Blind to bullying! (Bullying in Schools)

Member Name: MandyMinx

Product:	Bullying in Schools
Date:	21/12/03 (84 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Low self esteem, Pain, despair

An 11 year old boy in Liverpool took and overdose of painkillers and died as a result.
Another death, another child. Another life lost.

Mum said that the child was being persecuted and couldn't even travel to school in the morning without a constant barrage of abuse and the fear of being hurt by some of his peers.
The school said that they weren't aware that there was a problem and they had a strict anti-bullying policy.

I say enough !

One child taking their own life out of desperation and despair is one too many. It has to stop and it has to stop now.
I wasn't shocked when I heard the statement from the child's school. I wasn't shocked when I heard exactly the same statement when the last 2 - 3 children who felt that there was no way out, nowhere to go, took their own lives. How many times are schools going to be allowed to get away with producing a policy for bullying and using it as an excuse for standing by and letting our children be hurt?
A policy is only worth the paper it is written on, if it actually works, and sadly in a lot of cases, a policy is a piece of paper that sits in a file, in an office drawer, gathering dust until the time of year comes around to review it.
Having a piece of paper that states that a school will not tolerate bullying is not enough.

How many times has the excuse 'We weren't aware of the problem' been offered up as an excuse. Not good enough!
In my experience many kids who are being bullied do tell. They tell until they are blue in the face, but the people who should be listening don't have the time.
I can talk from experience when I say that some schools have real problems with bullying and unfortunately it is easier to ignore the victim, after all, these are usually the withdrawn, quiet children who don't make very much noise and are not causing any trouble within the classroom.
Why upset the apple cart? It will sort itse
l
f out won't it?

Before I made the decision to move my son to another school I made 18 separate visits to the school he was at to try and sort the problem out. I used to hear the school secretary sigh on the phone whenever she realised it was me. The head teacher would make a point of telling me that she was really busy whenever I managed to pin her down, and my son found that his class teacher was a bit sharper with him and he got into trouble more often. They said that my son had problems interacting with the other children in the playground. They even hinted that if he was being bullied, he brought it on himself.....Hello!
On lots of occasions I almost felt bullied myself. Bullied by the system. A system that wasn't protecting my child from a bunch of kids his own age.
When I eventually decided that we had to move him for his own sake, the look of relief on the head teachers face told me that I had made the right decision.


I had to keep fighting for the rights of my child. I am his mum and as such I have a duty of care.
Schools have a duty of care too. Do we not leave our children with them on a daily basis. Is it not right that we should expect them to be safe while they are there? The law says that our children have to go to school. We have little choice. The law should therefore protect our kids while they are in the care of the school. They should be protecting our children.
In my opinion in many cases they are not doing enough to effectively sort these problems out. I have talked to mothers who have been asked by the school to prove that their child is being bullied and others, like myself who were told that their children brought it upon themselves.
It seems to me that a very clear message is being sent out to the victims of these horrible acts and that is that they might as well keep quiet, telling can sometimes make things worse in the long run.

'we weren't aware that this was happen
ing in
our school. We didn't know that there was a problem!'
Well you are not doing your job properly then are you?
Your policy is not working is it?
You're not listening!

How many more kids have to go through so much bullying that they feel there is no option but to end it all. Take their own life?
How much more evidence does there need to be before something is done to protect these kids?
How many more adults will have to carry the burden and emotional baggage that being bullied at school can leave them with?
How many more bullies are going to grow up thinking that what they do is acceptable, because no one is telling them otherwise?
Is it any wonder that society is becoming more violent?

My gran used to say that our school days were the best years of our lives.
For many kids that has to be a really scary thought.


Rant over!

If you have a child that is the victim of bullying then there is a really good website that you might find helpful. It's called Bullying online and it has some really useful advice for parents.
http://www.bullying.co.uk/index.html

Bullying Online has linked up with the Anti Bullying Campaign in London so that parents and children in despair can either pick up the telephone or use their computer to contact someone who understands what they're going through.
The Anti Bullying Campaign was founded in 1985 by Janet Perry after the tragic death of her son Mark who had been a bullying victim. Calls to the group are rising year on year, up from 16,000 in 1997 to 20,000 last year. Training is given to schools as well as resource material for teachers to use in class.
We need to act now, before more children lose their will to live, before more innocent lives are lost.

Summary: