Article: Beating Bullying
By Carrie Briffett, Communications Officer, Mental Health Foundation
Introduction
The forum - a bullying culture?
Methods of bullying
Successful approaches
New programmes
Future strategies
Websites of interest
Leave a comment
Turn around New Zealand's high rate of bullying by looking at the overall school climate and sharing skills; that's the main message to come from an innovative anti-bullying event organised by the Mental Health Foundation.
New Zealand ranks second worst among 37 countries when it comes to bullying in primary schools, according to a major international report released at the end of 2008. Almost three quarters of around 5000 New Zealand Year Five students said they had been bullied in the preceding month, the Trends In International Mathematics And Science Study found. The country's rates were more than 50% above the international average.
The Foundation's youth health promoters, Tina Helm and Angela Culpin, are taking action on bullying by bringing together experts to share their knowledge and inform interested individuals of programmes that tackle the issue.
"We want to give people the opportunity to engage and learn about how to counter bullying. There is a definite connection between those who experience bullying and mental health issues." Tina Helm.
The Bullying Forum - a full-day event held in Onehunga, Auckland on 13 April - looked at what kind of bullying is taking place, the methods of bullying that occur, what is currently being done to address it and how this can be improved upon. Around 150 people heard from presenters and took part in discussions on the issues. Attendees included individuals from schools, police, media and social workers, as well as interested parents.
The forum: a bullying culture?
Bullying based on someone's physical appearance or sexual identity, as well as the connection between sexual violence and bullying, is given particular attention. In each case, negative but socially permissible comments are seen as being part of the destructive impact of being bullied.
Gaayathri Nair, presenting on behalf of Eating Difficulties Education Network (EDEN), explains that bullying about looks and body shape often underlies other kinds of bullying, and has also been found to be the most prevalent kind among both genders. Gaayathri says when it comes to making negative comments about the weight of an obese person, there is a persistent idea that negative comments are seen as 'for their own good'.
The combined negative effect of deliberate bullying and indirect insults are discussed by Rainbow Youth's Priscilla Penniket. She explains how homophobia can be played out in different ways, such as continually using language that leads to negative feelings, examples being ‘that's so gay' or jokingly calling someone a ‘faggot'; as well as direct abuse towards someone because of their sexual identity or sexuality.
Kate Butterfield of Bodysafe also talks of a culture that allows what are seen as ‘harmless' sexual taunts around people's bodies and/or sexual experience. She speaks of educating students to "understand the implication and consequences of what they say."
She notes that research indicates sexual bullying behaviour may translate later into sexually violent relationships.
Methods of bullying
A newer aspect of bullying is how to help young people protect themselves from bullying via mobile phones or the internet, without cutting young people off from technology. Netsafe's Lee Chisholm says the number one technology-based concern for young people is being bullied through the net.
"Young people need the skills to negotiate the perils of the net; you can't protect them against the web: it's interactive. They are the web," she says.
Forum attendees suggest cyberbullying is more frightening than other types of bullying as it can be completely anonymous. Other issues raised are that bullying through the internet means many people see the unpleasant things that are being said or done to someone and that young people may feel it is relentless as their mobile phone or email can be targeted.
Successful approaches
The good news is that for each of these issues and modes of bullying, the relevant organisations work towards countering bullying and its negative impact through such means as running in-school workshops. They say they work to address the culture that dismisses some negative comments as harmless.
In addition, there are general anti-bullying programmes in schools. The Peace Foundation's Yvonne Duncan says that since the Cool Schools programme trialled in 1991, the approach has been widely adopted and now over 400 schools are using it. The project trains students to be mediators in other student conflicts.
Christina Barruel, Cool Schools national trainer, says the mediators take a neutral, confidential position, listen to both sides of view and aim for a win-win situation. "These are relationship building skills," she says. "Conflict isn't easy; it's in everyone's life. It's how you deal with it that makes the difference."
