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This is the VOA Special English Education Report. |
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An old problem is getting new attention in the United States: |
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bullying.Recent cases included the tragic case of a fifteen-year-old girl |
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whose family moved from Ireland. |
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Phoebe PrincePhoebe Prince hanged herself in Massachusetts in January following months of bullying.Her parents criticized her school for failing to protect her. |
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Officials have brought criminal charges against several teenagers. |
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Judy Kuczynski is president of an anti-bullying group called Bully Police USA. |
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Her daughter Tina was the victim of severe bullying starting in middle school in the state of Minnesota. |
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JUDY KUCZYNSKI:"Our daughter was a very outgoing child.She was a bubbly personality,very involved in all kinds of things,had lots of friends. |
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And over a period of time her grades fell completely. |
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She started having health issues.She couldn't sleep. |
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She wasn't eating.She had terrible stomach pains. |
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She started clenching her jaw and grinding her teeth at night.Didn't want to go to school." |
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Bullying is defined as negative behavior repeated over time against the same person. |
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It can involve physical violence.Or it can be verbal --for example,insults or threats. |
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Spreading lies about someone or excluding a person from a group is known as social or relational bullying. |
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And now there is cyberbullying,which uses the Internet,e-mail or text messages. |
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It has easy appeal for the bully because it does not involve face-to-face contact and it can be done at any time. |
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The first serious research studies into bullying were done in Norway in the late nineteen seventies. |
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The latest government study in the United States was released last year. |
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It found that about one-third of students age twelve to eighteen were bullied at school. |
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Examples included being made fun of,pushed,spit on,threatened or excluded from activities. |
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Some students had their property damaged. |
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About four percent reported being the victims of cyberbullying. |
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The study took place in two thousand seven. |
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Susan Swearer is a psychologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-director of the Bullying Research Network. |
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She says schools should treat bullying as a mental health problem to get bullies and victims the help they need.She says bullying is connected to depression, |
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anxiety and anti-social behavior,and bullies are often victims themselves. |
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What can be done to prevent bullying?That will be our subject next week. |
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And that's the VOA Special English Education Report,written by Nancy Steinbach. |
