Strategies for Bully Free Secondary Schools
Bullying is a problem that occurs in the social environment as a whole. The bullies'
aggression occurs in social contexts in which teachers and parents are generally unaware
of the extent of the problem and other children are either reluctant to get involved or
simply do not know how to help (Charach, Pepler, & Ziegler, 1995). Given this situation,
effective interventions must involve the entire school community rather than focus on the
perpetrators and victims alone. Smith and Sharp (1994) emphasize the need to develop
whole-school bullying policies, implement curricular measures, improve the school
ground environment, and empower students through conflict resolution, peer counseling,
and assertiveness training.
Secondary schools are responsible for protecting their students’ population.
Students cannot learn effectively if they fear for their safety. Troubled students, both
victims and bullies, need a supportive environment to learn and grow. There are a number
of strategies that the management of secondary schools can adopt to eliminate or
minimize bullying activities in their schools. These include setting code of students
conduct and behavior; teaching skills on anger management, friendship, assertiveness,
conflict resolution, and peer mediation; exploring ways to deal with bullies; promoting
structured activities and team work; providing effective supervision; building empathy
and understanding; getting students involve in services; teaching students to be
affirmative and positive. Each of these strategies is discussed below.
i. Establishing and Enforcing Rules about Bullying and Behavior
An international school in a neighboring country encourages its students to inform
confidentially their teachers about any form of bullying. The school has a code of
behavior as follows: “The school authority does not tolerate bullying, name calling,
harassment, teasing or intimidation of others including harassment of younger students,
female students, and students from minority groups. It expects students to show
tolerance, understanding, and courtesy to the people with whom they come into contact,
fellow students, teachers, and members of the public. If any students are facing problems 6
with their friends, family or others, they are encouraged to talk to their coordinator,
teachers or counselors.” A code of behavior like this can be adopted so that students are
aware that bullying behavior is not accepted in the schools premises and they would
voluntarily come forward to report any forms of bullying activities that they come across
or witness or even heard of. Such rules clearly communicate a zero tolerance for bullying
and an expectation of positive behavior. They also meet students’ physical and
psychological needs for safety for it is hard to learn when they are intimidated,
threatened, and scared of or when they are witness to intimidating, threatening and scary
behavior.
For rules to be effective, they should be created with student’s input, short and
simple, easy to understand, specific, agreed upon and accepted by everyone, enforceable,
communicated to and supported by parents, others, teachers and staff, and reviewed
periodically and updated when needed.
ii. Teaching Anger Management Skills
When students are in danger or under some kind of stress, they tend to experience the
“fight-or-flight” response. They battle the cause of the danger they perceive or the stress
they experience or they run as fast as they can to get away. When students are bullied,
running away is an option and sometimes it’s the only option. They need to know that
fighting is not an option except in cases where self-defense is essential. What can they do
instead of fighting or trying to hurt someone back? They can learn and practice other
ways to manage their anger. These ways include like don retaliated or do anything right
away but consider various options. For example the options of walking away, finding
another person to be with, telling an adult of what happened or counting slowly from 1 to
10 and backwards to cool anger or control your temper and remain cool and calm.
iii. Teaching Friendship Skill
Some secondary schools students become bullies because they don’t have friends, feel
lonely and seek attention by bullying. Some kids become victims because they’re isolated
and easier to pick on. All students, be they bullies or victims and others can benefit from
learning and practicing friendship skills. Students can be taught skills on how to make
and keep friends. These skills include reaching out to people first, involvement in social
clubs, letting people know that you are interested in them, not showing off, be honest,
kind and accepting or accommodative.
iv. Teaching Assertive Skills
Some secondary schools students do not know what to do or how to react when they are
being bullied. Should they cry, run away, fight back or get even? Victims tend to be
passive that is behaving as if other people’s right matter more than theirs. Assertive
people respect their own rights and other people’s right. Students should know their
rights like the right to stand up to people who tease, criticize or look down upon them and
the right to respond when someone violates their rights. Secondary schools students can
be taught how to look assertive like standing up straight, keeping head up, looking people
in the eye and so on. When students appear assertive, they are more likely to feel
assertive and fellow students will treat them with respect.
v. Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills
Conflict between people is normal and inevitable and not all conflict is harmful or bad.
