How Should Schools Handle Cyberbullying?

This is a tough issues for schools because these students' primary relationships are formed at our through our schools, yet the bullying primarily takes place outside of school via social media. If a student comes to me and shows me a tweet harassing or insulting another student, should I be legally required to act? If so, what specifically am I supposed to do? If I report it to administration, what are they supposed to do? Contact the police? Is that the responsibility of the the school or parents?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/style/28bully.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"The girl’s parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J.

Punish him, insisted the parents.

“I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’ ” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.”

Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked.

Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together.

What about the police, Mr. Orsini asked.

A criminal investigation would be protracted, the parents had decided, its outcome uncertain. They wanted immediate action.

They pleaded: “Help us.”

Schools these days are confronted with complex questions on whether and how to deal with cyberbullying, an imprecise label for online activities ranging from barrages of teasing texts to sexually harassing group sites. The extent of the phenomenon is hard to quantify. But 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.

Affronted by cyberspace’s escalation of adolescent viciousness, many parents are looking to schools for justice, protection, even revenge. But many educators feel unprepared or unwilling to be prosecutors and judges.

Often, school district discipline codes say little about educators’ authority over student cellphones, home computers and off-campus speech. Reluctant to assert an authority they are not sure they have, educators can appear indifferent to parents frantic with worry, alarmed by recent adolescent suicides linked to bullying."

 

if you really think it's that big a deal, apply the death penalty

 

Um...okay?

 

the parents haven't got the guts to do what is required of them and are trying to coerce someone else into doing it for them. gutless pukes

 

If it doesn't happen at school or at a school function, it's not the school's place to do anything about it.

 

Doesn't seem to be the case in New York:

http://southeast.patch.com/articles/cuomo-signs-cyberbullying-legislation

"What's different about the new law is that victims and their parents will now have the ability to report incidents that take place off-property to a school-appointed official, when they deem the cyberbullying impedes a student’s ability to learn.

The new legislation was part of the agenda at a roundtable discussion hosted by New York School Boards Association Director Timothy Kremmer in Latham last week. Brewster Board of Education President Dr. Stephen Jambor was in attendance.

“No one is opposed to the need to protect our children from this threat,” he told Patch. “We are worried about how the role and function of the public schools is always expanding, perhaps because there are fewer other reliable supports left in society … We are also being asked at times to police things that are practically unenforceable."

Jambor said that previous legislation was “already designed to broadly address the well-being/security of children in school.” He referenced this column in the Huffington Post. Written by David A. Singer, a Board of Education trustee in Harrison, the July 3 piece focuses on a bill that deals with the placement of special education students.

In the blog, Singer makes note of “reams of unfunded state mandates that demand that our public schools become parent, cop, nursemaid, chauffeur, shrink, social worker, nutritionist, physician, personal trainer, godfather, and oh yeah, teacher, to our kids” while staying under the 2 percent property tax cap."

 

If the schools were private, then they'd have recourse to separate the students and determine which customer they should stop serving in order to maintain service to the other. In the case of government schools, they don't have much choice in the matter as they designed it so that all the children within a certain district be educated together regardless of ability, willingness to learn, or social tendencies. So, in some ways, the school is responsible, and, yet, the usual response of school administrators is expel, or, even worse, to involve the police and get someone charged with a crime.

The parents would do better to get their kid out of the school rather than have her submit to the treatment of bullies, whether those bullies be other kids, or the teachers and administrators who run that authoritarian institution. And, it's going to be important for the parents to work with their own children so that suicide is not seen as the answer to some social ostracization. Suicide from bullying is usually caused by a sense of futility by the victim. He/she doesn't see an end to the dilemma and so opts to take a more permanent way out.

 

Then (as usual like when they tried to ban large soft drinks) New York has it wrong.

 

If schools find out that a child is being abused at home, they're legally required to report it to authorities. Do you disagree with this obligation?

 

So New York has now opted to make it's public schools an adjunct of the juvenile justice system? Seems like a bad idea to me. They ahve neither the training nor the staff to conduct criminal investigations. Given our litigous court system this is going to wind up with some school system owing several million to some kid's parents.

 

That will certainly happen no matter what the school does or doesn't do. I've had parents threaten to sue me because their daughter received a detention for refusing to quiet down after three requests to do so. Her "disciplinary record" was going to negatively impact her standing amongst her peer group, etc.

 

Not argung that it doesn't already happen just that this will add to the problem. "In Loco Parentis" means you stand in for the parents when they aren't present. When they are present doesn't your authority end? And frankly shouldn't it?

 

What if, for example, the parents of the bully refuse to act? What if the actions of these children on social media start to directly influence the ability of students to feel safe and learn in my classroom? Will kids be willing to take chances/risks on assignments and contribute to discussions if they know anything they say may be mocked mercilessly by a bully for hundreds of his/her peers to see? What's the solution? "Parents getting their kids in line" sounds good, but it's been established that there are some parents who, frankly, won't/can't do their job.

 

that is not your business. when we were kids, there was lots of bullying on the local playgrounds. no one would EVER think it was the responsibility of the school to handle it

 

That bullying didn't follow you home or take place in front of literally hundreds of your peers over and over again via the echo chamber of social media.

There are lots of reasons to argue that it's not the responsibility of schools to handle it; however, "this is how it used to be when I was a kid" isn't one of them.

 

Frankly, that is one of the problems with public schools in todays world. 60-70 years ago they'd have kicked his butt out and called the cops on his parents if they showed up to complain. Now that is verboten.

Hell, I'm not even sure how you can handle that sort of thing short of filing cahrges and sending his nasty little ass to juvie hall.

 

of course it did. getting the crap kicked out of you in front of the whole neighbourhood?? teasing certain kids every day of their lives, spitting on them, goading them to fight?? calling certain girls fat and ugly day in day out? punching fat kids in the gut just because theyre fat? the list goes on. don't kid yourself pal.

 

But those days inside your house was a safe haven.

 

it is now too. turn off the ****** facebook page and spend time with your family

 

You think public schools don't wish they still had the ability to expel kids when appropriate? You can blame the lawyers for the current inability of public schools to remove disruptive students permanently.

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And the point flies way over his head. The two aren't comparable; find a better argument. There are dozens out there.

 

forgive me if I don't recognize your expertise in evaluating comparisons, pal. if you don't like my posts , don't read them.

 

If you can't contribute something meaningful, stay off my threads. Simple enough.

 

I do not think schools should be handling cyber bullying themselves. This is really the realm of the parent. The parent should already be keeping an eye on what their child is doing, and can encourage them to stay away from social media if it is causing problems with the student. They should also be helping their child cope with bullying.

Students do not NEED things like facebook and social media. And if it is becoming a problem, then the parent needs to take these things away.

 

hey pal, I know you have a high opinion of yourself but I hate to break it to you: YOU don't get to come into a public forum and tell anyone who can and cannot reply. If it bothers you, start your own forum, make your own rules and enjoy talking to yourself!! lol

 

The student doesn't even need to be active on these sites for the bullying to take place. We had an incident earlier this year where 15 students kept retweeting the same harassing message about another student over and over again; that student would come to school the next day and be inundated by other students who had seen the tweet, asking questions like "Did you hear what so-and-so were tweeting about you last night?!"