The Bullying Phenomenon

Bullying has spread nowadays at schools, universities, social clubs, and even within families. For adults bullying considers a natural challenge, most of people perceive it as a life fact. However in some cases victims of this phenomenon are suffering from many mental illnesses such as depression and social withdrawal. Dangerously, this phenomenon breaks self-trust and dignity especially among teenagers and children. One can remember that news about a nine- year- old girl “McKenzie Adams” from U.S. Alabama who committed a suicide after a continuous racist bullying from her colleagues in school. The young girl who always dreamed to be a scientist when she grew up hanged herself just to get rid of her miserable life.

Actually, the previous and many other cases were just tragic stories, nevertheless, the whole picture of this phenomenon can be scary as a statistics report announced by UNESCO in year 2018 revealed that there are a quarter of a billion children in schools who are being bullied out of a billion children in the world. It means that one out of three teens is bullied worldwide.



The main reason behind this phenomenon is the prevalence of violence inside the society, although there many other reasons such as the absence of the right role of the teacher inside the school, spread of poverty, scattering of violence-based electronic games and failure of family and parents to follow their children. Moreover, bullying has many types: verbal bullying, physical bullying, cyberbullying and racial bullying (as the case of McKenzie Adams). The study conducted by UNESCO from samples of 19 countries showed that 34% of students are subjected to verbal bullying and cruel treatment, while 8% of them are subjected to physical bullying.

After many years of considering bullying problem as a trivial matter, the world has started to take the bulling issue seriously through global campaigns by united nations and all international organizations concerned with this matter, as the whole world realized that bullying causes a critical fragmentation in societies. For example in our beloved country Egypt, There was a campaign held by the Egyptian National Council for Childhood and Motherhood in schools in 2018 called "I am against bullying.". The campaign urged children, parents, and caregivers to address bullying and oppose it in the educational and non-educational circles, and seek guidance from trained specialists through the child hotline no. 16000, which provided support and assistance around the clock, seven days a week, and it was also an effective channel for reporting severe cases where child safety was at risk.

In my opinion, there are two solutions to sustainably solve the problem: one is to raise awareness about the whole issue of bulling, and another is to set strict rules and regulations in schools, universities and social clubs against the criminals (intentionally written) who harm others with any type of bullying.

The first solution is to spread the knowledge that bulling is harmful and evil in addition to its serious results on the whole society. For this solution, the causes and roots of the problem must be highlighted. The person who commits acts of bulling usually has a reason to harm others. Sometimes he wants to feel popular or powerful, and sometimes he has a sad history that people always annoy him, so he starts to annoy others to give himself a black shelter and survive. Unfortunately, most criminals in jails that committed serious crimes such as killing, raping or hitting had a background history of being bullied or doing acts of bulling when they were young. Therefore, the raising of awareness solution might be the first gate to solve the problem. Raising the awareness of students at schools is a primary procedure as the start of the catastrophe begins from schools. The solidarity and education ministries may launch a large awareness campaign to fight bulling; the campaign includes short advertisements and TV shows about how to respect each other. While the ministry of education can impose ethics in the curricula, in addition to monthly workshops from primary to secondary schools focusing on soft skills and how to be respectful to others and their rights, and encourage students through incentives to defend the weak. The solution will have its positive impacts quickly as young ages are easier to change their minds. On the other hand, it will be costly as the huge campaign of advertisements and TV shows must be advanced to convince young ages. Nevertheless, the solution is very important and effective.

The second solution is setting strict rules in schools, universities and social clubs against the bulling acts. These rules must not cover physical violence only, but also the verbal too and other types too. The real problem that years and years families have ignored the issue as if they are leaving their kids to play, or they are just young, and when they grow up, they will be disciplined. The more dangerous part is sometimes teachers in schools are ignoring the issue even during their supervision period; they act as if it is not important and that they are children and will get along with each other after all, but it is not true. To analyze, this reflects clearly the role of law and supervision in protecting people’s rights. Therefore, cameras must be set in corridors and playgrounds, and strict sanctions must be imposed on violence. The ministers of solidarity and education in addition to their role of launching the awareness campaigns may release a host of rules and regulations towards violence. For example, every student who hurts his colleague intentionally by physical acts or words must be in detention for a certain period or even expelled from school for good. It is not an easy solution, but also it is very effective on a short term.

To conclude, there is no doubt that bullying has its negative impacts on both victims and doers. Nevertheless, its solutions can be easily implemented, but initially all the society must understand the whole issue and its results, in addition to acknowledging that these types of acts have severe sanctions. Personal rights must be protected like the freedom to live in peace without anyone annoying you or harming your inner peace and self -respect. At the end we must mention the quote by the writer Zack W. Van about bullying: “Bullying builds character like nuclear waste creates superheroes. It's a rare occurrence and often does much more damage than endowment.”