Bullying, an escalating issue, impacts students worldwide. This phenomenon, encompassing psychological, verbal, and physical abuse, cultivates an atmosphere of fear and anxiety in classrooms. We will explore the causes, effects, and preventive strategies of bullying to foster safer, more respectful educational environments for all students.
The Reality of Bullying in Schools: Safeguarding Students from Violence
School Bullying: Psychological, Verbal, or Physical Abuse
Predominantly, emotional violence is most prevalent in this context, primarily manifesting in classrooms and schoolyards. School bullying stands out as a severe and specific manifestation of violence in schools.
This form of school abuse is characterized by its systematic and methodical nature, where the aggressor subjugates the victim, often under the indifference, silence, or even complicity of other classmates.
Such school violence is expressed through repetitive acts aimed at intimidating the victim, involving an abuse of power, where the aggressor perceives themselves as stronger, either objectively or subjectively.
The victim, subjected both physically and emotionally, faces severe psychological aftermath. It’s common for them to dread attending school and exhibit symptoms of nervousness, sadness, and loneliness in their daily life.
In extreme cases, this situation can trigger suicidal thoughts.
Goals and Evolution of Bullying Cases
School bullying aims to intimidate, undermine, subjugate, and emotionally and intellectually consume the victim, pursuing benefits for the bully or satisfying their need for domination, aggression, and destruction towards others, which may become their habitual pattern of social interaction.
Sometimes, the bully, through a process of “trial and error,” seeks recognition and attention, learning a relationship model based on exclusion and contempt for others.
Often, the child who initiates bullying soon finds support from a group that joins in the harassment, thereby reinforcing the abusive behavior against the victim.
Types of School Bullying
Social Exclusion
Social exclusion encompasses bullying practices aimed at isolating the victim socially.
These practices focus on marginalizing the victim socially through exclusive behaviors. For instance, they include actions such as prohibiting the victim from playing in groups, communicating with others, or enforcing isolation by preventing others from interacting with them. This form also involves actions intended to make the victim cry.
The tactic aims to portray the child as weak, unworthy, or crybaby in front of peers, triggering a stigmatization phenomenon known as the scapegoat mechanism.
Social exclusion is particularly challenging to combat, as the victim often only perceives the rejection and exclusion without fully understanding the underlying dynamics.
Harassment
This encompasses school bullying behaviors that involve psychological harassment, showing contempt, and disrespect for the child’s dignity. Indicators of this form of bullying include contempt, hatred, ridicule, mockery, scorn, cruelty, disdainful gestures, and mocking imitation.
Social Manipulation
It covers bullying behaviors that seek to distort the social image of the child and generate animosity towards them among peers.
This method involves twisting and negatively emphasizing everything the victim does or says, or even what they have not done or said. Regardless of the victim’s actions, the situation is manipulated to induce rejection by others.
This distortion of a social image often leads to other children unwittingly joining in the bullying, under the mistaken perception that the victim deserves the mistreatment, in a phenomenon known as the “fundamental attribution error”.
Coercion
In the context of school bullying, it refers to behaviors that force the victim to act against their will.
These bullying practices seek to exert total control and dominance over the child’s will. Forcing the victim to perform undesired acts provides various benefits to the bullies, mainly social power. This leads to bullies being seen as figures of authority, especially by those witnesses to the subjugation.
Coercions may include humiliation, abuses, or non-consensual sexual behaviors, which the victim often hides for fear of retaliation against themselves or their family members.
Social Exclusion
It involves practices aimed at preventing the bullied child from participating in group activities.
The motto of these behaviors is “not you,” segregating the child from the social group. These actions include ignoring the child, treating them as if they do not exist, isolating them, limiting their expression, and excluding them from games, generating social isolation.
Intimidation
Encompasses school bullying behaviors aimed at terrifying, diminishing, or emotionally wearing down the child through intimidating actions.
Indicators of intimidation include threats, physical harassment, and bullying when leaving school. It is crucial to provide support to children who suffer from bullying and seek psychological assistance, as bullying can cause severe emotional traumas with lasting effects.
School bullying is a complex problem that requires a multifaceted solution. Through education, psychological support, and early intervention, we can mitigate its devastating effects.
