Do you know what bullying means? Have you ever noticed how much violence students experience in their schools? Have you ever realized if your siblings or any member of your family might be suffering this harassment? Moreover what would you do if in the future your son or daughter becomes victim of bullying or if he/she is a bully?

This semester I have had the opportunity to know in a better way a state school and learn about student’s behavior. One day, I went to a fifth elementary course and I saw a child constantly hitting his classmates, apparently he just couldn’t focus his attention on the teacher. He got very easily distracted and was not only rude on his way of acting, but also on his speaking. After class, I talked to him because I felt curiosity about his behavior. To be honest I was very impressed after hear him say “I need to hit people because I’m tense and angry all the time”, and then I asked him “Ok, and what are your tensions?” But he couldn’t answer. He also added that he won’t change the way he is because he actually likes it and is also a way to make his peers respect him.

Sometimes this aggressive behavior is due to some similar experiences of violence that he had to deal with in the past, or reflects an aggressive domestic abuse. Another factor could be the environment considering that children are overexposed to aggressiveness all the time through internet, video games and TV. Sometimes students think that they need to earn the respect of their classmates to feel confident with themselves. Whatever the reason is, children need the support of their schools if they don’t have it at home.

Obviously, bullying brings negative consequences for those students who react passively and are the victims of bullying. Aggressive people intimidate those students who are shy, and a direct consequence of this can be reflected on their marks. If we think for a moment, we can figure out that this is a kind of vicious circle in the way that attacked people do not participate in classes, so they’ll have many questions unresolved and with this they’ll get bad results on their tests.

After class I talked to some teachers to get their impressions about this kind of behavior, and I got the feeling that bullying is very common so they are use to it. Therefore, they won’t try to change it because they don’t have more expectations about their students, which is a very sad reality. In almost every school we can find a group of students who are called “trouble boys”, but are specially those ones who need more attention, help and motivation to learn and develop their skills hidden behind bad behavior.

In my opinion a possible solution to decrease these aggressive reactions is trying to pay more attention in what they need, what they have to say and what they want to do. It is in teachers, families and authorities hands to focus on this and try to implement new methodologies and resources to overcome the problem of violence.

Bullying has become a very usual concept for people. But it doesn’t mean that we have to get use to bullying as if it was something normal. Children are in their growing up process and they need a model to learn how to interact with their peers. They also need to learn how to solve their problems talking instead of fighting. So keep your eyes open and be aware of detecting any of these cases on time. Maybe you might have a strong impact in someone’s life!

02-12-09