As reported this week by the Associated Press, there’s been a dramatic drop in the percentage of children being bullied or beaten up by their peers. These findings were revealed in a national survey by experts who believe anti-bullying programs are starting to have an impressive impact on what has been a long standing and difficult problem.
The study, released by the U.S. Department of Justice, noted that the percentage of children reporting physical bullying over the past year had declined from 22 percent in 2003 to under 15 percent in 2008. That percentage difference is a huge drop in a relatively short period of time.
The survey’s lead author, Professor David Finkelhor, was pleased and encouraged by the findings. “Bullying is the foundation on which a lot of subsequent aggressive behavior gets built,” said Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. Finkelhor believes that if violence is indeed going down, we will reap future benefits in the form of lower rates of violent crime and spousal assault.
In a MarsVenusLiving article in June of 2009, “Bullying, A New Look at an Old Problem,” we noted that the American Academy of Pediatrics had published a new policy statement on a pediatrician’s role in preventing violence. For the first time the policy encompassed the topic of bullying. At the time of its publication, many doctors, who specialize in the field of children’s health, explained that they were glad to see this addition.
One such physician, Dr. Joseph Wright, senior vice president at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington and the chairman of the pediatrics academy’s committee on violence prevention, explained that a quarter of all children report that they have been involved in bullying, either as bullies or as victims. “Protecting children from intentional injury is a central task of pediatricians,” Dr. Wright said, “and bullying prevention is a subset of that activity.”
In the recent past it was estimated that each day in America 160,000 children refuse to go to school for fear of being bullied. By definition, bullying occurs when a child is repeatedly the target of teasing, taunts or actual physical attacks.
Finkelhor noted that anti-bullying programs had proliferated in recent years and have received funding boosts following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Colorado. ”There is evidence these programs are effective,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing the fruits of that.”
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, which has been implemented in several thousand schools across the US, is one such program. It includes forming an anti-bullying committee to intervene immediately if bullying is observed. A representative of the committee meets with students and parents as issues arise. The aim is to prevent patterns of violence from taking root and becoming part of the classroom dynamic.
Marlene Snyder, a development director for Olweus, said the survey’s results were heartening to those in the anti-bullying field but not cause for complacency. ”The decline is not happening everywhere,” she said. “It’s in schools where adults really understand how detrimental this conduct can be and have made a conscious effort to bring these numbers down.”
School violence is an issue that can be successfully addressed and behaviors modified only with a concerted effort on the part of educators and parents to take the problem seriously and work proactively to reduce, and hopefully one day eliminate, school and youth violence. These newly published results indicate that we are moving in the right direction, and we will hopefully continue down that path.
Workplace violence has unfortunately not gone down, I believe.