Bullying: Are Anti-Bullying Programs Effective? In Recent

¶ … bullying: Are anti-Bullying programs effective?

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of efforts to deal with the problem of bullying in schools, specifically encouraging schools to adopt formal anti-bullying programs that educate students on the subjects of how to spot bullies and why bullying is wrong. However, many of these have been quite controversial.

Pro

One meta-analysis of many different bullying programs found that school-based anti-bullying programs are effective: "on average, bullying decreased by 20 -- 23% and victimization decreased by 17 -- 20%" (Ttofi & Farrington 56). The methods children are using to engage in bullying today are far more subtle and difficult to monitor through the use of social media and thus require an aggressive anti-bullying campaign through the schools. "One 2010 study by the Cyberbullying Research Center, an organization founded by two criminologists who defined bullying as 'willful and repeated harm' inflicted through phones and computers, said one in five middle-school students had been affected…Because students prefer to use their phones for texting rather than talking...they often miss cues about tone of voice. Misunderstandings proliferate: a crass joke can read as a withering attack; did that text have a buried subtext?"(Hoffman, "Online bullies"). Anti-bullying programs can help teens communicate more effectively.

Bullying can have long-lasting effects, both for the bullied studied and the bully. Children who are bullied are more likely to do poorly in school and drop out; have low self-esteem and experience psychological issues like depression and anxiety; and are more likely to commit suicide. Students who are bullies are more likely to commit violent or criminal acts later in life ("Bullying and school climate," APA). The reasons for which students are bullied (intellectual achievement, gender identity, race and ethnicity) relate to issues like equality and justice schools must take a stand on to create a better society.

Con

First and foremost, there is the argument that bullying is not dangerous behavior, but merely a normal part of adolescence. This argument suggests that rather than focusing on the bullies, the ability of children to defend themselves should be bolstered, which is not a traditional component of bullying. Additionally, to support this idea, there is competing research evidence indicating that anti-bullying programs are ineffective. A recent study of 7,000 children at 195 different schools "found that children who attended schools with anti-bullying programs were more likely to experience bullying than children who attended schools without such programs" (Ferguson, "Anti-bullying"). Although this could be that these schools had more bullying problems to begin with, this is not particularly impressive evidence about the programs' efficacy. Also, the supposed efficacy of some programs could also be rooted in the fact that overall, actual bullying behavior has actually been declining in society, although it is more highly publicized (Ferguson, "Anti-bullying").