Stop it
Anyone who’s ever gone to school is familiar with bullying, either through observation or personal experience. There was always some kid, or group of kids, who enjoyed tormenting others.
Back in the day, the victim didn’t have many choices. He or she could physically confront the tormentor: Delivering a black eye could be a convincing signal to back off, although, depending on the size and disposition of the bully, head-on confrontation was not always advisable.
The other alternative was to suffer in silence. Reporting the problem to a teacher, who wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything, was only likely to make matters worse. For the most part, dealing with bullies was seen as just a part of growing up. But it’s hardly an acceptable part of maturing when a bully makes life so miserable that tragedy results. When an individual is harassed and mentally tortured to the point where suicide seems the only way out, or when the emotional trauma leaves deep scars that can haunt a lifetime — that type of bullying is nothing short of criminal.
The stories of bullying victims driven to desperation never fail to grab our attention. Cyberbullying has raised the problem to a whole new level. Calling the problem an epidemic is probably not an exaggeration.
Except for the victims themselves, no one feels the pain more than the parents of a child who has been bullied. One of those parents testified last week before state Rep. Paul Clymer’s House Education Committee during discussion of House Bill 2464, which addresses harassment, intimidation and bullying in the public schools. She told the committee how her 14-year-old son had been bullied for five years before committing suicide.
Montgomery County Rep. Tom Quigley’s bill, which has a number of co-sponsors, would require school boards across the state to adopt anti-harassment and bullying policies if they have not already done so, based on a model policy developed by the Department of Education. The DOE would then oversee the districts for compliance and submit annual reports to the General Assembly.
Some school districts no doubt take bullying more seriously than others. This bill would be an attempt to impress upon every school district the need to identify and deal with all degrees and forms of bullying, from that shove in the lunch line or words on the school bus to aggressive attacks on Facebook.
Naturally, some of last week’s debate focused on concerns about the bill, such as how it meshes with existing federal statutes. Fine. Possible shortcomings, discrepancies and loopholes should be identified.
But there is a demonstrated need for a comprehensive strategy to deal with bullying, and until such a strategy is put in place, we’ll hear more accounts of young people forced to endure taunts and ridicule, with sometimes terrible results. As one lawmaker said about the legislation, “Stop … telling me how we can’t do it, and tell me how we can get it to work.”
– Bucks County Courier Times