Should I tell an adult, walk away – or fight the bullies?
9 March 2010 | By Martin Cocker
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Tags: I recently read this report from “The Youth Voice Project”. The cover says its a “…large scale research project that solicits students’ perceptions about strategy effectiveness to reduce peer mistreatment in schools.” I’m always sceptical of research that perports to be representing youth voices. They are often better described as “what adults think young people are trying to say” or ”what young people thought adults wanted them to say”.
Anyway, this particular report was sent to me by long time supporter and friend of NetSafe, Michael Berson- so I read it. Its not specifically about digital bullying. Its about peer mistreatment generally – but there is plenty of food for thought contained within it for an organisation like NetSafe (and I think for teachers and school leaders generally).
Of most interest is the strategies young people employed in response to the bullying, and how successful they felt those strategies were. For example 58% told an adult at home. Of the students that did that: 34% said that helped, 48%, said it made no difference, and 18% said it made it worse.
I thought the rates telling adults were quite high: 42% said they told an adult at school and 58% told an adult at home (remember they employ multiple strategies). That’s way above the stats we got from our research as part of the Convergence Generation project. However, I note that the majority of the respondents were in grades 6-8 (and our research targets Secondary School students), so I guess that reflects higher rates of younger children who turn to adults.
Also, I wonder if the generational digital devide is also a factor. Maybe our respondants who were talking about cyber bullying don’t turn to adults because they don’t trust the adults to understand the cyber part.
The research says young people reported “Telling an adult at home” and “Telling an adult at school” as the two most successful strategies (of the 12 options).
“Hit them or fought them” was the strategy most likely to make things worse. It was also the 5th ranked strategy for making things better. I guess it depended on how the fight panned out.
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Hmm. I recently had a conversation involving bullying with my eight year old son. It was a “one-off” incident we were talking about. We talked about strategies and what he would do if it became a regular occurance. I found it interesting that he said he would only tell an adult at school if and using the analogies / metaphors of if his “sling-shot” or “axe” approach did not help he would go to someone with a “machine gun”. Interesting though not surprising that he viewed himself only having ability up to a point to stop it and that he was fully prepared to use this should the option come up and that he viewed adults as having more ability.
I wonder how many often they turn to adults as a last resort?