Remember the days when bullies lifted kids up by the front of their shirts against a locker demanding lunch money? How about the days when standing up to a bully was between the student and the bully, settling the score face-to-face during recess?
It seems those days have quickly passed and the new requirements for being a bully today seemed to have been turned up a few notches, becoming even more brutal than many of us care to remember.
Before, gossip was spread through slambooks. Today, gossip is spread through Facebooks. Because of this, many students who are victims of online bullying — and their parents — think it should be the school’s responsibility to take more action to discipline these online bullies. According to an article in The New York Times, many students all across the country are challenged with online bullies, and a lot of the time their parents try to seek justice by involving the school system.
As much as I want to agree that schools should protect their students from online-bullies and gossip, I honestly can’t. My reason is simply that it is not the school’s place. Schools aren’t the community referee when someone spreads a rumor. I feel it isn’t the responsibility of the school to tell a person who they should or shouldn’t be allowed to bring to prom.
School systems have enough on their plate as it is, and I don’t think it should be considered that each institution can create complete justice. Instead, the number one (and only priority) should be to educate. That is, unless the online bullying is taking place on school grounds, which is a different story.
I think the No. 1 focus of school should be to focus on preparing students intellectually. How can we make them the referee of all social difficulties that happen off of school property? That is the job of the parents. What is being said to a child, or what a child is saying, is something that should be monitored by the parents. This idea of involving school administrators seems like a complete abandonment of parental responsibility.
The attitude throughout the minds of most of parents seems to be that as far as their children are concerned, they can have all the rights and the teachers and administration can have all the responsibilities. They can take legal action against others if anything goes wrong yet make no attempt to guide children to make better, moral decisions. This doesn’t apply to all parents but the attitude is very common.
The very most that should really be done is teachers, school faculty and both families should be made aware of the situation, in a joint meeting with the kids. This would allow bullies to understand their behavior is being closely watched, the victims to know they have support and the parents to exercise appropriate supervision in the future.
Yet, there are the parents of the cyber-bullies who tend to brush it off as though it’s nothing to bat an eyelash over. When parents actually defend this behavior, how can we be surprised when the children possess a moral compass that is any different?
Obviously there is great harm that can come to children through cyber-bullying. Anything that goes online really lasts forever and this younger generation really doesn’t seem to comprehend the consequences of their actions. It hasn’t become any harder for these kids to have access to social media in order to attempt to destroy the lives and self-esteem of others.
You might think I’m referring to elementary, middle and high school students, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Cyber-bullies can be all ages and strike in different forms, from hateful comments on an opinion article, to a coworker who guilts someone into taking on more than he or she has time for.
The sad truth is, sometimes these people never grow up. But, for the most part, the victims do grow up and find it unnecessary to include anyone who doesn’t need to be involved because they’ve matured enough learn how to handle it themselves.
Kids and teens can be extremely merciless and their actions stem from behavior that was definitely learned, but bullying has been around since before the times of texting, instant messaging and Facebook. Life might have been simpler but it wasn’t any safer or kinder.
Cristina Toscano is a State News guest columnist. Reach her at toscanoc@msu.edu.
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