Introduction
According to some Viet Nam researchers, bullying in school is the term indicating violent behaviors in the school campus, including despiteful, threatening, terrific words or behaviors which let other people wounds or even make them die. Moreover, these actions can cause people to be hurt mentally and emotionally or to be shocked in their mind. Bullying in school happened not only among students but also between students and teachers, among school’s staffs, teachers or even between teachers and school’s staffs. Bullying in school has become more serious in many countries in recent decades, especially in countries with the developing economy like Viet Nam. According to Nguyen (2013), the data calculated by Caring and Security Directorate for Children showed that bullying has increased by 3 times in 10 years. Bullying in school is not a new or strange problem, but its increase in quantity and serious quality with the underworld nature have made people worried and anxious.
Literature review
There has been a lot of research that explores the topic of bullying in school in Viet Nam. A recent literature on violence at schools of Dang (2015) proved that the situation has occurred not only at secondary and high schools but also at disabled student schools with the age from 3 to 18 years in Ho Chi Minh city. Bullying in school has increased not only in its quantity and levels but it also caused more serious results [according to Nguyen (2015)]. There were not only fights with bare hands, but students even brought weapons to schools such as knives, scissors, machetes or razor blades in order to make the fight more exciting and cliff-hanging. In Viet Nam, research on bullying in the school of Le (2012) titled “The solution to prevent bullying behaviors among high schools’ students” reflected the situation of violence at schools which happened regularly at high schools and tended to increase rapidly; however, the solution might not work or be applied effectively. Besides Viet Nam, researchers in foreign countries have also conducted the research on this topic. For instance, Casella. What is violent about “school violence”? The nature of violence in a city high school. Preventing violence in schools: A challenge to American democracy. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 15- 46. From the chapter: “Notes how violence is enacted in many forms and at different cultural and structural levels, which allows one to understand it in a more complex way than is usually portrayed in our popular discourses about school violence. Topics discussed include the school; methodological and theoretical considerations; fighting; systemic violence; sexual harassment, bullying, and jumping; suicide; and the focus on gun violence” ( Psyc INFO Database Record, 2002). Espelage, Holt, & Henkel (2003). Examination of peer group contextual effects on aggression during early adolescence. Child Development, 205-220. “Peer groups identified using SNA (i.e., social network analysis) demonstrated a significant amount of within-group similarity on self-reported bullying and fighting, suggesting that students affiliate with individuals who bully and fight at the same frequency (p. 216). Peer group bullying and fighting were associated with individual-level behavior, even after controlling individual baseline levels for males and females. However, peer contextual effects explained more variance in individual bullying than individual fighting. This differential impact of peer group membership suggests that future studies consider peer relations across subtypes of aggression (p. 205)”. Jeffrey, Miller, & Linn (2001). Middle school bullying as a context for the development of passive observers to the victimization of others. Bullying behavior: Current issues, research, and interventions. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Maltreatment and Trauma Press/The Haworth Press, 143-156. “Results from a survey of New Jersey middle school students indicate that eighth graders were significantly more indifferent to bullying and less sympathetic to victims than fifth graders…In the absence of bullying prevention programs, witnesses to peer aggression become less willing to intervene on behalf of victims and more indifferent to the distress of the victim” (p. 144).
Methodology
A questionnaire was designed to focus on student’s perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about bullying in school. The questionnaire was carried out with a group of high school students from four schools Nguyen Huu Huan, Thu Duc, Hoa Sen, Ngo Thoi Nhiem and some secondary school students from two schools Hoa Lu and Le Qui Don. There were also 2 teachers being asked to answer the questionnaire sheet. The questionnaire was summarized basing on the results of the questions.
The final version of the questionnaire in Vietnamese was administered to a total of 50 students (17 boys and 33 girls) from six secondary and high schools and two teachers in November 2015. Vietnamese version was designed for students who are not good at English. The questionnaire was given to students in order to answer directly. There was also an online survey for them to fill in as their convenience and the questions in the survey were similar to the ones in the questionnaire.
There were totally 15 questions in the survey. The participants were asked about their names, ages, and careers. Then, the survey asked people whether they have ever seen any case of bullying in school or even suffered from being bullied in school. The research also wanted them to indicate their attitudes if they think violence at schools is a serious problem. Next, students were also asked about their perceptions about bullying in school that whether the amount of bullying cases has increased at school in their living area, or which kind of gender has more participants taking part in bullying in school, and causes (school, family, students themselves or all of the answers) that result in violence at schools. The fact is that youngsters are really interested in playing video games and watching movies, so I also want to know whether they can recognize how violent games and movies affect on bullying in school. The research focused on students’ opinions about bully’s effects to their best at school work and if there is anything that should be done more to stop bullying in school. Moreover, participants were encouraged to give some kinds of weapon students may bring to school, some results bullying in school causing to students and some solutions to help minimize or prevent this problem.
Findings and Discussion
The questionnaire and the survey data were combined and presented according to the subheadings below:
• people’ age, career and gender
• What people know about violence at schools
• Their attitudes and perceptions to this problem
• Their opinions about the results and solutions
People’ age, career and gender (Q1 – Q3)
About one-third (17/52) of the participants were boys and the rest of the participants were girls with nearly 65 percent (34/52), except one person who was not sure about his or her gender. Nearly half of them (about 44%) were under 15 who were at secondary schools while the rest were high school student (52%) and 2 teachers aging from 26 to 35 years. Also, over 96 percent (50/52) of the participants were students and nearly 4 percent (2/52) of the people were teachers.
From this data, we can see that the number of female participants preferred to be more than male ones, which seemed that girls might care about this problem more than boys. They were mostly from under 15 to 25 years old which were the ideal ages and exactly the target participants for me to do the research.
Whether people have seen any case of bullying or been bullied in school (Q4 – Q5)
Only 15% (8/52) of the participants have not ever seen any case of bullying in school before while the rest of them (85%) have been the outsiders to this situation.
Moreover, the percentage of people bullied in school was about 26 (14/52), which meant every 4 people who had not been bullied, there would be 1 person bullied. We also can see that 85% – the very large number – of the participants have ever seen the case of bullying, which showed that the violence at schools is so popular and wide that it is becoming a serious problem and worthy for us worrying about and paying attention to.