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Jordan Lawrence
3/7/16
Abell
Education in a Diverse Society
Mid-term

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Root Cause Analysis: Home Bullies

In our society, there is a bullying problem. Although it doesnt directly relate to education
and its academic influence, it does constantly take place in schools. Kids must learn, along with
their normal studies, how to treat people nicely. It is sometimes hard to determine why kids are
so mean. Is it genetically influenced? Are the parents to blame? Do they feel provoked and thus
find bullying to be an appropriate response? When I watched Disney Channel and Nickelodeon
growing up, there were always bullies in shows. Conflict is what made each episode interesting,
however it was more interesting to me why certain bullies acted the way they did. You were able
to sympathize with the bully because they were almost always negatively impacted by their
home life, more so by the way their parents treated them. Children might not have support at
home, and consequently, the parents are causing kids to bully. Children are very easily influenced
by their environment and often bring their experiences from home into school.
Since the development and extreme exposure to technology, there has been various forms
of cyberbullying through hateful YouTube and Facebook comments, public humiliation through
social media and anonymous harassment over texts and chatrooms. While these are more
common at the middle school age, schools cant regulate what their students do online. However,
parental negligence has allowed children access to these forms of bullying by allowing them to
use these websites freely. If parents restricted constant computer use and paid attention to what
websites their kids were using, the problem wouldnt be as widespread. Additionally, parents are
starting to give their nine year olds iPhones now, exposing them to the evils of anonymity behind
cyberbullying. Similarly, children continue to cyberbully because they dont even see the faces of
their victims (Jan and Husain 44). Parents can teach their children to apologize if they see
theyve caused someone to hurt, however not physically seeing the response to bullying

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distances the bully from the victim.
Similarly, parental neglect makes children want to feel noticed: It is generally involved
with lack of parental supervision and involvement in the lives of their children (Georgiou and
Stavrinides). Therefore, kids will often act out in the form of bullying, to gain their parents
attention. They will prey on the weak, or a susceptible target and bully them until they gain the
attention of teachers, who can tell the principal, who might eventually call the parents in for a
meeting. Contrarily, this neglect can rather facilitate the continuation of bullying. Kids who
arent punished by their parents for negative behavior are convinced that they can get away with
anything without consequences.
More commonly it seems that negative parental behavior is the human cause of bullying.
Bullies tend to come from families with authoritarian parents, those who are strict, give harsh
punishments (Georgiou and Stavrinides), shout or abuse their children (Whelan, Kretschmer &
Barker 218). The subjects of parental verbal or physical abuse tend to emulate that aggressive
behavior against their peers at school, these kids are considered aggressive victims (Whelan,
Kretschmer & Barker 219). There are some more susceptible to corrupt social environments than
others: research has shown that the gene encoding the enzyme mono- amine oxidase
underlies biological stress- response systems and confers a vulnerability to harsh parental
treatment (Whelan, Kretschmer & Barker 219). Consequently, the kids with this enzyme dont
understand how to cope with the abuse and relieve themselves when inflicting it upon others.
Parents must learn to understand the influence they have on their children. They must
teach compassion and cooperation to their children by being a positive example of those
attributes. Parents must not neglect their children, while also remembering to be forgiving and
respectful of their childrens emotions. It is important that we, as a society, emphasize the fact

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that parents are constantly being looked up to, whether or not theyre actually being a good
person.