Jonnie Black, a past pupil and advanced mediator from Mt Roskill Grammar, Auckland, explains how the programme has inspired him: he wants to be a role model to other young Māori men and his 10-year plan is to be an international mediator.
New programmes
A unique approach to tackling bullying is discussed by Mike Williams, head of student support at Edgewater College. A student who is being bullied, along with the counsellor and teachers at the school, puts together 'undercover teams' of six students. The team includes two of the worst bullies, although they are never named as such, along with four students who are neither bullies nor bullied. The team is told there is bullying in their class and they have been chosen as ‘secret agents' to counter it. The students discuss with the counsellor what they can do to address the issue.
"It's about changing relationships," Mike says, calling it a "playful approach to a serious problem". He says he has led 27 teams since 2004 and a number of other New Zealand schools have also picked up on this approach. Like the Cool Schools project, the undercover teams take a non-punitive approach. Mike adds that some bullies feel constrained by others' expectations that they will behave in a bullying way. This project allows the chance to break free of habitual actions and be supportive. None of the rest of the class knows about the undercover teams.
Future strategies
The overarching message coming from many of the presenters is to take a broad approach in tackling bullying. Jo Robertson and Siobhan Harrod from LearnEd discuss how their two-day workshops aim to alter the whole school environment in order to decrease bullying.
They say what's needed is a "positive school culture with clear expectations and barriers". According to Jo and Siobhan, this is about having clear guidelines around safe reporting of bullying, and ensuring policies and definitions around bullying are both understood and used by all. They say each school has to consider approaches that best fit the needs of their students.
Dr Janis Carroll-Lind from The Children's Commission speaks about their new document that addresses this topic, Responsive Schools, which was released in March.
Janis says everyone - students, parents and teachers - must accept the fact that bullying happens in their school and take responsibility in countering it. "Bullying happens in every school, despite a school's best efforts against it," she says. "What we need to do is acknowledge bullying happens and is a risk to be managed."
She also advocates taking a wide view. "The only programmes that are effective are those that attempt to alter the whole school environment rather than focusing on bullies and victims alone," she says. "It has to be a whole school approach."
Websites of interest
- EDEN (www.eden.org.nz/)
- Rainbow Youth (www.rainbowyouth.org.nz/)
- Netsafe (www.netsafe.org.nz/)
- Bodysafe (www.rapecrisis.org.nz/content.aspx?id=24)
- LearnEd (www.learned.co.nz/)
- The Children's Commission (www.occ.org.nz/)
- The Peace Foundation (www.peace.net.nz/)
- Cool Schools (www.peace.net.nz/index.php?pageID=24)
Comments
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Posted by Rosalie Liddle Crawford 3:05 pm, 28 Apr 2010 Reply
hi Carrie
This is an excellent article. Another website of interest for you is www.webhealth.co.nz where people can search for and find organisations in their own region that can assist them with bullying issues. All they need to do it type in "bullying" as a keyword.
Cheers
Rosalie -
Posted by Caroline 4:16 pm, 30 Apr 2010 Reply
Congratulations for staging the Bullying Forum! I love the video clips!
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Posted by Lisa Gembitsky 4:03 pm, 25 Feb 2011 Reply
I think this is great!! New Zealand has got a problem, just like the rest of the world and it's no different to what we see in our schools. We are all looking for a fix or a solution to this problem. Teachers can only do so much for our youth so either the students themselves or the parents need to take responsibility for teaching and learning acceptable social behaviour, social skills and empathy towards others. There is a great website and programme in New Zealand called 'Konfident Kidz'
www.konfidentkidzone.com
It teaches kids how to take responsibility for their actions, builds confidence, and makes them aware of dangerous situations, amongst many other things. The kids that do this programme absolutley love it, and rave about it for months after, most of them come back to do it again!!
www.konfidentkidzone.com -- check it out well worth it!! -
Posted by robert106 8:13 am, 12 Oct 2011 Reply
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