Title: Managing school bullying in New Zealand
Date: 19/06/2019
One in two kids are bullied at school, yet most schools claim to have a zero tolerance for bullying. In April 2017, a survey from OECD showed that school-bullying rate among 15-year-olds in New Zealand was the second-highest country in economic co-operation and development countries (Forsberg, 2019). Among the New Zealand students surveyed, there are more than a quarter said that they are bullied at least a few times a month. New Zealand’s cultural diversity and healthy inclusivity environment face threats from emerging incidents of bullying. Stopping school bullying requires understanding the bullying issue, exploring the sources such as parenting styles, and developing mitigation measures for the campus.
School bullying refers to unequal oppression among campus students. Bullying includes physical or verbal aggression, resistance, and exclusion in interpersonal interaction, and some talk like sexual harassment or the sneer, comment and ridicule for body parts. Forsberg asserts a general definition, “Bullying is an act of repeated aggressive behavior to intentionally hurt another person, physically or mentally. Bullying is characterized by an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person” (Forsberg, 2019).
Social learning promotes school bullying by influencing a child’s character. A child’s character development has a close relationship with family life because parents and siblings play an important role in children’s physical and mental development. When the child grows up in an environment rampant with hostility, irresponsibility, and indifference such as experiencing abandonment or has domestic violence, there is a likelihood of the child becoming a bully. Most of a child’s character comes from their parents. Transitioning into primary school, the teacher influences the behavior and style of the student. Teacher’s practice has a profound effect on children since they are in the imitation stage (Raskauskas et al., 2010). Therefore, if the teacher chooses the wrong parenting style, the possibility of bullying also increases. Furthermore, the teacher’s failure to intervene during a bullying incident instills false values in students. Teachers and parents behavior affects children as wrong education manifests in poor mannerisms among students in schools and social activities.
Bullying as an aggressive behavior with intent exists in many forms and happens in students’ daily campus life. According to the students, bullying in New Zealand, one may be left in the basket, be laughed at, be threatened, the property is taken by others, be beaten or pushed or be spread false rumors. Ethnic bullying takes every day in New Zealand campuses due to the difference in appearance, nation, physique, and language. Many overseas students have suffered different levels of exclusion, though these exclusions may be unintentional or deliberate. Bullying, as one of the particular kind of aggression behaviors, has terrible influences on bullies, victims, and their school surroundings as well (Coggan et al., 2003). As a country with a large number of foreigners, New Zealand has a considerable number of international students. However, some international students have a hard time on campus, perhaps just because of some characteristics that make them different from local people. For the bully, by continuing the process, he will form the wrong values or embark on the criminal road. For the bullied people, they will have psychological problems, affect his health, even affects personality development (Denny et al., 2015). Bullying persists because bullies believe their behavior to be healthy while relatives and teachers make bullies feel good about their actions.
Campus administrations should adopt various strategies to curb bullying and promote peaceful coexistence among the students. For instance, New Zealand school and Ministry of Education have adopted the New Zealand’s National Administration Guidelines requiring all schools to provide a safe environment for students. In this case, a safe environment encompasses physical safety and psychological security. Moreover, the school should have a self-censorship system to discern and handle with bullying such that a student bullied around school premises, including ethnic bullying, gets help from the school in time (Slee & Skrzypiec, 2016). School and the relevant departments will intervene and give correct educational guidance to the initiator of school bullying, spectator, and the mob. Also, parental attitude plays an essential role in dealing with bullying. Parents should help children know that being discriminated is not the child’s fault. Furthermore, parents should help the child build confidence because confidence shields the child through providing courage.
Effectively preventing the occurrence of school violence requires people to change their behaviors from the beginning. For instance, parents should pay attention to the education of children, their actions and ambitions, stopping the wrong things on time. Besides, teachers and parents should help children build up correct concepts and ideas when they are very young (Denny, 2015) While children are continually learning new skills and knowledge, they should also receive adequate moral education. This can fundamentally solve the problem. Let people stopped school bullying in the bud. Bullying is a vice affecting international students leading to inadequate scores and grades. Students should be taught the value if cultural exchange to help them tolerate cultural and social differences.
References
Coggan, C., Bennett, S., Hooper, R., & Dickinson, P. (2003). Association between bullying and mental health status in New Zealand adolescents. International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 5(1), 16-22.
Denny, S., Peterson, E. R., Stuart, J., Utter, J., Bullen, P., Fleming, T., … & Milfont, T. (2015). Bystander intervention, bullying, and victimization: A multilevel analysis of New Zealand high schools. Journal of school violence, 14(3), 245-272.
Forsberg, C. (2019). The contextual definition of harm: 11-to 15-year-olds’ perspectives on social incidents and bullying. Journal of Youth Studies, 1-15.
Raskauskas, J. L., Gregory, J., Harvey, S. T., Rifshana, F., & Evans, I. M. (2010). Bullying among primary school children in New Zealand: Relationships with prosocial behavior and classroom climate. Educational Research, 52(1), 1-13.
Slee, P. T., & Skrzypiec, G. (2016). School Bullying, Victimization, and Pro-social Behaviour. In Well-Being, Positive Peer Relations and Bullying in School Settings (pp. 109-133). Springer, Cham.