A School Bullying Policy
Wherever possible we will use the “No Blame” Approach
Step one: Interview the victim and explain what will happen. Ask for
a poem/writing/picture that can explain their feelings; This should
be within a day, if possible. Ask for names of supportive friends.
Step two: Convene a meeting of the Helpful group the next day. This
should be 6-8 people, including the bully/bullies and supportive
friends but NOT the victim.
Step three: At the meeting state that you have a problem to sort out
and that no-one is going to be punished. Explain how the victim
feels; share their poem/writing/picture.
Step four: At the meeting ask what we can do to help. Don’t go over
the past; discuss the future. Ask individuals for ways they can
help.
Step five: Leave it up to them. Emphasise that they are all really
helpful and you are sure it will work.
Step six: Meet individuals informally to find out how it’s going.
This is a school bullying policy, according to an email list it was posted on. I’m sure you’ll agree that is is quite brilliant 🙄 I really hoped it wasn’t true, but i googled, and found it. Whatever the ins and outs of bullying, whether you think it is grossly and utterly unacceptable (which i do) or whether you think that some people bring it on themselves, which perhaps some people might, I really find it hard to believe that any school thinks getting someone to write a poem about their feelings for a bully to look at is going to help.
This makes me enormously angry.
I attempted to blog the other night about a teachers tv program where the teachers were using transactional analysis techniques to explore children’s state of being during various incidents and altercations, and I was too angry to be coherent about it. Load of absolute tosh, all of it.
Ooh, I’m beginning to get all wound up again…
I don’t know if i can be coherent about it either. Bullying is bad enough without the teachers being on the bullies side, and that is what this is, in effect.
Sometimes people just have to stand up for what is right. How many children have got to strangle themselves for gods sake?
To be fair, I think bullying ranges in severity hugely. Pip experienced what I would consider mild bullying at day camps once (think I blogged it), consisting of name calling and some physical aggresion towards her. Because Pip felt able to tell me about it and I felt confident approaching the camp and trusted they would deal with it and they *did* deal with it throughly that very day in a manner as described above, it ended without the need for anything more.
Having had the enlightening (!!) experience of bullying for three years at my secondary school, this method, I am sure would have brought me more grief. I can’t imagine this being suitable in a secondary or where the bullying is of a serious nature or has been prolonged or involves more than one perpetrator (more difficult to change group behaviour).
Less severe (but still abhorant) bullying among younger children might respond quite well to this sort of treatment. Punitive measures aren’t neccesarily ideal. I’m always horrified that bullying is able to reach the scale it sometimes does and I’m certain this is due to total negligence and incompetence on the school’s part for failing to deal with it in the early stages. Maybe this is an attempt to address that problem? I only hope it isn’t used blindly in all cases of bullying at all ages.
Having said all that, I did have to resist the urge to crush Pip’s bully with my bare hands….
Hmmm, Bishop Stopford *IS* a secondary….I can only imagine the ridicule I would have been subject to had I composed a poem about my experience….
I like this bullet point from the “Supporting the victim” section:
Avoid promising the victim that he/she will now be safe and OK.
The ‘no-blame’ approach has a lot to answer for – or rather the schools and individuals that choose to adopt it do. The last two schools that I worked in (one state, one Steiner) had this type of bullying policy. “Let’s discuss the abuse you’ve suffered in front of everyone at circle-time – that’ll fix it all” – pathetic. In both schools it seemed to be used as an excuse to do nothing or blame the victim (not really ‘no blame’ at all then). Makes me very angry too – no-one suggests a non blaming strategy if a member of staff is attacked or harrassed do they?
Yes Simon, it rather makes a mockery of the previous point…
Reassure the victim that he/she has done the right thing in telling you
you did the right thing, I can do nothing to protect you !!!
This type of approach is used with adults, too, in the ‘have the burglar/mugger/rapist come face-to-face with their victim and be forced to face up to the reality of what their actions have done’ approach to criminal rehabilitation. I think it may well have some merits, but at least no-one is attempting to say the criminal isn’t a criminal, and due punishment has to be served as well.
