Uncovering the hidden causes of bullying and school violence

Counseling and Human Development, Feb 2000 by Weinhold, Barry K

In middle-school, girls who mature early are often bullied and sexually harassed by boys.

Girls tend to bully only other girls.

Boys usually bully alone, and girls bully in groups.

Bullying Outside of School

How pervasive is bullying outside of schools? Considering that bullying is a hidden part of the overall culture of violence that is supported by dominator values, you can see that it occurs almost everywhere-at home, at work, and on the road.

At home, some key points in bullying are as follows.

Older siblings often bully their younger brothers and sisters.

Bullies and victims of bullying often grow up to become batterers. Adult perpetrators of domestic violence often have been identified as bullies or victims of bullying while they were in school (Straus & Genes, 1988).

Bullying occurs in the workplace as well. Bully Online ( 1999) reported the results of a study, as follows.

Bullies at school who get away with it often become serial bullies at work.

Children who get bullied at school tend to become targets for bullying at work.

More than one million U. S. workers are assaulted annually.

The most common reasons people are bullied on the job are that they are good at their job and they are popular with other employees (the workplace bully is driven by jealousy and envy).

In the United Kingdom, one in three people leave their job because of bullying.

The same study showed that 53 percent of UK employees have been bullied during their working life.

Road rage has become recognized in recent years. Nerenberg ( 1999) reported the following:

Road rage is another form of bullying.

In 1996, 28,000 Americans died because of aggressive driving.

There are 2 billion episodes of road rage per year in the United States.

Violent incidents of road rage have increased 51 percent over the last five years.

Collective Denial About Effects of Bullying

The most common way that schools deal with bullying is to ignore it. Many teachers don't see anything wrong with bullying. One Columbine student reported, "Teachers would see them push someone into a locker, and they'd just ignore it" (Prendergast, 1999). A junior at Columbine said, "I can't believe the faculty couldn't figure it out. It was so obvious that something was wrong" (Dube, 1999). In another study, teachers were able to identify only 10 percent of the students who reported being a victim of a bully (Paulk et. al., 1999). A prevailing attitude among some teachers is that those who get bullied probably had it coming to them. In families, fewer than one in 10 incidents of bullying involving suspected child abuse or domestic violence ever get reported, and of the incidents that are reported, few are ever investigated and almost none result in any criminal charges (Weinhold, 1991).

How does bullying differ from normal peer conflicts? The collective denial is supported by misconceptions about how bullying situations differ from normal peer conflicts. There is a big difference between these situations (Weinhold, 1999a). A bullying situation has six defining factors: