School bullying is a widespread problem that needs a solution. It is defined as a repeated aggression, either physical or emotional, displayed through an imbalance of power in schools. In “Bullying Harms Victims and Perpetrators of All Ages,” Diana Zuckerman states that thirty percent of all school children are involved in bullying either as the bully, victim, or bystander. (64) This makes school bullying prevalent enough to be a widespread problem in the United States. It is necessary for schools to implement solutions that will be effective in preventing it. In “A Whole-School Approach to Stop Bullying: Special Considerations for Children with Exceptionalities,” Rebekah Heinrichs states that “A power imbalance is always present in bully/target incidents,” which is important to note as it shows that bullying is about power, which implies that the solution to bullying would be to make it so that bullying does not give the bully power anymore, and therefore it does not give the bully reasoning to continue to bully. Bullying can happen to anyone, but it most commonly targets students who are different in some way, whether it be race, sexuality, disability, or a number of other things. (“Facts About School Bullies and Bullying Behaviors”) By acknowledging the targets of bullying, it is easier to understand why it happens. Because of the analysis of who is targeted, it has been learned that bullying usually happens for power. These people are often targets because they usually seem easier to bully, and it sets the bully higher socially, which gives them more power (Iland and Iland). United States has come a long way to acknowledge that bullying is a problem, but it is still lacking in an effective solution to prevent bullying.
There are many bullying programs in existence today, but they do not do enough. The Olweus program, one of the most renowned bullying prevention programs, has not stopped bullying, but has only caused a “decrease in the number of student self-reports of bullying others, and a decrease in students reporting that their teacher had done “little or nothing” to address bullying.” (Zuckerman 65). This makes this program more effective in spreading the knowledge that bullying is happening, rather than having an effective solution to stop it, which shows that there is need for an effective program to stop bullying in schools.
One of the possible solutions to prevent bullying is to create a whole-school approach. Theoretically, the benefit of a whole-school program would be successfully preventing bullying without individualizing or punishing bullies for something that may not be their choice, but these benefits cannot be certain until more research confirms it. In “A Whole-School Approach to Bullying: Special Considerations for Children with Exceptionalities,” Rebekah Heinrichs reports that teachers only intervene in bullying situations around fourteen percent of the time (197). Having teachers only intervening fourteen percent of the time is a major problem as most programs work on the basis of teacher intervention. It shows the importance in creating a program that instructs the teachers on how to identify and intervene in bullying situations. In “The Effectiveness of Whole-School Antibullying Programs: A Synthesis of Evaluation Research,” it states that a whole school program “must be directed at the entire school context rather than just at individual bullies and victims.” (Smith et al. 548). This would make it so that the program combats bullying altogether as a system rather than punishing a bully for bullying. It would mean that the program would not be aimed at punishing bullies, but by instigating behavior that is effective in stopping the psychological process of bullying. The program would include having activities that make the student population connect besides their differences, and it would also implement the mindset that “different is good,” which can help to stop the purpose of bullying. This can be done through having slogans that influence a positive and connecting mindset to the students or having activities where the students are required to work with people they would not usually work with. The reason why this program is not a clear solution is because there is still a lack of research on the effects of programs such as these. There is not yet concrete evidence that states whether programs such as these are effective, and therefore, “only a cautious recommendation can be made that whole-school antibullying interventions be continued until they are evaluated further.” (Smith, et. Al. 558). Before a whole-school program is implemented, there still needs to be more research on it. Christopher Donaghue and Alicia Raia-Hawrylak state in “Moving beyond the Emphasis on Bullying: A Generalized Approach to Peer Aggression in High School” that with more research “school administrators may gain a more complete picture of the challenges posed by peer conflict at school and respond more effectively” (38). If teachers and administration know more about bullying, they will know how to handle situations better, which will also help to avoid future situations with bullying.
Another possible solution to prevent bullying is anti-bullying laws. This solution would show that bullying is taken seriously, and that it will not be allowed to just continue to happen. While this is a benefit that many are looking for in bullying prevention, this solution brings up a couple of concerns for many people. To start, Lisa Garby states in “Direct Bullying: Criminal Act or Mimicking What Has Been Learned?” that children’s behavior often correlates with the behavior shown of their parents, which could mean that bullying is not the child’s fault, but instead a behavior passed on from their parent (449). This is an issue concerning anti-bullying laws, because if bullying is not the child’s fault, the law would be punishing that child for something they could not control. This issue would need to be researched further before these laws are considered as an ultimate solution to bullying. Another concern was addressed by Dewey Cornell and Susan P. Limber in “Law and Policy on the Concept of Bullying at School.” They state that often cases will try to use civil rights law to punish bullying, which is ineffective in many cases because the law only protects students who are covered in certain categories and that students who are bullied for other reasons are not protected under this law (337). This would be a concern that could be addressed in the future with anti-bullying laws, to make it so that any student who is bullied for any reason could be protected under the anti-bullying law. Of course, it still needs to be identified what constitutes as a severe enough case to bring it to court. With that, there is much more research that needs to be done before these laws constitute as a good solution to end bullying. Research needs to be focused on “how these laws and policies are implemented and to what effect” (Cornell and Limber 341). By identifying how the laws work now to prevent bullying, and what they lack in, it will be easier to acknowledge what needs to be changed. It is likely that with more research, there will be more knowledge on how to format these laws to work to protect students from bullying.
These solutions could both prove to be effective in preventing bullying. Both of these solutions have many factors that could help to prevent bullying, and they should both be taken as equally attractive options for a final solution. In fact, it may be logical to combine both the whole-school approach with the anti-bullying laws to create both a school-wide and state-wide way to address bullying. This would allow most bullying to be prevented through exercises and ideas spread through the whole-school program, while the major cases of bullying are addressed through the anti-bullying laws. This would have a lot of benefits, including involving the teachers in bullying prevention and recognition, preventing the bullying through positive mindsets, addressing bullying as a serious issue, and a myriad of other benefits that could help to prevent bullying altogether.
Overall, the most important thing that needs to be done to prevent bullying is to research it more. Diana Zuckerman states in “Bullying Harms Victims and Perpetrators of All Ages” that “Little is known about which programs work best in which types of schools or for which types of students” (66), which directly connects to what Lisa Garby states in “Direct Bullying: Criminal Act or Mimicking What Has Been Learned?” when she says “This dilemma calls for further research to be conducted with a focus on the direct bullying” (450). Without further research, it will never be known why bullying occurs or who’s fault bullying is. This research would be influential in determining whether these solutions will prove to be effective in the school system, and what the most beneficial way to format the program and laws would be.