School Bullying Awareness

As I was thinking for a while now about what I wanted to blog about next, I found myself searching social issues in education hoping to find interesting current issues. I looked through a few scholarly journals and a few other websites and finally came to a website that supported the motto: “everyone has the right to be respected and the responsibility to respect others". This is the saying that caught my eye. The following is a web site that supports the idea of spreading the awareness of bullying in hopes of eliminating it in society. This web site is a great resource for parents, students and educators alike. http://www.bullying.org/

Although this is not something that I have personally experienced in my life as a child, nor was it something that I was forced to witness while doing any of my practicum, I am not naïve to the fact that it does occur in schools around the world. I do not think that this is a specific topic that we will be discussing in class, but I am sure that it will come up as it is a very important issue that needs to be addressed. At the beginning of our Education and Society class, we were warned about some of the depressing factors in Education, and I feel like this is one that everyone can associate with at least on some level.

One of the main reasons that I am interested in this topic is because I believe that all children have the right to a safe learning environment. Bullying can take many forms such as verbal, physical, social and extortion. Not only is there bullying that is directly face-to-face between students, but with the increase in technology, cyber bullying takes place. According to Bullying.org, “bullying happens to someone in Canada every 7 minutes on the playground.” And “other kids are watching 85% of the time when one kid bullies another kid. Adults like teachers or parents hardly ever see a bully being mean to someone else.” This is important to me firstly as I want to be a teacher and secondly because I have a niece and nephew who will be entering the school systems about the same time I will be. Although I cannot yet think of it in terms of a parental perspective, I can empathize with those who have dealt with such issues.

The idea that this takes place and that no students around do not take notice or care is not the truth. An example that I have heard of previously which took place in Sept 2007 in Nova Scotia where a grade 9 boy wore a pink shirt on the first day back to school. Many of the students harassed the boy, but there were two grade 12 students (David Shepherd and Travis Price) who not only did the opposite, but decided that they needed to take action. After school, they bought 50 pink t-shirts and e-mailed their classmates to get them on their side. Dozens of students the next day came to school dressed in pink. Their campaign did not go unnoticed and made it onto the Ellen DeGeneres show.

This is a group of students wearing pink to support the cause. The next pink day will be April 14, 2010 and is an annual event.

Here are some other websites that I have found to be very informing:

http://www.bullyingcanada.ca/
http://www.safecanada.ca/
http://www.bullyonline.org/
http://www.cyberbullying.ca/