Chapter 24: What Schools Do To/for Kids Who Have Been Bullied: A Qualitative Study

INTRODUCTION A renowned expert on school bullying was speaking at a violence-prevention conference. She waxed eloquently about the desperately negative impacts of such bullying upon its victims, and why, therefore, bullying has to be prevented or significantly reduced. She described an exciting kickoff event for her particular anti-bullying program an Iowa school district. Even the governor made an appearance, and he gave a rousing keynote speech. At the end of the speech, he confided to the young students attendance that he, too, had been bullied as a child! That anecdote got me thinking: hey, this man was a victim of school bullying, and yet he managed to become the governor of Iowa. He didn't turn out so bad, did he? Why do some kids who get bullied go on Columbine-like school shooting rampages--while others go on to be Governors of Iowa? Is there anything that the schools themselves do to foster or discourage these kinds of outcomes? Why School Bullying Matters What has prompted the interest of policy makers, researchers, school districts, and administrations the phenomenon of school bullying? The inspiration appears to have grown from three sources: first, what might be characterized as a concern with bad things happening as an outgrowth of bullying behavior; second, a concomitantly evolving focus on children's fundamental rights; and third, a growing understanding of the negative psychological impacts of bullying upon its victims. Bad Things Happening. The sparks that galvanized researchers into exploring the whys and wherefores of modern-day school bullying originated from the trauma of school suicides and shootings (Espelage & Swearer, 2004; Smith, 2004; Smith & Brain, 2000). The researcher considered to be the father of modern bullying research, a much-published Scandinavian scholar named Dan Olweus, began studying bullying the 1970s and 1980s. He became interested bullying as a result of a spate of school suicides his native Norway; the children who killed themselves had apparently been brutally tormented by their peers (Olweus, 1993). A succession of school suicides caused by school bullying led to research activity this area Japan as well (Smith & Brain, 2000). In the United States, it was literally a trigger, as well as a number of explosive devices, that set off research interest into the bullying field: the Columbine shooting rampage (Espelage & Swearer, 2004). Reports that the two perpetrators had felt themselves to be persecuted by their peers created a groundswell of media attention, state and local policymaking, legislative enactments, and research on school violence general and bullying prevention particular. Even the United States Secret Service managed to get into the act: it turned its vaunted profiling and threat assessment skills to the problem of school violence, producing an extensive study of 30 seven incidents of targeted school violence over 25 years (Vossekuil Fein, Reddy, Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). One of its top 10 findings was that [m]any attackers felt bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack--indeed, an oft-quoted statistic is that 71% of the attackers studied had felt bullied by their peers (p. 21). The Right to be Safe School. Also driving research activity into the phenomenon of school bullying has been the conviction that children have a fundamental right to feel safe and secure their schools, and that bullying, even if it does not rise to the level of provoking retaliatory violence, violates that right (Smith, 2004). The immediate genesis of this conviction lies less reaction to the spates of bully-provoked violence and more a growing appreciation (especially among European, Australian, and Canadian researchers) for the human rights of individuals the international community. As noted by Smith (2004), a prominent British researcher the field, in a twenty-first century climate of increasing concern for rights of individuals and groups, . …

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