How to eliminate school bullying

An important step in the right direction

There are many ways to tackle school bullying, and I definitely feel that it’s a problem that needs approaching from multiple angles.

At the moment various groups are successfully pursuing the following approaches:

Legal

• Anti-bullying legislation forcing schools to adopt anti-bullying policies
• Upgrading many types of bullying to criminal offences
• Enabling bullies to be sued in court

Cultural and Educational

• Anti-bullying charters that schools can voluntarily sign up to, to agree a code of practice
• Encouraging spectators and passive bullies not to participate
• Changing the culture within schools to make bullying less acceptable
• Changing school culture so that victims are not ashamed to report bullying
• Educating parents to recognise bullying and act decisively and persistently if they discover that their kids are being bullied

• Using hard-hitting anti-bully road-shows in schools to impart the full horror of bullying for some victims

Practical

• Training peer counsellors (other students) who can provide support for victims
• Training school staff how to deal with bullying more effectively

I believe that most of these approaches have considerable merit within an overall strategy aimed at reducing bullying, but I think that even collectively, they will still fail to significantly eradicate bullying in many cases for two important reasons.

1. Of the three types of bullies that I consider to be a problem (venters, performers and haters), the worst (haters) does not bully for approval or popularity, so changing the culture is unlikely to change their mind-set in the short term. Long term, everyone can be changed, but kids who are suffering right now can't wait 10-20 years for the pervading attitudes to shift.
2. Schools have to have a will to change bullying, and many do not. They will sign up to charters and agree to voluntary codes of conduct. They’ll even be reluctantly bound by law to investigate bullying, but then all that happens is that they deflect victim complaints so that they do not show up in their school’s statistics.

In my opinion, the only way to FORCE schools is to deal with bullying professionally, is to have unambiguous, nationally consistent procedures that they must follow, which provide an unavoidable paper trail by which they can be held accountable.

For that to work, there will need to be clear definitions of what bullying is. One campaigner said to me that we need to keep the definitions as broad as possible so that they can encompass all types of harassing behaviour. That makes sense because some kids can be harassed by the seemingly most minor of actions.

Here’s an example of how it might work:

1. A parent or student makes a formal complaint of bullying. By formalising the complaint, we hopefully eliminate low-level complaints. I realise that a low-level complaint by one student may be severe to another, but as it is the victims themselves who decide the severity of a case to be reported, they themselves weight the complaints.
2. The complaint MUST be recorded on a two part document, listing the complainant, details of the complaint, date, etc. One copy of the document is given to the complainant who signs for it, and the other is kept by the school. The parent or student now takes their copy away, so they have proof that a formal complaint has been registered, and received by the school – no more of these “We never received a complaint” denials, and no more of these “We complained 200 times and were not listened to” accusations.
3. The school follows a national or state/county agreed upon procedure for investigating the incident. The complaint is assessed to determine whether or not it is even bullying, per se. If it is not, then the “victim” is still afforded counselling. After all, they felt victimised, regardless of the letter of the law. Read about the sad case of Matt Epling to see how something that one person might consider relatively minor, can be devastating to another.
4. The accused is afforded impartial status, so without admission, witnesses or evidence (or past form), they cannot be punished.
5. The complainant is called back in and updated upon the results of the investigation. They are given an updated copy of the incident report, detailing the results of the incident, and describing a suggested course of resolution (mediation, punishment *, counselling, or whatever). Again the complainant signs to acknowledge receipt.
6. The complainant is interviewed again for a sign off after a further interval of time (say a fortnight, or a month), to ascertain whether the course of action has been successful. At any time before this scheduled date, the complainant can report that the bullying is continuing, in which case the school jumps back to stage 2 and takes appropriately more severe action, where necessary. The victim MUST be provided with full support to ensure that they feel safe and unharrassed by this stage. At this point, even without further corroborative evidence, the likelihood of credibility is assumed for the victim, not the bully.
7. If no further incidents are reported before the sign off, and the victim is satisfied with the course of action, the victim is asked to sign off the incident report to acknowledge satisfaction in the system. If they are unhappy, they have the chance to explain why, and if their concerns do not merit further action, they can be recorded on the incident report. If the school wishes to close the case, but the complainant is unsatisfied, having gone through the entire procedure, they have the option to escalate to a county arbitrator, and beyond.

This system is a little time-consuming, but it’s thorough, and leaves a paper trail that parents can use to demonstrate when correct procedures have not been followed (eliminating personal bias – for a horrific example of personal bias by the school board costing the life of a 13 year old student, read the case of Jared High at www.jaredstory.com). Most importantly, when there is a clearly defined procedure right from complaint to resolution, it gives the victims confidence that there is a point in complaining, overcoming one of the major hurdles.

*Note: many schools cite student confidentiality protecting the rights of the bully, from letting the student know that the bully has been punished. Yet again, the rights of the perpetrator are protected at the expense of the victim. This is a ridiculous position that denies the victim satisfaction or closure. The victim knows who the bully is. The bully knows who he or she is. Confirming to the victim that justice has been done, is an essential part of healing the victim, as well as giving them confidence in the system.

A lack of faith in the ability of the school administration to resolve their issues or protect them, seems to be a consistent theme amongst the most harrowing bullying cases, where kids do not even report bullying. Misplaced faith in the system by parents is the thing that often enables bullying to escalate to lethal proportions.