Bullying: An Increasing Social Disease

Bullying has become a major problem in our classrooms, playgrounds, workplaces, and over the Internet.  But an increasing number of people and organizations have begun to fight back in order to educate as many people as possible about the devastating effects  bullying can have.   

 February 27th is anti-bullying day in Canada - better known as Pink Shirt Day - a day set aside to bring awareness to bullying issues and the devastating effects it can have. 

 What is bullying? 

Bullying is a form of repeated,and aggressive behaviour directed at children, teenagers, or adults. The behavior is intended to cause fear, distress, or harm to another person's body, feelings, self-esteem or reputation.  Bullying usually involves an imbalance of power. 

 Bullying can come in a number of different forms 

 Verbal bullying: name calling, sarcasm, teasing, spreading rumours, threatening, making negative references to a person's culture, ethnicity, race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, unwanted sexual comments. 

Social bullying: mobbing, scapegoating, excluding others from a group, humiliating others with public gestures or graffiti intended to put others down. 

Physical bulling: hitting, poking, pinching, chasing, shoving, coercing, destroying or stealing belongings, unwanted sexual touching. 

Cyber bullying: using the Internet or text messaging to intimidate, put down, lie, spread rumours or make fun of someone. messaging to intimidate, put-down, spread rumours or make fun of someone. 

 How common is bullying? 

According to the National Education Association, it is estimated that 160, 000 children in the United States miss school every day due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students.  

• 1 in 7 Students in Grades K-12 is either a  bully or a victim of bullying
• 56% of students have personally witnessed some type of bullying at school.

• 15% of all school absenteeism is directly related to fears of being bullied at school.

• 71% of students report incidents of bullying as a problem at their school.
• 282,000 students are physically attacked in secondary schools each month.

  In Canada

• Approximately one in 10 children have bullied others and as many as 25% of children in grades four to six have been bullied. 

• A 2004 study published in the medical Journal of Pediatrics found that about one in seven Canadian children aged 11 to 16 are victims of bullying. 

• Studies have found bullying occurs once every seven minutes on the playground and once every 25 minutes in the classroom.

• In the majority of cases, bullying stops within 10 seconds when peers intervene, or do not support the bullying behaviour.

• Students are most vulnerable to bullying during transitions from elementary to junior high school, and from junior to senior high school.

There is a correlation between increased supervision and decreased bullying. Bullies stop when adults are around.  

To find out more about bullying: 

• Words in the News: Cyber Bully
• "The Daily Mail leads on a mother who has won a landmark legal case against Facebook after being sent death threats by so-called internet ‘trolls’." Full story
  + VOCABULARY + LINKS (englishblog.com)

• Bullying - Mindmap           
  
• Bullying (Wikipedia)
  "Bullying is the act of intentionally causing harm to others through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation..."
  

• One in five children is bullied online
  "One in five children aged eight to 11 is a victim of cyberbullying attacks, a new report from charity Beatbullying has found...
  The bullying prevention group surveyed over 1,500 primary school pupils, finding that 21 per cent had been "deliberately targeted, threatened or humiliated by an individual or group" using technology  (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cyberbullying (listening and reading from Kids Health.org) 

Videos 

• What is cyberbullying  
• The myths of bullying 

A  PSA is  a public service announcement, a type of commercial about important social issues. PSAs are meant to educate people and make them aware of the problems these social issues can cause  

• PSA Cyber Bullying Video  
• Words Hurt  

How does bullying affect people?   Read my next post. 

Spread the Word: Acceptance Vs Bullying

  
Last month, 2,000 students from 17 Vancouver schools came together at a Vancouver Giants game to spread the word of acceptance in honour of anti-bullying. 

This is the 3rd Acceptance Project using social media to spread a positive message. February 27th 2013 is anti-bullying day, but acceptance should happen everyday. 

What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction with lyrics  

Spread the message. 

Send this post to your friends, your Facebook page or any other social media you belong to. 

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Just go to the right hand side at the top of the page and sign in. 

It's free!

Canadian Anti Bullying Video Goes Viral

Wednesday, February 27th, is anti-bullying day in Canada, better known as pink shirt day. 

Before reading any other posts on the issue of bullying,  I strongly encourage ALL of you to watch the following video.

Shane Koyczan, a well known Canadian spoken word poet was bullied a lot when he was a child.  

Recently, he took that pain, wrote a powerful poem, narrated it, and worked with animators and motion artists from around the world to create the  “To This Day Project”. 

Since  it was uploaded on You Tube days ago, the To this Day Project video has received more than 4 million views, and the word is still spreading    

If you need to read the words while watching the video, click on the   the lyrics of To This Day. 

 "Facing the problem helps" 

In a post about his poem, Shane said, his experiences with violence in schools still echo throughout his life, but added that "standing to face the problem has helped me in immeasurable ways." 

Says Shane: "I wrote “To This Day”, a spoken word poem, to further explore the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.

"Schools and families are in desperate need of proper tools to confront this problem. We can give them a starting point… A message that will have a far reaching and long lasting effect in confronting bullying." 

Extraordinary Effort 
 Shane stressed that the video was the result of of a group of individuals coming together and binding their talents in an expression of solidarity and compassion." 

"I am humbled by the extraordinary efforts of those who selflessly gave their time and committed themselves to bring out this message in such a beautiful way." 

In a interview in the  Huffington Post   Koyczan  said that to him, bullying started at the kindergarten age when he first thing children learned was to call each other names.

"Something so small can be so long lasting in someone's life, he stressed. 

In terms of what he hopes people take away from his video, Shane said, "Just that sense of connectivity. As much as you may feel alone in this, you're really not. There';s people who go through this every day. In a lot of ways, there's more of us than there of them." 

He added that people needed to be "more assertive" in how they dealt with bullying 

 We Need to Come Forward 
 We also need to get better at coming forward when we see it.  Now, it's our turn to make a difference in our communities. 

Koyczan has received a lot of positive responses including one emotional letter from a parent  who revealed that her 9-year old is bullied at school and has even contemplated suicide. 

" The great hope with this piece is that people will find that light or even find that piece within themselves to see their beauty to celebrate their differences, Shane said. 
"Because their differences ultimately are what make them beautiful." 

Find out how you can help the collaborative effort at ToThisDayProject.com.