Uncovering the hidden causes of bullying and school violence

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

In the case of the 15-year-old boy in South Carolina-he said he got excited and scared when the convenience clerk turned around; his heart rate went up; the flow of adrenaline closed down his forebrain, he panicked and reflexively he did what he was conditioned to do: He pulled the trigger, shooting just as accurately as he had done hundreds of times before when he was playing video games. Our children are learning to kill and to enjoy it (Grossman, 1998).

Here are some additional statistics:

60 percent of men on TV dramas are depicted in violent scenes; 11 % are killers (Grossman, 1998).

In the media in general, the majority of victims are women and children. (Grossman, 1998).

20 percent of suburban high-school students endorsed the idea of shooting someone "who has stolen something from you." (Grossman, 1996).

Bullying is pervasive in most schools. Some statistics that bear this out are:

Half of all violence against teenagers occurs in school buildings, on school property, or on the street in the vicinity of the school. Most begins as bullying or putdowns (NIDR, 1999).

The National School Safety Center estimates that more than 525,000 attacks, shakedowns, and robberies occur per month in public secondary schools in the United States (Weinhold & Weinhold, 1998).

The National Education Association estimates that 160,000 students miss school every day (totaling 28 million missed days per year), because of fear of attack or intimidation by a bully (Fried & Fried, 1996).

Students receive an average of 213 verbal put-downs per week, or 30 per day (Fried, personal communication, 1996).

In a survey of 558 students in a Midwestern middle school, the researchers found that 80 percent of the students had engaged in bullying behaviors in the previous 30 days (Espelage et al., 1999).

80 to 90 percent of adolescents report some form of victimization from a bully at school (Espelage et al., 1999). 90 percent of all students thought that bullying caused social, emotional, or academic problems for the students who were bullied (Weinhold & Weinhold, 2000).

69 percent of all students believe that schools respond poorly to bullying and victimization (Weinhold & Weinhold, 2000).

How dog, bullying differ frm grade co grads? (Olweus, 1994).

Bullying occurs in every grade, but it happens most frequently in grades 4 through 8.

Bullying usually starts as teasing and put-downs with younger bullies and then becomes more physical and more violent as bullies get older.

Bullies can be easily identified in each grade by the sixth week of the school year.

Potential bullies can be easily identified as early as preschool if we recognize the early warning signs.

How does bullying differ between boys and girls? (Saunders, 1997).

Boys tend to use direct physical and verbal attacks to bully others.

Girls tend to use more indirect, subtle, and social methods such as exclusion, manipulation, and spreading rumors.

Boys tend to bully other boys (80 percent) and girls (60 percent).

Boys are more likely than girls to be both perpetrators and victims of aggressive physical and verbal bullying by peers.