Increased bullying needs more education, students say

With bullying becoming more common, we need better education for both students and teachers. Photo:Eddie~S

Schools need to enhance bullying education, according to students and a student teacher.

With youth internet and screen time dramatically increasing, bullying has become easier to do and harder to detect.

“So much of it happens outside of school, like online and after school hours. It’s not really in the hallways as much, anymore,” said Ryan Blandford, a student teacher and UBC student.

Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old, was aggressively bullied after naked photos of hr surfaced on the web. She changed schools multiple times, but the taunting and teasing followed her. Todd committed suicide in October 2012.

With Todd’s and other teen suicides, the pubic took even more interest in the bullying, and the effects the internet is having on youth.

The federal government has recently talked about introducing a cyber-bullying law, but there is little said on how that will prevent bullying among youth.

A group of Grade 11 and 12 students all agreed that bullying is a problem at their age. They explained that there is a fine line between bullying and joking around, noting that it matters who the person is and how well you know them when it comes to teasing.

Students also feel that they would benefit from increased awareness and education.

“Past [the course] Planning 10, they don’t talk about any social interaction,” said Jonah Tsumura, a Grade 12 student, adding that bullying is clearly an issue needed to be dealt with but isn’t getting the attention it should.

“Teachers can encourage more interaction between students in their class, and take focus off of some of the academic aspects of the class and focus on how the kids can interact,” said Tsumura.

Blandford agreed that teachers need to be on top of cyber-bullying, even if it’s happening outside of classes. “When they’re getting bullied outside of school, it’s going to affect them inside of school,” he said.

Most school districts have policies that deal with bullying, which is often spelled out on their websites.

But not all cases of bullying can fall under these policies.

“It’s probably best dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but there are obviously guidelines that those policies help to set out,” said Blandford, making the case for more strategies to deal with bullying.

Joan Nesbitt, a criminology professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, too noticed cyber-bullying, even at a university level.

“I can certainly see there are students out there that have the potential to be abusive online,” she said, referring to her online classes.

Nesbitt said that if that behavior happens in a controlled environment, where a teacher is present in the conversation, who knows what goes on in less controlled internet environments.