By Ben Oroko
Bullying in schools is a complex issue and cannot be prevented unless all responsible parties take an active role and proactively work together to promote equality as part of the efforts to stop unlawful discrimination within the school environment.
Bullying is not a new phenomenon in our schools. Teachers are the people with whom your child spends most of their childhood. Therefore, it is critical to take a look from a teacher’s perspective, before we judge their actions or inactions in the context of bullying within the school environment.
With so many potential and hotspot areas for bullying within the school environment, it is often very hard for teachers to be everywhere and see everything since bullying incidents can take place while students are aboard a school bus, in social halls, dining halls, playgrounds, dormitories and even in the library.
However, there is only one place where teachers have full control in terms of monitoring bullying incidents; the classroom, and this does not necessarily imply that under such an environment bullying cannot take place.
It is equally important to emphasize that teachers have a noble and moral duty to stop and prevent any form of bullying when they see it happen under their watch, failure to which it will be taken as abetting crime within the school.
When it comes to responsibility in relation to bullying, teachers should also exercise their mandate in discussing new school policies and challenge ineffective ones, as well as initiate the discussion of bullying with their students and colleagues.
In this case, teachers can also be of great help and support parents whose children are affected by bullying incidents while in school, by providing a first-hand perspective, along with advice and guidance on how to address the incidents and stop them from recurring in future.
However, never before in the history of education system in our country have we ever witnessed such an alarming rate of bullying amongst children in schools.
Sadly, the rate keeps on increasing, causing irreparable harm not only to the victims’ holistic development, but also their overall academic performance.
Bullying is unpleasant and hurting to the victims, but what has attracted attention among education experts and managers are the short and long-term effects on the learners who fall prey to the incidents of bullying.
This is what should be the bigger focus for schools, teachers and parents, considering that apart from the obvious physical traumas in cases when bullying was physically aggressive, victims of bullying in general experience a wide range of short-term mental illness, including lowered confidence, anxiety, fear and depression.
The sad story is that most victims suffer in silence, but even so, they cannot hide the signs that something has been done to them to disturb their wellbeing.
In that respect, awareness of the signs of bullying makes it easier to discover it and help the child in dealing with the pent up emotions.
The Writer is a Communication practitioner and correspondent based in Kisii.
benoroko2000@yahoo.com
