Bullying and Harassment plays a huge part within society and within the public school system. Bullying and harassment runs deep in the public school system and is increasing dramatically across the nation.  Verbal, mental, physical, and cyberbullying are unacceptable, mentally damaging, and dreadful to the student being bullied.

Through my research paper.  I will help to raise awareness about bullying in hopes of providing help for those that have been bullied, show actions that may help stop bullying, and provide assistance to the students that are currently and have been bullied.  Bullying has a tendency to make teenage student feel inferior. I decided to do this topic because I have been in the same situation of being pushed around by bullies and I did not know what to do next. Seeing the recent suicides in teens, especially with students made me want to take a stand and speak up for those who cannot for them self. People bully because they want to show their power and show that they are in charge, or they have been a victim of bullying themselves. I am going to provide reasons to back up my statement.

         What is bullying? “Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time” (What Is Bullying 2015).  Bullying is a huge problem within all grade levels across the nation, once noticed as regular, if not harmless, bullying now is one of the main threats to safety within a school system.

In the 1990’s, several school shooting were committed by victims of bullying.  I believe bullying is super harmful and needs to be stopped. Bullying does not happen with people with the same amount of strength, it usually involves a more powerful perpetrator intimidating a perceived weaker person. Bullying depends on a direct balance of power, and has a tendency to causes stress on the less powerful individual. There are 3 forms of direct bullying.

The first form of direct bullying is physical, which can be poking, hitting, or pushing. The second form of direct bullying is verbal which can be considered calling names, yelling at the person, and constant teasing. The third form of direct bullying is cyberbullying, which occurs online and via social media.

 Indirect bullying is social in nature and involves the bully excluding his or her victim form a peer group an example of this is, spreading bad rumors. The graph below shows that cyberbullying can happen to anyone. It is a 50 percent chance and the person that said “they don’t know, or maybe” have experienced bullying and does not  want to speak up out of  fear.  Around 35 percent of the students in the local school system have experienced bullying.

That means around 35% of the students are not safe in their environment and aren’t learning to the best they can, the achievement scores for the school are suffering because of this.    Bullying is most common among children between children between the age of 8 to 15, which are the stages of late childhood and early adulthood, and it occurs mostly in middle schools and elementary schools, with sighs of it still prevalent in high schools. As children get older the types of bullying changes. Younger school bullies usually use name calling as a form of bullying, and as they mature the name calling turn into physical aggression, which are more likely to turn into sexually harass their victims. In the recent years some adolescents have begun to use chat room, email , and other internet items to bullying which is called cyberbullying one of the 3 main types of direct bullying. An example of cyberbullying is  “Aaliyah’s Mother says her daughter committed suicide over cyber-bullying.  It had to be a horrible death, and they need to do something about Facebook and the bullying, there’s a lot of kids dying over that,” said Rodriguez.

Aaliyah, she says was the target of bullying by a few girls who would send her nasty messages, calling her derogatory names and the girl constantly picked on her . Something Aliyah’s friends witnessed firsthand” (Mother says her daughter committed suicide over cyber-Bullying.” NBC4i.Com, 19 Dec.

2017). That did not have to happen to Aaliyah, her life meant something to someone. That is one reason why bullying has to stop.           School bullying has a lot of negative effects. Besides disrupting classroom events, bullying harms the children’s ability to learn in the classroom and has shown to contribute to the school dropout rates.  “Schools with high rates of bullying had dropout rate 29 percent above average, whereas schools with low levels of bullying had dropout rates 28 percent below average.

UVA professor Dewey Cornell points out that the study is the latest piece of evidence that an inclusive school climate is vital to student success” (ThinkProgress, ThinkProgress, 1 Nov. 2012).  As a subtle form of violence, bullying creates and unsafe school environment and can evolve into more serious violence. People who witness bullying happening starts to get fearful that they will become a victim of bullying themselves.

Bullying’s damaging effects can be similar to those caused by child abuse. Victims of bullying suffer from poor social skills, body imaging issues, and physical distress. Many of the target victims have low self-esteem, symptoms to stay out of school for bad headaches and fatigue due to bullying. Some would say they are staying out of school because they are scare and other might say bullying has physical and psychological repercussions. Most victims react by suffering in silence afraid it will trigger the bullies, and in some cases the victim acts out in violence behavior towards themselves which can result in suicide. A school can have a certain feeling about it. It should feel like a place where everyone is respected and where everyone is safe.

You can help make it that way by accepting and supporting others. Let people know that you are not interested in bashing anyone for any reason, not because they’re fat, poor, gay, short, or anything. Schools should be kept safe and all students feel safe in the in a system that was created to help the people.

Bullying and harassment runs deep in the public school system and is increasing dramatically across the whole world.  Verbal, physical, and cyberbullying are unacceptable and must be stopped. Bullying has a direct effect on students dropping out, committing suicide as a way of coping, or hurting other people and example is school shooting. All these are reason for bullying to be stopped even more in public schools. Every student should be safe and happy in their learning environment to succeed to the best of their abilities.

Bullying should be stopped in public schools. Hopefully this makes a change