By JANELLE L. PLUMMER
Observer Staff
Nov. 8, 2007

Bullying is common in schools across America
Photo By Janelle Plummer

Everyday in schools throughout America, from elementary to high school, many children are bullied.

When children are bullied, they feel frightened, threatened and compelled to retaliate. If retaliation isn’t the solution, the victim is often suicidal.

How can parents, teachers and the school community work together to find the root cause of bullying?

Professor Brec Cooke, an education professor at American University, said that bullying was a power issue and a learned behavior. Usually, children who bully will see a bully type behavior at home.

“Anytime that someone is in the position to exercise control or privilege over someone else, you have the power issue that is involved,” Cooke said. “And typically, you have students that are bigger picking on students that are smaller. It’s the power and control issue.”

Cooke said, in order to understand bullying, one must examine the social institutions and elements that go into construction.

“You also have groups that are capable of picking on an individual or another group collectively in order to exercise their privilege in a need to demonstrate their superiority,” he said, “not because they feel insecure or inferior underneath, it’s more of a social construction and they are exercising something that they have learned.”

To find the root cause of bullying, Cooke said that schools must try to identify where bullying existed, find those places and intervene.

“Bullying doesn’t really work without the audience,” Cooke said. “It’s the theater of it as they say that really allows it to happen. It doesn’t work without a group to observe it.” But “of course,” he said, “it’s not going to take place where it is readily observed.”

A 2007 study titled Childhood Bullies and Victims and Their Risk of Criminality in Late Adolescence shows the correlation of childhood bullying and victimization with juvenile criminality.

“There is a strong correlation,” Cooke said. “These same students demonstrate criminal behavior later on in life.”
According to him, special education students are bullied more because of their learning disabilities.

Dee Williams, a former special education teacher’s aide for Frederick County Public Schools in Virginia, agrees with Cooke.

Williams worked at the elementary and high school levels with students who have suffered with learning disabilities.

She said students with autism, Down syndrome and other learning disorders are many times bullied in elementary school where there is a lot of name calling, such as students saying “you’re stupid or dumb.”

While some children retaliate, the victim often becomes a bully. “Of course, it can produce a bully in return,” Cooke said. “A lot of students react to bullying by becoming bullies and finding ways to pick on other people. Some of the behaviors like with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), their behaviors might be mistaken for bullying.”

Shareka Bannerman, 15, a sophomore at Suitland High School in Suitland, Md., said that she witnesses bullying everyday within the school.

“[Bullies] target the ones who do not fit in the crowd,” Bannerman said.

In her opinion, victims of bullies must stand up to the bully. She said bullies try to pick on her, but she stands up to them.

“In Prince George’s County it’s neighborhoods against neighborhoods,” Bannerman said. “[Gangs] try and bully you, and fight if you’re not from that neighborhood.” While the school does not offer any programs for victims of bullies, the guidance counselor and the principal are the only resources.

Bullying sometimes starts at home.

“Personally, I think the only reason why they do bully is because they do not get enough attention in the home and they try to get attention from other people.”

Williams said parents should be alert if their child is the victim.

“Parents have a fine line,” she said. “You want to educate your kids [about bullying], but you don’t want them to fight.”

Cooke said that in many of the school shootings that have happened in the past, the victim fought back, so schools should take bullying seriously.

“It’s a serious endeavor expression to make someone feel inferior by physical, verbal or mental abuse,” Cooke said.

Many people can recall the day in 1999 in Littleton, Colorado at Columbine High School when two students, full of rage and anger, killed their classmates, a teacher and themselves.

They were victims of bullying.

In Elliott Aronson’s book “Nobody Left to Hate”, proposes that schools must use teamwork to overcome animosity, build cooperation, empathy and compassion within the classroom and the entire school community.

The Childhood Bullies study shows that bullying is associated with mental abuse.

Stephen Wisecarver, an associate professor of psychology at Lord Fairfax Community College in Middletown, Va., said there are different factors in students bullying other children.

He said there could be a history of abuse or violent punishment in the home, frustration over lack of success in school, social life, extracurricular activities and a lack of friends to help them hone their social skills.

“Severe Learning Disabilities (LD) or ADHD can cause a kid to miss the non-verbal aspects of conversation and take a sarcastic remark literally, leading to ridicule and rejection,” Wisecarver said. “This can lead to what psychologists call a hostile attribution bias which causes them to automatically interpret the behavior of others as aggressive.”

In the end, in order to get to the root cause of bullying everyone must get involved, intervene and prevent this type of mental disorder.

Wisecarver thinks bullying must take a concerned effort from parents, schools and community leaders.