Dear all,
As far as I know, my school does not have a specific policy regarding cyber bullying. Does yours?
At my school students are not allowed to carry cellphones or any other electronical gadgets. Any cellphone/gameboy/ipad/camera (etc) spotted by a teacher is confiscated and the student disciplined. Students are also not allowed unsupervised access to the internet from school. A teacher is always present in the computer labs with the students. Therefore, cyberbullying is considered "not likely to happen" during school hours. Whatever happens after school is not the school's responsibility but the parents'.
Is my school right to be ignoring cyberbullying for the reasons I mentioned above? We know, of course, that some (many?) students illegaly bring in their phones to school and hide them in their bags and lockers. We do not search bags or lockers. The phones are probably set to "silent" and kept hidden. I-phones/Blackberries are very common (I work at a very expensive private school) and I am sure the students both secretly communicate with each other and access the net during the school-day. In other words, cyber bullying may/is likely to be going on, only we have no way of finding out unless a victim comes forward. As far as I know that has not happened yet.
At my son's school it has however happened. A student had (using an illegal cellphone) taken a photo of a "friend", in the classroom wearing the school's uniform, and uploaded it to Facebook. He then created a "group" and invited his friends to join the group. The photo was posted on the "group-wall" and the group members invited to comment on the photo. To say that the comments were hurtful would be an understatement. (I almost choked on my coffee when I heard about what had been written!). The parents of the victim somehow found out and contacted the school for help. The school principal called in the bully and his "group-friends" and confronted them. The offensive facebook group was then erased and the boys made to apologize to the victim. The school took disciplinary action (loss of school points I assume) towards the bully for having brought a phone to school and taken a photo of a friend. The offensive comments that had been written by the other boys were outside the school's juristiction, as they had been posted after school hours. However, the school informed the parents of the "commentators" . They left it up to the parents to do (or not do) something about it.
Neither school has a policy or procedure regarding incidents of cyberbullying. Neither school explicitly teaches internet safety, as far as I know. Something should be done about this. I believe that kids often do not realize how hurtful their behavior online can be and how easy it is to "cross the line". They may think of it as a "joke" and all in good fun...
Do you have any suggestions as to what should be done, by me and the schools I mentioned? Any educational programmes to recommend?
CoffeeAddict
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Interesting and important question. As my audience is different, I don't really know how we can handle the situation but I just read a fellow blogger's post related to Facebook usage at school at blogathon. It is really hard to monitor todays' students! I worked one semester at a private college and the students' attitudes were so arrogant and they were terribly spoiled (not all of them for sure). Administrators, teachers, and the parents should solve the problem together by meeting face to face and discussing for the solution. Easy to say, difficult to practise though.
Hi CoffeeAddict,
I read you blog post all in one breath. I worked for a high school two years ago and I witnessed the same problems. In fact, bullying is a huge problem all by itself at schools. Cyber-bullying is just a part of this problem that must be prevented before it branches out. As far as I know, Ministry of Education has an action plan to prevent aggressiveness, violence, and bullying among young people. We are officially a part of this action plan. I translated regulations of the action plan into English a few days ago. Because, I applied to attend an event called “ Waves of legality and waves of citizenship” about crime prevention. It’ll be held in Paris and Palermo. I'm pasting a paragraph of my translation. "Anger management, conflict resolving, problem resolving, empathy development, stress management, peer mediation, self-discipline, decision making, taking responsibility, and self-confidence are the programs that we apply to prevent crime among young people. Our objectives are to show that violence can be prevented, to indicate that anger is a natural and important part of life, to teach that anger can be expressed in a constructive and healthy way, to specify that to be able to control anger and violence is a must of growth and maturation, to introduce the positive ways to express anger, and to develop alternative ways to violence in the event of conflict. Our basic approach and hypothetical framework is preventive – developmental counselling”. These are what we do at state schools. I googled cyber-bullying and found some useful internet sites. Please, take a look at :
Thanks for writing about a very important issue, cyber bullying. Bullies used to be the bigger kids that picked on little ones but with the developing technologies, they have expanded their roles and their ways of bullying.
Here is an award winning project about e-safety at schools. It is designed especially for both primary school staff and primary pupils:
http://www.childnet.com/kia/primary/
I also think that we should teach our kids never to publish personal information, to be carefull with the pictures they give out, never to respond to bullies and save any suspected mails/pictures/text and contact to family members immediately.
Thank you again for writing about this issue!
Özge
I work in a private primary school, too. Though we do not allow the students to bring or use a cellphone, I caught a boy playing with a mobile in class. Actually, this is a general problem we experience in Turkey. Pupils do not know how to use technology for their own learning in a fruitful way. They just see it as a way to have fun and kill time. In my opinion, their learning habits and behaviours develop at early ages. Here one of the most important factors in shaping or guiding them is their class teachers at primary level. Unfortunately, when you look around, you see most of the class teachers working at primary level are not so young, and most of them are not even digitial immigrants. They do not know how to use internet or any other technological components. I believe, if they are a good command of technology, they can help their students do develop right behaviours and habits. Of course, that's just my point of view.
Thank you all so much for your kind comments and good ideas. It is really nice to see that many people are concerned about cyberbullying and want to do something about it. I recently came across the following report (some of you may be familiar with it, it's called the Byron Report) and I think I will use it with my students starting next term. Here's the link to the Pdf file: http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/byronreview/pdfs/Final%20Report%20Bookmarked.pdf
Hi CoffeeAddict,
Here is an excellent educational film on cyberbullying by the UK government. It's very touching...
http://www.digizen.org/resources/cyberbullying/films/uk/lfit-film.aspx
Sirin