As another school year begins, two experts discuss how pervasive bullying remains in schools and what educators should be doing to curtail it.
Q. How has bullying changed over the years?
A. University of Ottawa professors Tracy Vaillancourt and David Smith, who have both studied the topic, agree that bullying hasn’t changed all that much. Name calling, taunts and physical forms of bullying tend to be common and “it hurts people today like it hurt people 20 years ago,” Vaillancourt said. But with the reach of social media, Smith said, kids can be targeted outside of school and the potential audience for cyberbullying is much larger. People can hide behind pseudonyms and false Facebook profiles, which means the victim doesn’t always know who their tormentor is.
Q. How vigilant are people at spotting bullying?
A. “Someone getting punched in the face is hard to ignore, but somebody spreading rumours about someone else might be more difficult to spot,” Vaillancourt said. The more covert type of bullying, which happens on social media can also be the most damaging, Smith explains. He added that kids sometimes work together to destroy a reputation by excluding others or by spreading rumours.
Q. What are some of the effects of bullying?
A. Vaillancourt said bullying “interferes with a person’s fundamental need to belong.” In one study that followed people 50 years after they were bullied, she said, the effects still lingered. What was once considered a rite of passage that people could get over has been shown to “alter the way genes are expressed, and it leaves a scar.”
Q. How pervasive is the problem?
A. While not every kid has been bullied, nearly all kids have seen people get bullied and witnessing it can be almost as destructive as being bullied, Smith said. “It makes kids scared to go to school, it erodes the social climate and they don’t trust people around them,” which can also affect their grades. It is “connected to the incredible distress that young people are feeling” even as they become adults. But what is worrying is that despite decades of bullying prevention, roughly 10 per cent of students experience abuse at school every day and as many as 30 per cent of students in Canada reported being bullied two to three times a month, Vaillancourt said.
Q. Why has there only been a slight decrease in the amount of bullying in schools?
A. Kids don’t report bullying because they think adults will mishandle the problem and there might be the potential for retribution, Smith said. He adds that bullying is a really a relationship problem and while “kids have the knowledge and the skills to mitigate the problem, they don’t have the knowledge and skills to get out of the problem, and that’s where adults are critical in stepping in.” Vaillancourt explains that “we tolerate it more than we should and if it’s not happening to us then we are less invested in it.” After decades of trying to tackle bullying and only seeing a slight reduction in schools, she said what is disheartening is that people have grown apathetic hearing about it.
Q. What are some effective ways of tackling the issue?
A. More supervision in areas where bullying tends to flourish such as playgrounds and cafeterias; bystanders need to step in when they see people being bullied; involving responsible adults early on in the process; implementing a national strategy for bullying such as authorities have in the United Kingdom or Norway, which has seen a significant decrease in the problem; and even rearranging a classroom so that kids who have trouble making friends are placed next to those who are good at building relationships are just some of the solutions Vaillancourt and Smith recommend. However what doesn’t work, but schools continue to do, the experts say are uncoordinated, one-off speakers or drama presentations about bullying.