I can imagine this working for under-7s but I think kids get meaner soon after that age at school these days – obviously not all of them. But those that are going to be bullies, who don’t naturally feel empathy and compassion, are not going to be moved by hearing how the victim felt, I think, even at the age of 8 or so. Especially if there is more than one bully as they can validate each other’s response to it.
Makes me angry too. Poor kids.
I think a poem about how they feel to the buly is more likely to make it worse. The bully will then take the mick out of the child who wrote the poem.
I think this kind of policy is part of the fiction that schools like to promote that everyone is some sort of ‘big happy family’ and that bullying is, therefore, some sort of misunderstanding.
The secondary school I went to had a culture of barely supressed violence at all levels – sometimes that spilled over into smashed up faces but most days it was just the usual things – spitting over the stair wells into your hair, ‘pinging’ bra straps, tripping each other in the corridors etc. etc. and of course the daily homophobic and sexual insults.
The idea that someone who was being bullied in such an environment could draw a picture to share their feelings with their tormentors would be laughable if it weren’t so sickening. The school I remember might have changed but a friend’s son was threatened with a knife there in his first year recently so I don’t think it’s improved. A policy like this in most secondary schools would be like putting icing on a doggy poop to try to turn it into something nice.
you’ve worked in schools then? 😉
Step seven: give the bullies the poem again so they can photocopy and show their mates and ergo have another reason to bully the victim
Step eight: Let the bully write a poem about all their angst which pushed them into bullying. Let the bully, or “significant altercation Other”, express what brought them to this point in life. Validate their feelings in a non-confrontational nor non-non-confrontational manner and ensure the bully feels two metaphorically strong, loving arms holding them.
Step Nine: ask the Help Group to say “good on ‘yer” whenever they meet the significant altercation other in public or private to boost their low self esteem. Hugging and high-fives should not be discouraged.
Step Ten: ask the Help group to write a play about the dysfunctional life the significant altercation other (hereon in SAO) has had to suffer – this would well if it was set to music and the participants could dance their emotions whilst holding hands
Step eleven: bring the victim, or significant altercation awareness arouser (SAAA) into a room strewn with rose petals and ask both the SAAA and SAO to unify and return the rose petals to the rose petal basket. If you can get them to weave the basket together beforehand so much the better.
Step Twelve: demand to know why the SAAA had to traumatise the SAO in this crude manner by attempting to publicly shame the SAO and cause him/her deep distress.
Step Thirteen: turn them out loose into the corridor and pretend not to hear any screaming. This works really well if you stick your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and go LALALALALALALALALA really loudly.
Step fourteen: should parents storm up to the school and demand to know why their child has been bullied/hurt and finds no satisfaction in our anti-bullying policy please adopt one of several posture:
1. Me no speak Engrish
2. Would you be comfortable saying all this to the bully’s parents in a meeting that we will convene?
3. I am sorry I didn’t understand the question.
4. Say “wibble wibble” whilst pretending to be mad.
5. Tell the parents – its not the bullying from the other kids you should be worrying about – its the teachers!!
I have WAY too much time on my hands
Does it show 😐
Worst I’ve heard is that in some schools in the netherlands children who are bullied have to do “kanjertraining” where they basically learn that they have to stand up for themselves.
So what they’re doing is: You were bullied, well it’s your own fault. As a punishment we’ll send you to training where you’ll learn how to behave properly and yell back at the bullies instead of being nice.
THey have that here too. Except they don’t pay for any courses – they just kick you out into the yard…
Bulling was the bain of my school years, to think they are now justifying this crap makes my blood boil
The school I’m doing an internship in has a no-tolerance for bullying policy. Pretty much the opposite of that policy.
No tolerance is really the only acceptable way of dealing with it. It isn’t good for bullies to bully, nor is it good in any way to be bullied.
It took virtual brute force to make my life bearable in the end – my mum went into school and picked her up by her collar. That stopped it. 🙂 But i had to go to a senior school in another county because the idea of spending another 7 years with those people was just unbearable to me.