ESSAY ON WAYS OF PREVENTING BULLYING IN SCHOOLS

According to the American Psychological Association (2011), 70 percent of middle and high

school students have experienced bullying at some point, nearly 40 percent were reported having

bullied or been part of bullying during their year in school, approximately 15 percent of youth

are severe victims, and about 12 percent are chronic bullies. This therefore means that bullying

has become a disaster to teenagers in schools since it affects their learning in a negative way.

Basically bullying is a form of violence which involves taking up a physically weaker person or

somebody of low standing to you. This is may be either physical or verbal. Normally males

engage in a physical form of bullying while on the other hand girls do the verbal way. All this

forms of bullying have an impact on the students’ academic performance as well feelings for

instance low self-esteem. This may go to the point of committing suicide. The trend is however

worrying since the number of suicides associated with bullying has been on the increase. The

effect of bullying cannot be overemphasized, since it is a detrimental to performance of students.

This means that much need to done in order to curb bullying in schools.

One of the best ways of preventing bullying in schools is trying to prevent it before it starts. As

the saying goes prevention is better than cure, it a perfect definition of why schools should adopt.

This will start by first assessing the situation in school and determining the potential risk factors

that might contribute to bullying in schools. One of them being drug and substance abuse which

is a key causes of bullying in majority of schools. This therefore means that the school

authorities should get to the root cause of bullying. Once the cause is found the authorities

should formulate the possible solutions to the menace. For the case of drugs and substance abuse,

the school authorities may put stringent measures to prevent substance and drug abuse. This may
include prohibition of drugs and substance within the school premises. This may go ahead to

even subjecting anyone found in possession of drugs to disciplinary action for instance being

given a suspension.

Being subjected to violence in the form of bullying is demeaning and disturbing to the victims

.Some of them would want to revenge for what they had been done. Bullying in itself disturbs

mentally and leads to depression and low self-esteem .Students who have undergone through

violence in form of bullying should be taken to classes that help them recover from the form of

violence they had already undergone. This helps them get through the traumatizing experiences

without being violent themselves on others.

In order to curb bullying the school authorities play an important role in making sure that the

students relate well to them. This involves making the students appreciate the effort of the school

in preventing bullying and other forms of indiscipline associated with bullying in the school.

This can be achieved through positive social interactive sessions and inclusivity. School

authorities need to involve the students in the formulation of the rules preventing bullying .This

can be done by getting their piece of mind about the same. This helps enhance a cordial

relationship between the two key players involved in this menace.

In conclusion, it is important to prevent bullying in schools since it has negative impact

academically as well as mentally on the victims. This can be done by formulating rules and

regulations stopping bullying according to journal of society and communication. Most

importantly is all the stakeholders should play their role in fighting bullying in schools (Anon.,

2011)
References
Anon., 2011. American Psychological Association. Bullying.
Tsai, K. C., 2012. Effects of Bullying in Schools: The Teachers’ Perspectives. Journal of Society and
Commuication, 12(print), pp. 7-21.