Tuesday, January 6, 2009

What students are saying

The role of bullying and harassing behavior in overall school violence has been ignored, and unexplored (Nansel et al., 2001; Pace, 2001).

"Research shows that parents and teachers greatly underestimate the frequency of bullying compared to student responses" (Coloroso, 2003, p.13).

There is no national data available on the prevalence of bullying (Nansel et al., 2001). However, limited research indicates that bullying may be as common as 75% of students surveyed (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, as cited in Papazian, 2000).

According to the U.S, Department of Justice figures, 160,000 students skip school each day because they fear victimization/being bullied; 20 percent of high school students are afraid to go to the restroom because of attacks (Fried & Fried, 1996).

In a study by Youth and Work Institute, youth participants stated that emotional violence often triggers more serious violence and the way to stop it is at the source, i.e. with the young people. In their own words, young people identified emotional violence as behaviors such as "teasing that goes beyond being playful and gets mean; …put-downs and gossip that are cruel; … rejection that feels like very real violence" to young people (p.3).

Young people have identified the need for change within their culture in the 2002 study introduced by Families and Work Institute (FWI) with Ask the Children: Youth and Violence (Galinsky & Salmond, 2002).

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