Preventing Childhood Bullying:
Valley News, 11/14/2000
By Dan Mackie
Valley News Staff Writer
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Whoever first said that wasn’t the target of an all-out bully attack. Bullies hurt people- it’s what they do —and sticks, stones, and words are all part of the bully arsenal.
Schools, unfortunately, are one of the places where bullies shine, since bullies and targets are forced to be close together five days a week. And there’s a large audience, which is good for the bully, since a wound hurts twice as much if you rub some shame in it.
Almost nobody likes bullies, but what’s to be done about them? In movies and stones they get their comeuppance, but that’s the revenge of screenwriters and novelists. In real life they often get to rule their petty fiefdoms for years.
This year, the Enfield Village School is working to prevent the childhood cycle of cruelties big and small with a bully prevention program. School officials think it’s reducing incidents and improving the social climate. When they started a reporting system earlier this year, they received 38 bullying complaints in a week. Recently, the school received just one. "I feel safer," a fourth-grade girl said last week when asked how things had changed.
Principal Chuck Stone isn’t declaring a final victory. He said it’s unlikely complaints will always be so few. But he said he’s pleased with the program and what it’s done for students. "There is certainly a greater awareness level of how they treat each other," he said.
Martha Mae Emerson, program coordinator, said’ studies suggest that school programs can cut bullying in half. "To go beyond that, you need other kinds of intervention," she said.
Enfield’s program attempts to give a clear message to children. Said Emerson, "We do not allow children at Enfield Village School to hurt each other with our bodies or our words. Every kid can understand that."
The effort began last year, when Emerson, a school counselor who has a job in another town this year but returns one day a week as a volunteer, went to Stone with the idea of an anti-bullying campaign. The school established a 10-person task force to look at the research and programs. Stone said it was important to get a large group of staffers involved. "We all needed to be on the same page," he said.
The program kicked off this fall. All teachers received clipboards and paperwork for bullying or harassment complaints. Complaints are referred to school counselors or the school psychologist, and ultimately, the principal.
Punishments, such as having to stay inside during recess, are spelled out for each offense.
The effort was energized last week by a visit from Stan Davis, a Maine educator who consults with schools that want to prevent bullying. He put on a razzle-dazzle program for children that included anti-bully strategies and magic tricks. Student volunteers helped him with skits that showed bystanders intervening to tell bullies to stop. They also befriended the victim. "Remember, giving friendship is the greatest magic of all," Davis told schoolchildren.
In an interview, Davis said he started concentrating on the issue several years ago when he found he couldn’t do much to help in cases of bullying. Telling victims to ignore bullies was age-did wisdom, but he said that didn’t work. Having victims tell bullies they were really hurting them was ineffective as well.
Such empower-the-victim strategies didn’t stop sexual harassment of women, Davis said. Assertiveness training and attempts to raise awareness of perpetrators wasn’t very effective, but things changed when corporations started losing lawsuits, Then they created procedures and enforced prohibitions.
What stops bullying is having a system for reporting incidents and spelled-out consequences, Davis said. The school must also work to create a climate where bystanders speak out.
In one session for students, Davis used the theme of "Let your light shine." He told the children, "This show is aimed at bystanders, not so much at victims.
"I’m asking you to be candles."
His quick review at the end of the session: Tell the bully to stop; tell a teacher, be a friend. Later, he explained that children need to learn that reporting incidents isn’t "tattling."
Davis, who was brought to Enfield as part of a $6,000 federal grant that funded the program this year, gave workshops for teachers in the afternoon and parents in the evening.
He said bullying can have long term effects. Bullies who don’t change their behavior patterns are six times more likely to do jail time as adults, according to research. Victims are likely to have elevated levels of depression.
Davis said Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus, found that bullies tend to come from homes "where rules are inconsistently applied and adults spend less positive time with kids."
He urged parents at the evening session to spend as much time as they can with children "doing enjoyable things together. He said pressures on parents are making that more difficult.
Consistent application of rules can work in schools. Davis said that at his school in Maine, several bullies told him they stopped bullying because they were "tired of getting in trouble all the time." He said schools need to stick with anti-bullying programs rather than seeing them as a quick fix. And schools shouldn’t dismiss complaints lightly. He quoted a writer on the subject who said: "We should assume that if children come to us about someone being mean to them that they have tried everything else first. Coming to you is their last hope."
Davis also quoted a child from Kansas City who updated the old saying about sticks and stones. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may break my heart," she said.
Leveling the Playing Field
Editorial, Valley News 11/24/00
The schoolyard bully who eventually gets his just deserts at the hands of his victims is the stuff of legend- or more accurately, fantasy. As anyone who ever went to elementary school can tell you , and that’s virtually all of us, the time when the tormented gain the upper hand over their tormentors are in reality few and far between. And often those subjected to ridicule and abuse carry the psychological, if not the physical, scars on into adulthood.
As an article in this week’s Valley News reported, at least one Upper Valley school is making a remarkable effort to even the odds between the playground’s petty tyrants and those whom they persecute. So far, the results at Enfield Village school are encouraging. Principal Chuck Stone reports that bullying complaints dropped from 38 in one week earlier this year to only one in a recent week. That’s progress by any measure, all the more notable when you bear in mind that what is being measured is the infliction on children of injuries large and small.
It goes without saying that no magic solutions exist to social and behavioral problems such as bullying. What makes the Enfield experience so heartening, in fact, is that it relies on a common sense approach that could be easily implemented elsewhere.
Not surprisingly, the key seems to lie in making an institutional commitment to improvement. According to Stan Davis, a Maine educator whom the Enfield school consulted, what stops bullying is having a system in place for reporting incidents and detailing the consequences. That’s just the approach Enfield took: When the anti-bullying program began this fall, all teachers received clipboards and paperwork to process bullying complaints. Those complaints are referred to school counselors or the school psychologist and, ultimately, to the principal. Punishments are spelled out for each offense.
Davis also stressed the need to create a climate where bystanders. speak out when they see bullying, coming to understand that reporting such behavior is not "tattling," but honorable intervention to redress the balance between the strong and the weak.
This page has often criticized the growing impulse of public schools to become involved in areas of their students’ lives that seem better left to parental supervision. But this is an instance where a direct correlation can be drawn between the ability of children to learn and the perceived physical and psychological security of the school environment
"I feel safer" since the program began, an Enfield fourth grader told the Valley News reporter, and the school has every reason to be proud of that simple tribute.