Bullying Gut Check: Is It Really an Epidemic?
Ida Lieszkovszky / StateImpact Ohio
First-grader Erica Geisey was a favorite target of bullies until her school adopted a new anti-bullying technique: empowering students to be kind to their bullies. Geisey says it's hard, but for the most part it's working.
It seems like bullying is in the news constantly these days, from documentaries focusing on the problem in schools to news reports of victims committing suicide or shooting their classmates.
But is bullying really the epidemic some describe it to be?
When news of the shootings at Chardon High School in Northeast Ohio first broke this past spring, the immediate consensus was that the shooter must have been a victim retaliating. But, it’s not that simple. In this case it wasn’t bullying; it was mental illness.
And then there’s “Bully” the movie that includes the story of a victim who committed suicide. The American Suicide Prevention Foundation issued a release criticizing the film for assuming too strong a correlation between bullying and suicide, a relationship the foundation says hasn’t been supported by research.
- Is Bullying An Epidemic?Some experts say bullying feels like an epidemic because we’re hearing about it more, not because it’s happening more often.Download
It’s this sort of crying wolf, or in this case crying bully that worries Israel Kalman, a former school psychologist and founder of the Bullies 2 Buddies program. He says it’s not just the extreme behavior like school shootings that gets labeled as bullying these days, more often it’s the little things on the other end of the spectrum.
“The current definition of bullying really boils down to all negative behavior. Anything that you do that can upset another person is bullying.”
–Israel Kalman, Founder of Bullies 2 Buddies
“The current definition of bullying really boils down to all negative behavior,” Kalman says. “Anything that you do that can upset another person is bullying.”
The traditional definition of bullying comes with three check boxes: there must be some harm done to the victim, there is a power imbalance between the two parties, and it has to be a repetitive problem.
Bullying used to mean all three boxes were checked, but these days Kalman says just one of those components is enough for educators and parents to cry, “bully.”
“If you say something stupid and I roll my eyes, I’m bullying you and it’s now the teacher’s responsibility to make sure that children don’t roll their eyes,” says Kalman.
Okay, maybe kids can still get away with eye rolling, but Kalman says it feels like bullying is an epidemic because people are talking about it more, not because it’s actually happening more.
Ida Lieszkovszky / StateImpact Ohio
Kristyn Singleton of JFK Catholic School in Warren says bullying does happen in her school, but she says some parents also tend to be overprotective of their children.
Kristyn Singleton, director of curriculum at John F. Kennedy Catholic School in Warren, agrees.
She says it’s not unusual for parents to come in to the school complaining of another student who dislikes their child, and demanding that the school do something about it.
Singleton says she thinks bullying has always existed, “but I think that as a society we’ve become so politically correct and I think as parents we really take things to heart.”
But all that’s not to say bullying doesn’t happen.
Amid all the misdiagnoses, bullying is still very much a problem in schools and haunts many students daily.
What schools usually do is punish the accused bully, but in the case of JFK Catholic, it recently switched to a different technique: the Bullies 2 Buddies approach of encouraging kids to resolve their conflicts by being kind to classmates who are mean to them. Sound familiar? It’s inspired by the “Golden Rule.”
Singelton says this year in particular there was a group of first-grade girls who’ve struggled with bullying.
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Usually Geisey’s response is something along the lines of “it’s okay.” As in, it’s okay if you don’t like me. She’s been taught to try to diffuse her bullies by joking with them and loving them – if she can.
It’s not easy.
She says she’s going to counseling, where they tell her not to let it bother her. “But it kind of does,” she confesses.
Geisey may never learn to love her bullies, and who can blame her? But she says things are getting better.
In December, before the school changed its anti-bullying program from one that focuses on punishing bullies to one that tries to empower victims, there were seven bullying-related discipline referrals to the principal’s office. Since January, there have been two.
In fact, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of students nationwide who reported being afraid of an attack at school dropped from 12 percent in 1995 to 4 percent in 2009.
Christine Bhat, an assistant professor and bullying expert at Ohio University doesn’t buy that data.
“Much of the bullying that happens through the use of technology or relational bullying does fly under the radar.”
–Christine Bhat, Assistant Professor at Ohio University
“Much of the bullying that happens through the use of technology or relational bullying does fly under the radar.”
Bhat says there may be fewer playground fights breaking out, but that doesn’t mean kids are nicer to each other. They’ve just moved those attacks online.
Bhat suggests the best way to cut down on bullying is to teach children when they’re young about what’s wrong, and what’s right, and that what’s wrong in person is just as wrong online.
Clarification: A line at the beginning of this story about T.J. Lane, the shooter at Chardon High School states that he was not motivated by bullying but rather suffers from mental illness. This reflects the statements of the prosecutor in the case, as well as a psychologist who testified that Lane has “mental illness of psychotic proportions.” You can read more about that here. Lane’s lawyers have been silent under a gag order, but have not disputed expert testimony that suggests Lane is mentally ill and suffers through periods of psychosis.
Furthermore, in Ohio criminal cases, there are generally two stages where mental illness can be applied.
· The first is before trial, if an individual is so unwell he cannot aid with his own defense. A judge can commit someone to treatment to try to get them to the point of understanding the proceedings, and then they can be tried.
· Ohio also allows a defense of “not guilty by reason of insanity” in a trial, which basically says the person’s mental illness was so severe, they could not tell right from wrong when they committed the crime. That is what’s called an “affirmative defense,” in which the burden of proof is on defense attorneys, rather than prosecutors.
