January 17, 2008

The Bullying Factor


"Bullying: A repeated aggression, verbal, psychological or physical, conducted by an individual or group against another." This is Bullying, and although you can think this is a teen's problem, it's not.

Bullying is a behavioural problem which affects thousands of school children and families. The humiliation, fear and social isolation bring them to a loss of self-esteem, and can results in absenteeism from school, deteriorating schoolwork, personality change, depression and sometimes suicide.

Although specialists say bullying knows no boundaries of age, sex or socio-economic background, we can commonly identify a standard target for bully: the outsiders. And what determines an outsider depends on where they are located: foreigners, chubbies, skinnies, blackies, weirds, nerds, and so on. Usualy related to schools and teenagers, but can take many forms, even in your work environment, it can be short term or continue over long periods, even years, who knows? Who stipulates that? The threatener, the intimidator, "The Bullyer", when the conditions should be dictated by the threatened, intimidated, "The Bullied".

In Ireland and UK, bullying is a huge problem. Recently we learn on the news that a 15 years old girl killed herself due to bullying - the so-called "Bullycide". She left a note on that... Authorities have to do something. If they start to act, "The Bullied" will feel confident to complain about "The Bullyer". When someone is caught bullying, shoul be punished: in school, withdrawn; on a work environment, dismissed!

We had, in Brazil, some issues with mocking freshers in university. After a couple of deaths, the governement took some actions, put some mockers in jail and decreed mocking illegal. Maybe this will show some results!

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