Destructive conflict damages relationships, creates bad feelings and lead to future
problems. But constructive conflict helps people learn, grow, and change for the better
like seeing things from other perspectives, become more open minded, tolerant and
accepting. Everyone benefits from learning and practicing conflict resolution. Bullies
discover the real power of solving problems without using intimidation. Victims are
empowered to seek solutions instead of giving up and giving in. Students who are taught
in conflict resolution are more likely to face conflicts, use problem solving to negotiate
solutions. They can benefit from learning conflict resolution skills that will empower them, increase their confidence in their ability to handle a situation and teach them how
to respond assertively, particularly in cases of verbal bullying. Conflict resolution steps
are begins by cooling down, describing the conflict including caused and effect,
brainstorming solutions and trying the best solution. It is about communicating, listening
and problem-solving techniques.
vi. Exploring Ways to Deal with Bullies
Students can be taught of several answers to the question of what should a victim does
when being bullied? The answers depend on the situation but the common ones are like
tell a friend, or tell a teacher or tell parents, stay calm and walk away or standup straight
and look the bully in the eye and say in a firm confident voice to leave you alone. Using
peer mediators (impartial fellow students) another way to deal with bullies. Mediators are
facilitators who do not take sides. They will ask open-ended questions, encourage
discussion, and guide students involved in the conflict to come up with and try their own
solutions. Ideal mediators are students who are calm, listen carefully, remain objective,
avoid taking sides and be patient. However, peer mediation may not work if victims have
low communication skills in the presence of bullies.
vii. Effective Respond to Reports of Bullying
Much bullying occurs where adults cannot see it and intervene as confessed by an ex
student of a secondary school mentioned under introduction and background above.
Bullies do not want adult audiences. Therefore the school authorities like the principal,
his assistants, disciplinary teachers, counselors and other teachers rely on students for
information about bullying that are not aware of. Students must be encouraged to come
forth with information on bullying activities having code of behavior as mentioned earlier
on and putting up notices saying that if you see or know or thought that someone is being
bullied, report it to the school authorities. No matter how much the school authority encourage students to report on bullying; reporting will stop if there is no quick and
effective response. The students will lose trust in the authority to handle the menace.
viii. Promoting Structured Activities
As a result of the tragic case of bullying mentioned in the introduction and background
section, the government i.e. the Ministry of Education immediately responded by setting
up a hotline for the public to report bullying activities in schools through the country. To
date 348 people has responded on issues about the misconduct of students and on school
management as well proposals to overcome the problem. One of the proposals received
was to see how students could help their peers overcome problems they faced in school
and one of the ways of fostering this relationship is through extra-curricular activities.
The cabinet wants to place more emphasis on extra-curricular activities to curb
indiscipline and promote national integration. The Education Ministry is to reassess all
activities and students' participation in uniformed bodies, clubs and societies and sports.
There are 24 uniformed bodies, 120 clubs and societies and 30 sports and games
registered with the ministry.
Much bullying takes place during unstructured activities especially during recess
time or waiting for the afternoon class session. Students can be encouraged to plan ahead
for those times and tell their plans like playing a particular game. Try also to get those
students who do not play games to have the habit of deciding in advance how they will
spend unstructured time. If they have difficulty making plans, offer them suggestions.
Since bullies tend to be older, stronger and more powerful than their victims, explore the
possibility of assigning older and younger students to different playground areas.
Getting students involve in services is a form of involvement in structured
activities. Examples of services are doing cleanliness work in a nearby villages, or
helping out in the home for handicap children or home for the age. When students work
together to reach a common goal especially when that goal involves helping others they
experience a sense of unity, personal worth and belonging.
This has a bonding effect on the group as a whole. It also gives students an opportunity to observe and appreciate each others’ knowledge and skills. The benefits to students involved in voluntary service
include learning to respect others, learning to get along with and relate to others, learning
to understand people who are different from them and learning to be helpful and kind.
