the cost of bullying

The cost of our failure to stop bullying in our schools is enormous.

For the targets, who often endure their school years in a more or less permanent state of anxiety, the effects include not only the cuts, bruises and wounding of physical assaults. Physical, verbal and relational bullying can all result in reluctance to go to school, repeated headaches and stomach pains, bed-wetting, poor appetite, anxiety, irritability, aggression and depression. Bullying is a direct attack on a student’s status and sense of belonging to their peer group and often results in low self-esteem. In the most extreme cases targets have taken out their anger through school shootings or by committing suicide.

Students who habitually bully miss the opportunity to learn an alternative to aggression. Research tells us that they often develop a habitual tendency to abuse power. Approximately 25 percent of school bullies will be convicted of a criminal offense in their adult years.

The students on the sidelines (the "bystanders") commonly report extreme discomfort at witnessing bullying, but say that they do not know how to prevent it. They are silenced by their fear that bullies will target them if they speak out. Often they grow up believing that they are powerless to stop abusive behaviors in others.

For the school, the effects are time wasted in tackling a problem that is resistant to change, absenteeism, compromised student academic performance, low teacher morale, negative perceptions of the school by the wider community and increasing parent hostility. The school campus becomes a place where diversity is unvalued and unprotected. Schools are increasingly subject to litigation for failing to provide a safe learning environment and in some cases are being held responsible for the suicides and school shootings by students targeted by bullies.

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