It Looks Like Anti-Bullying Programs in Schools Increase Bullying
Everyone knows that bullying can lead to severe problems. There are reams of evidence now that shows kids who get bullied are more likely to experience anxiety, extreme depression, low self-esteem, and — at worst — suicidal tendencies. Despite the risks that are known, bullying remains a problem. It's a complex issue, thus there are no easy ways to stop it. And now according to a new study, sometimes when experts try to stop bullying, they actually make it more pervasive.
Researchers from the University of Texas, Arlington, studied schools that had implemented anti-bullying programs, and found that bullying was more prominent at schools with these initiatives than at those schools without them. Simply put: Teaching kids not to be bullies can teach them how to be bullies. Seokijing Jeong and Michigan State doctoral student Byung Hyun Lee, crunched numbers from 195 schools and 7,000 students. They used data from the annual Health Behavior in School-Aged Children survey and prominent anti-bullying campaigns, such as "It Gets Better." The duo also asked students and faculty to answer a separate survey, which asked questions about the school's environment and violence prevention programs.
Their results seem counterintuitive. "The findings reveal that students attending schools in which bullying prevention programs are implemented are more likely to have experienced peer victimization, compared to those attending schools without bullying prevention," wrote Jeong and Lee.
However, when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that anti-bullying programs can do more harm than good. Why? Because the classes are explaining exactly how to be a good bully. "One possible reason for this is that the students who are victimizing their peers have learned the language from these anti-bullying campaigns and programs," Jeong said. "The schools with interventions say, 'You shouldn't do this,' or 'you shouldn't do that.' But through the programs, the students become highly exposed to what a bully is and they know what to do or say when questioned by parents or teachers."
Jeong and his colleague said that what programs should be doing is trying to find more sophisticated ways to deal with bullying. In other words, find the bully, then figure out why they're a bully, and you can start to change kids before they become aggressive. Of course the problem with that is the one thing kids who are victims don't have is time to figure things out. Until then, watch out for the bullies taking notes in the anti-bullying class.
[Pic via Flickr - Eddie~S]