Through involvement in structured activities and voluntary services which are
group work, promotion of team work also takes place. Students who participate in group
activities are more likely to have positive feelings about others. They develop fewer
biases and prejudices. Good team members accept each other as equals, support group’s
goals and rules, participate in discussions and express their needs and feelings honestly,
have positive attitude and disagree without being disagreeable.
ix. Providing Effective Supervision
One the contributing factors to the death of a form four student highlighted in the
introduction and background section above is the lack of supervision or being vigilant by
the school authority. An ex-school administrator pointed out that “leadership is very
important for without good leaders, things at schools will spiral out of control and, in
some instances, students may control the school. Residential schoolteachers must be
committed, must be proactive and not operate on a reactive basis. Teachers must make
their presence felt and join in student activities. One of the steps is to monitor the
wardens and ensure that they carry out their duties, especially on weekends and public
holidays.”
It is believed that some students become bullies because the supervision they get
is minimal or nonexistent. And bullies tend to do their bullying where adults can’t
observe and intervene. Close supervision of students at schools may be one of the most
effective bully prevention strategies available. It’s true that spending more time
supervising students will increase teachers’ workload. But more positive supervision
where you interact with students, suggest ways they can interact with each other and
model kindness, acceptance, affirmation and getting along promotes positive behavior.
x. Building Empathy and Understanding
Empathy is the ability to identify with and understand another person’s feelings,
situation, motives and concerns to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Empathy is
basic to positive relationships with friends, peers, family members and everyone else tht
one encounters throughout his life. Often when students are not liked by others it’s
because they lack empathy. It’s not enough for students to empathize with people they
have things in common with. They also need to empathize with people who are very
different from them in their needs, experiences, points of view, life circumstances,
beliefs, ethnic and cultural background, talents, abilities, accomplishments etc. They also
need to be able to think about how other people might feel in response to specific events
and circumstances.
Understanding on why do bullies bully and why do victims put up with it is
another strategy. There are no easy answers to these questions but some students bully
because they love having power over other people, because other people bully them,
because they want attention, because they are jealous of other people and because they
have their own problems. Some students are victims because they are different in some
way, they do not know how to make friends, and they are socially awkward. Students can
be invited to contribute their own reasons on why some students are bullies and why
some are victims. With this information it will help them to understand why they and
their classmates or schoolmates do some of the things they do.
xi. Teaching Students to be Affirmative and Positive
Everyone appreciates a compliment. Students especially enjoy knowing that their teacher
thinks well of them. Take every opportunity to say something positive to each of your
students through out the day. Get students to know about what they like, what they are
good at, their positive characteristics, what make them proud of themselves and what
good things they would like other people to know about them. This information can be
shared with other students to encourage them to recognize and acknowledge each other’s positive characteristics and notice similarities. When students affirm each other, everyone
feels accepted, appreciated and valued.
Positive thinking can be powerful especially positive thinking about ourselves and
our abilities to solve problems, reach goals, cope with hard times and accomplish what
we set out to do. Positive self talk creates positive beliefs. Positive beliefs lead to positive
attitudes and feelings about oneself and others. Positive attitudes and feelings promote
positive behaviors.
Conclusion
Bullying is a serious problem that can dramatically affect the ability of students to
progress academically and socially. A comprehensive intervention and prevention plan or
program that involves all students, parents, and school staff is required to ensure that all
students can learn in a safe and fear-free environment. Even the government, in the wake
of public outcry on bullying in schools, is setting a task force to monitor and overcome
discipline problems in schools. The government is very serious in combating bullying
problems and the education minister was quoted in a news report as follows: “Finally to
those who prefer to bully rather than learn, I have this to say to you: ‘If I accept you as
you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are
capable of becoming, I will help you become that.' (Johann Wolfgang Goethe).”
The minister has since directed state education departments and schools to work
hard to eliminate the bullying phenomenon in the country. In the coming months, schools
will be under tremendous pressure to formulate, develop, implement and review
strategies, program and plans to control bullying activities. There will be training courses,
seminars, workshops and symposium on techniques, methods and tools to prevent
bullying in schools. Therefore, this article offers to the schools and education authorities
the various strategies and ideas to be adopted and adapted in carrying the directive from
the Minister of Education to eliminate the menace of bullying in secondary schools.
Adapted from Yahaya, Azizi and Ma'alip, Halimah Strategies To Eradicate Bullying In Secondary Schools. In: Seminar antarabangsa APECA 15 Biennial Conference-Workshop 2004 23-24 Nov. 2004 Eden Hotel. Johore Bahru.. (Unpublished)
POSTED BY CHIA YONG SIANG
