Attitudes Toward Bullying

I came across this great article called "Examining Variation in Attitudes Toward Aggressive Retaliation and perceptions of Safety Among Bullies, Victims, and Bully/Victims." I didn't think much of it at first, assuming it was going to be a dry, statistical read, but I was pleasantly surprised with its readability and awesome research!

Bullying can be a wide variety of things that can include threatening and name calling, kicking and hitting, and even cyberbullying in our new technology-focused world. "Bullying continues to be one of the most common forms of aggression and victimization experienced by school-aged children" (Bradshaw, 2008, pp. 10). It seems like everyone has experienced a form of bullying while in school, but how does this victimization affect these children in the long term? While bullying is considered just a "fact of life", is does seem to have short-term and long-term consequences for all those who are part of the bullying.

With relation to online vs. brick and mortar schools, many students leave their traditional school for an online school as a way to escape bullying that they have experienced first hand. I personally have several students in my online class currently who have told me that the reason that they joined online school was to escape severe bullying that they had been experiencing at their old traditional school. The worst part is that every student whom I have talked to tells me that little or nothing had been done to help them or protect them in this difficult situation.

However, I think that this article brought up an interesting point: cyberbullying. With students leaving traditional education to escape bullying, can they not also experienced bullying in the online chat rooms and discussion boards in the online school? Of course a teacher will step in to stop the bullying, but once something has been typed up and shared, it is difficult to forget it.

With so much school effort focused on encouraging students to report bullying rather than preventing future bullying, what do you think should be done to counteract this? Do you think this website can help?

Check out this website (it's interesting!): http://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/index.html

Bradshaw, Catherine P., Lindsey M. O'Brennan and Anne L. Sawyer (2008). Examining Variation in Attitudes Toward Aggressive Retaliation and Perceptions of Safety Among Bullies, Victims, and Bully/Victims. Professional School Counseling, vol. 12 (No. 1), pp. 10-21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42732859