Saturday, March 19, 2011

Bully, Bullied, Bystander...and Beyond




     I have become acutely aware of the prevalence and seriousness of the reality of bullying in the world of tweens. Please visit the blog “Non-fiction for Tweens: Bullying” http://nonfictionfortweens.blogspot.com/ of which I was a part of a collaborative process to bring awareness to and offer support for the topic of bullying. 
This article is provided by the Teaching Tolerance project and offers teachers an opportunity to impact the solution to this problem.
The article begins with (not to be minimized) examples of children ages 11 to 19 years old who committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied. They felt alone with no solution and made tragic choices to end their pain.
The article identifies three main characters in the act of bullying which are not new, yet deserve to be mentioned: the bully, the bullied and the bystander.  Bystanders play a critical role in supporting, even if apathetically, the act of bullying. For me the most important aspect of the article is the identification of a “fourth character.”
This fourth character is the “anti-bully”, that person who will summon courage and have the strength to assume one or more of three vital roles to taking a stand against the bully: resister (who stands up to and speaks out against the bully), defender  (who aligns their self with the victim)and witness (who makes public the bullying that usually escapes adult detection.  It is here that teachers can influence students to make a difference and begin ending the cycle of violence. “It is a daunting task but a necessary one. 
I support and believe the foundation of this article.  My concern, when I look at this objectively, is that there is no research cited to support the data. This is clearly more than just a passionate opinion offering one possible solution to a complex problem that should be addressed with many different solutions, however the addition of citations would greatly increase the credibility.  
Coloroso, B. (2011). Bully, Bullied, Bystander ... and Beyond. Teaching Tolerance, 51-3. Retrieved from Education Full Text database