Rudd needs to confront bullying - opinion piece

Advertiser Education Now opinion piece about school bullying

School-age bullying can destroy lives. Every parent dreads that sense of overwhelming helplessness that greets the understanding that one's child feels devalued, threatened and victimised by bullying.

“”Kids will be kids”” should never be an excuse for allowing our children to humiliate, isolate, victimise and abuse other children.

As parents and members of school communities we all have a responsibility to get involved, to understand what is going on, and to set an example for our own children.

In this day and age, most schools have strong anti-bullying policies.

Since 2003, there has been a National Safe Schools Framework led by former Education Minister Brendan Nelson, to which all states have signed up, and under which all schools are theoretically responsible.

Yet my electorate office still receives calls from distressed parents looking for help as their traumatised children's cases fall outside the bounds of their school's policy. And sometimes a detached policy – reliant on student reporting the abuse – is not enough. “”Dobbing in”” a bully is a tremendously courageous action to take for a student who has already had their feelings of security and safety at school destroyed, and requires that the victim have faith in the authority of the school to make the bullying stop.

Some of the worst bullying can take place at some of the most privileged schools. In the last month we saw media reports about a boy at an “”elite”” Sydney non-government school who was the subject of a protracted series of assaults and abuse. This lad was the victim of physical assaults – resulting in variously a broken arm, bruised neck and cheekbone – and serious psychological harassment by a group of other students “”who called him an ‘emo' and told him to cut his own throat and wrists”” (Daily Telegraph, 18/2/09).

Physical abuse is often easier to detect and deal with than non-physical harassment. Some of the most insidious forms of psychological abuse have been exacerbated by the spread of new technologies – mobile phones (particularly now that multi-media messaging and cameras are standard on almost all new mobile phones), social networking websites, blogs and email.

In July last year, 18 year old Jessie Logan of Cincinnati, Ohio, committed suicide after suffering months and months of incessant psychological bullying her mother described as ‘torture'. Jessie had sent her boyfriend a revealing photo of herself by mobile phone. After their break-up, the boy spread the photo far and wide to hundreds of students at the school. When a girl with everything to live for reaches the point where not only is she afraid to go to school, she feels that she cannot go on at all, it must be taken as a call to action.

Similarly traumatic cases involving harassment over the internet, in Australia and around the world, have received widespread reporting. At a time when the use of laptops in schools is increasing dramatically, we must be increasingly vigilant against the dangers of the unintended uses of this technology.

It is not good enough for Education Departments to wash their hands of the situation either, on the basis that what happens outside of school grounds is not the school's responsibility.

As Shadow Education Minister David Pisoni said on radio this month: “”WA and Victoria have understood that the social network that develops at schools moves on outside of the school environment and that is where cyber bullying tends to happen and they're setting up procedures to deal with it.””

The former Liberal Government initiated the National Safe Schools Week, to disseminate information for teachers and communities, and to highlight the problems of bullying. The new Rudd Government cancelled National Safe Schools Week last year, and is now reviewing the National Safe Schools Framework. I for one will be watching to ensure that the Government treats this review seriously with a view to taking action.

In the mean time, we have a serious responsibility as parents – indeed as any adult who has any contact with children of school age – to constantly reinforce the best sort of example in the way we go about our business.