(Picture source: Here)
News of school bullying in Hong Kong always appears on newspapers in recent years, and the related videos go viral too. Although the Education Bureau promotes the idea of “Zero Tolerance” and the incidents of school bullying are common to see. According to a survey, the common seen types of bullying are verbal bullying and physical bullying, for example, excluding others and name-calling etc. However, interviewed children were no ideas when they saw the bullying happening and the most extreme case for the victims emerged a suicidal thought. I think there is the high time for the authorities, schools and parents to solve the problem and well planned to protect from our next generation before the day to resume classes.
1. Definition of bullying and its influence
According to a journal of the American Medical association, “bullying” can be defined as a teen’s behavior is purposefully meant to harm or disturb another child. It may occur repeatedly over time and it shows the imbalance of power between the kids involved. The kinds of bullying behaviors including verbal belittling, hitting, rumors and gestures.
In the further studies, scholars found that both the perpetrators and the victims are feeling lonelier than others. Also, their relationships with their peers are not as well as others so it may bring a negative influence for their school life or career path in the future. No matter educators or psychologists agree that they need a constant assistance.
2. Causes from academic competition in HK
An educational psychologist Danny Wong (2017) pointed out the fierce academic competition in Hong Kong is one of the major factors and it leads that parents and teachers put the emphasis on the academic gratings rather than the students’ mental health. Sometimes, teachers will label their students into upper and lower level in learning so it will bring a negative impact for the “lower level” students to bully others in order to re-build their confidence.
In the situation, we can call it as “Bullying Circle” (Dan Olweus,2012). The situation in schools doesn’t affect only the ones who is bullied or doing bullying, but also the ones who are witnesses. They are playing in various roles in different situations so I am concern about the rippling effect that bullying will drag on their development in the long term.
3. Deteriorated situation in recent years
As we all know that the workload of teachers is heavy including catching up with teaching progress and managing the school admin work so it is difficult for them to spend extra time on caring their student’ school life. Meanwhile, how far would the schools’ attention on the problem be taken for the concern? Schools ‘reputation is one of the concerns for the principles to report the bullying case to the authorities so it will lead the problem worse than before.
For sure, the attitude of parental teaching is also important for the child. Due to a busy working life of parents, they will adopt the permissive or neglecting ways to treat their child. However, they are necessary for the parents to righting their children’s values. Parents should tell their children the correct value and the importance of respect others otherwise children will misunderstand the correct behavior in their daily life.
4. Solution: Bullying is unappealing
First of all, the peers is the most important role in students’ school life. Using an effective group effort to combat the problem is a direct and easy way. Taking an active resistance is necessary for students to take a first step in stopping bullying. Therefore, telling children how to prevent from problem happening and effective responding when seeing the fellow classmates being bullied is an important measure for the authorities and schools to adopt. Through the group pressure, telling the act which he is doing is not a right thing and asking him to cease his actions then. The reason behind promoting the value of bullying is not a kind of social acceptance and unappealing.
5. Solution: Take it seriously
Second, parents should take the responsible for their child’s behavior so taking the problem seriously when they find their child is bullying others or being bullied. Make good use of an opportunity to communicate with their child for understanding what they thought about their acts and explain to them that there are no accepted excuses for bullying others. Meanwhile, telling the ones being bullied, should not tolerance the bullying and discuss any possible measures to combat the problem.
6. Solution: Law enforcement is necessary
Finally, the authorities and schools are also the main roles in solving the problem. Strengthen the supervision and introduction of mandatory reporting system are the imminent measures for the authorities and schools. I suggest to the authorities that taking US’s anti-bullying law as the blueprint and adopting its experience for regulating the schools’ liability.
Will the bullying incidents in recent years trigger the authorities consider these measures? I hope so.