bullying. Gerlinger and Wo assume that the combination of security method and school discipline will decrease all types of bullying as the students in sample schools with both measures have healthier relations with others and live in a more prosocial environment, as the self-report survey demonstrates higher average ratings on the variance of friends, grades and extracurricular. In addition, the survey study of Kupchik and Farinia, the schools with punitive policy has a lower level or bullying report, while students in those with lenient policy have a higher tendency to bully.
Both two studies mention that the fair and clear enforcement of disciplines is the prerequisite of preventing bullying by structural support. And since the school discipline is enforced by teachers and school staff, the training is critical for health classroom management (Gorman & Pauken, 2003). Students who experienced unfair but strict punishment have a greater preference in challenging authority after adolescence (Losen, 2011). To raise positive model for elementary students, teacher and staff should be careful when carried school discipline which could not be too lenient or too punitive, and detecting situation from victims, bystanders, and the bully is necessary for enforcement. Additionally, leadership training is beneficial to classroom management as well. A teacher with better communication skills and popular image from students can lead students to get more involved in learning to behave in prosocial ways, as the young population is persuaded easier by a trustworthy and authoritative figure (Adeogun & Olisaemeka Blessing, 2011).
These studies have similar limitations such as the negative marginal effects of authoritative discipline and the self-selection tendency of the self-report survey. Also, mentioned by Kupchik and Farina, the recent studies arguing that punitive policy harms student’s performance while failing to reduce bullying significantly. Moreover, the Gerlinger and Wo suggest that if the structural stupor, or school disciplines, can not be carried efficiently and fairly by school administrators and teachers, the long-term “rule-oriented and teacher-driven bullying prevention mechanism”. From the data in the data collected from these studies, private schools show greater preference in authoritative school discipline, and it works better in these schools. This an undetermined factor while it is possible that this solution works better in school with a smaller number of students and less variable social-economic background. Nevertheless, by comprehensive refinement in school discipline and careful enforcement, the effects of this solution on bullying prevention should be positive, but it should be considered as relative long-term strategies and the administrators should know this is not a straight-forward process and are ready to improve it continuously.
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