Half of the 942 pupils said that they had been bullied at least once or twice during their school careers; 44% admitted they had bullied someone else. Less than a third said that they had never been involved either as bully or victim. These figures seem all the more remarkable when it is realised that a narrow definition was borrowed from Norwegian researchers – ’Bullying is long-standing violence, mental or physical, conducted by an individual or a group against an individual who is not able to defend himself or herself in that actual situation.’ One-off incidents and fights between equals were specifically excluded.
Many of the victims wrote about what had happened to them years before, but some revealed a current torment:
I am scared stiff all the time and my schoolwork is being affected. I am also scared to go out. I want to stand up to the girl who is bullying me because she is making my life a misery, but I can’t.
14-year-old girl The pupils were asked how often they had been bullied since Christmas. This was chosen as an occasion which all could remember well and provided an accurate measure of their experiences over the previous six to ten weeks. Six per cent of the children said that they had been bullied ‘sometimes or more often’ in this short time, which was identical to the proportion of victims found in the very large Norwegian government-sponsored survey carried out by Dan Olweus in 1983.
We must be cautious in making general assumptions from these findings because of the small size of the sample, but interesting trends were noticed which may be of use to teachers, parents and others who are trying to help victims.
Although boys and girls were equally likely to be victims during their school career as a whole, there were fewer girls than boys among recent vic- tims. As children grow up they appear to be less likely to become victims, presumably developing protective or avoidance strategies of their own. But older girls seem to do this better than older boys, who sometimes feel that they have no one to turn to:
I have been picked on. People think I am nothing and say anything they want to me. Every day I feel rejected. It’s not that people use violence much, but I feel as if I am treated as a dustbin. I do want to come forward about this but as I am leaving in a few months I don’t see any reason to do so. Nor have I the courage.
16-year-old boy Although the proportion of 15–16-year-old boys who were victims of bullying was relatively small (4%), their sense of alienation and failure could be severe:
Sometimes you feel like dying because you can’t face up to it.
15-year-old boy
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Twelve per cent of 15–16-year-old boys claimed that they had recently bul- lied others. For them there seems to be less shame in admitting to being a bully than in being a victim. Virtually all the girls who commented thought that the answer to bullying lay in the adoption of a collective remedy:
People who are being bullied feel as if they are alone in that problem and most people, if not everybody, are against them. They need to be shown that they are not alone and unless they tell somebody, nothing can be done.
15-year-old girl Boys tended to suggest that victims should stand up for themselves. Quite a few said that they had taken up weightlifting or the martial arts, but with varying success:
I get bullied quite a lot. I try not to let it happen but I just can’t find the courage to fight back. I do press-ups and weights to give me more muscle so I can fight back and have a chance of winning. I don’t like fighting anyway. I think it’s a mug’s game.
15-year-old boy Society expects its young men to be aggressive but, paradoxically, punishes those who fight and alienates those who reject violence. No wonder adoles- cents are sometimes mixed up. Sue Askew and Carol Ross have described the social pressures which force many boys to choose what is for them an inap- propriate method of defence:
Toughness and aggression are approved of in boys – the argument goes as follows: boys are encouraged to be tough and stick up for themselves. This is not usually meant as an open encouragement for them to be violent, but more of a message that violence is all right if not taken to extremes ... and can, in many circum- stances, be a way of improving social status with other boys.
from Boys Don’t Cry (1988) An older boy who is not aggressive and who is bullied by others may lose so much status that life becomes unbearable. Seeking help could be perceived as a further sign of weakness. Perhaps as a result of this only 38% of male vic- tims had told someone else that they were being bullied, in contrast to 61% of girl victims. Given the success of older girls in avoiding bullying and their readiness to seek help, it is clear that schools must develop a telling ethos. Nobody, of whatever age or whatever sex, must ever feel that there is any shame in speaking openly about fears or concerns.
There are many potential benefits in store if this ideal can be achieved. Children may talk about other problems they are experiencing at school or at home; most will be fairly minor but others could be of the utmost gravity. Encouraging children to talk about being bullied by other children will make it easier for them to talk about being victimised or abused by adults. But this will only happen if schools are successful in creating an atmosphere of open- ness – and that will be difficult unless there is a national climate of concern about bullying and aggression.
BULLYING