If you can’t say anything nice then don’t say anything.
Our podcast on bullying:
Bullying is recognised as mean behaviours happening over a longer period of time. This could be insulting someone, deliberately hurting someone, spreading rumours about someone or leaving someone out of a group.
We took a survey within our year group about bullying. Our first question was to see how many people have been bullied before, 39% of people said they have been bullied before while 52% said they haven’t, the rest said they didn’t want to answer. When we asked them if they have had an experience similar to bullying i.e. teasing or people making rude remarks. 60% of people said they have had this happen to them. We found out that 4% of people openly admitted to have bullied while 8% said they would prefer not to say. Our next question was whether people have witnessed bullying, 53% of survey takers said they have, with most people supporting or telling the teacher about what they saw.
Bullying can occur in a lot of different ways like cyber bullying, physical bullying and verbal bullying. Children who are perceived as “different” (e.g different race, sexuality, appearance, disability, weight) by their peers are more likely to be bullied. Some people who bully are actually doing it in self-defence, they are scared that other people will bully them so they become the threat. Nowadays cyber bullying is more common than other forms of bullying, this is because people are more on electronic devices. This is because people can say more online, not face-to-face, because they are hidden behind a screen and do not the chance of getting into a fight and getting hurt.
By Tamar, Kasia, Sara and Charlie from the British School in the Netherlands
