Bullying in Schools

Bullying in schools is a pandemic issue that has unfortunately existed since the dawn of peer interactions among young people. Just because it is something that some consider to be a “natural” part of growing up or schooling does not mean that it should be an accepted issue. In the 1980s, questionnaire surveys of more than 150,000 Scandinavian students found that approximately 15 percent of students ages 8-16 were involved in bully/victim problems with some regularity - either as bullies, victims, or both bully and victim (bully-victims) Approximately 9 percent of all students were victims, and 6-7 percent bullied other students regularly. 

In contrast to what is commonly believed, only a small proportion of the victims also engaged in bullying other students (17 percent of the victims or 1.6 percent of the total number of students)” (Olweus 2003). Scandinavian countries were pioneers in studying the common phenomenon of bullying and paved the way for similar studies in the United States and Canada in later years. While the data worldwide is quite similar in terms of numbers of instances of bullying, there has not yet been a general consensus on how to deal with the problem most effectively. Many scholars and counselors have proposed methods to curb the practice among schoolchildren but to varying degrees of provable success. In analyzing this problem it is most fitting to first take a look at more generalized profiles of bullies and how they fit into the larger trends of bullying and then to examine possible solutions and their potential efficiency in eliminating (or at least lessening) the damage caused to the victims and hopefully, address the problems of the bullies themselves.