Bullies - a growing problem - school bullies

Current Events, Feb 13, 1995

A 17-year-old boy in North Dakota had been constantly picking on a 14-year-old boy. The older boy kept calling the younger one "Dumbo" and built snowmen with big ears to ridicule him. The younger boy's father went to court.

A lawyer for the 17-year-old claimed that the First Amendment protected his client. But last year, a judge ordered an end to the bullying. He cited an anti-stalking law intended to protect battered women. In December, the North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the judge.

The judge's decision sounded extreme to some people. But bullying is a serious problem in many schools--and it's getting worse in the United States as a whole. "There's no question that aggressive behavior is increasing, and bullying is part of that," says Susan Safranski, president of the National Association of School Psychologists.

Bullying is bad enough for the victim, but some people see such behavior as leading to worse actions. "As a pediatrician [a doctor specializing in children's medicine] in a middle-class suburb of Boston, I have noticed an increase in child-to-child injuries in my practice since 1985," wrote Luisa C. Stigol, M.D., recently. She believes that school bullying leads to violence in the streets.

Americans, of course, are not the only people plagued by school bullying. A Norwegian psychologist who has studied this problem in Scandinavia estimates that one in seven children there is a bully or a victim. But that does not excuse bullying anywhere.

Have you seen people bullied in your school? What do you think should be done to nend the problem of bullying?