Eng 1a - Social Justice

Beau Williamson

Professor Stiles

ENGL 1A

June 25, 2011

Bullying

Bullying has been going on in America for numerous years and does not show any signs of stopping soon. I feel that friends, parents and schools are all sources of where bullying comes from. A bully is a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people. In other words, a bully is basically someone who picks on, beats up or belittles another to raise their own self esteem and boost their ego. There are many other types of bullying in American than what most people would typically imagine. Usually when a person hears of a bully they seem to think of the big, fat chubby kid who beasts up the smaller kids and takes their lunch money. Unfortunately, there are many other forms of bullying ranging from; verbal, physical, indirect, social alienation, intimidation and even cyber bullying. Bullying in America needs to be stopped and all parents, friends and schools need to do something about it.

It cannot be determined whether a child is born a bully, raised to be one or influenced to bully by fellow peers. There is actually no once single cause of bullying among children. However, there are risk factors that can influence the need to bully within a child, some of that deal with problems at home and parenting, to the impact that their friends have on them. Bullying occurs more often in children whose parents promote the modeling of bullying behavior both verbally and physically, and give harsh physical discipline to their child. Also, a lack of supervision and involvement in a parent's life can ignite the need to bully in a child. Bullies are often victims of bullies themselves. According to Dr. Peter Sheras, 40% of bullies are themselves bullied at home or at school. Dr. Nathaniel Floyd's research shows that a victim at home is more likely to be a bully at school. The reason may be that when a bully watches another child appear weak and cowering, it disturbs him because it reminds him of his own vulnerability and behavior at home (Brinkman). Friends also play a crucial role in one's want to bully. Children often do what the other kids are doing just to be cool and fit in. When a friend sees another friend bullying someone, it almost becomes contagious. They see one of their friends bullying someone so in their mind they don't see anything wrong in it and go along with it as if it was a lifestyle. Both parents and friends play a big role in a child's bullying and actions need to be taken to stop it.

It seems that the universal place where bullying takes place is at school. The ironic thing about this however is that a child's school is where they are supposed to feel safe, comfortable and have the opportunity to better their education. Unfortunately, some students do not have the opportunity to learn because of bullying. A child's school should act almost as a second home for the student due to the fact that students spend an average of between four and seven hours a weekday there, and the victims of bullying should not have to live in fear while enduring their school day. School faculty and administrators know indeed that this is true, but yet bullying at school continues to happen. It seems that the number of bullying reports would significantly decrease if the bully received a harsher punishment