Thirty percent of U.S. students in grades six through ten are involved in moderate or frequent bullying, as bullies, as victims, or as both according to the results of the first national survey on this subject. Bullying is increasingly viewed as an important contributor to youth violence, including homicide and suicide. One out of four kids is bullied. The American Justice Department says that this month one out of every four kids will be abused by another youth. Surveys show that seventy seven percent of students are bullied mentally, verbally, & physically, and fourteen percent of those who were bullied said they experienced severe reactions to the abuse. One out of five kids admits to being a bully, or doing some "Bullying."
You hear about all these situations where kids have been bullied so bad that it has resulted with suicide. Some cases don’t always result with such devastating circumstances, thank god, but any case of bullying is unacceptable. Barely being seventeen I witness plenty of bullying in school. Since I have always been tall I haven’t really experienced any bullying towards me, probably because being taller than everyone else wouldn’t result necessarily with being the victim. Though in elementary school I do remembering not being “socially accepted” with the kids when I would do well in any of the curriculum. So sometimes I would hide what I knew when a teacher asked a question.
Once I got to middle school I went from kind of getting bullied to being the one that occasionally bullied. I guess what I am trying to say without looking bad; though being a bully looks bad in general, is I wasn’t the usual do what I say or I’ll beat you up bully but I just went along with what my friends did and said to the other children at school. I didn’t stop to think about how I used to feel when I was in elementary and just thought how great it was now to fit in with the “cool” crowd. Then again I didn’t really realize I was being a bully since I thought at the time that a bully beat up kids, but now I noticed being a bully can range anywhere from verbally, mentally, or physically.
When I got to high school I thought that the bullying would end there. Since everyone would be more mature and everything. Little did I know it hasn’t changed at all. Sometimes I think it might have even got worse since the bullying went from more verbally to physically. I don’t know why but some kids just enjoy picking on other people. They even seem to enjoy it more to see someone cry or run off feeling like crap. I get along with a lot of people at school and when I see someone picking on someone else I am definitely not afraid to tell them to knock it off. Sometimes that just causes more problems for me but usually I can handle it more than the poor kid getting picked on can. Plus if I can get the kid to feel a little safer at school or to even just feel like they have a friend then maybe I can prevent something worse from happening.
Eight percent of students miss one day of class per month because they are afraid of the bullies at their school. Forty three percent fear harassment in the bathroom at school. A hundred thousand students carry a gun to school. Twenty eight percent of youths who carry weapons have witnessed violence at home. A poll of teens ages twelve through seventeen proved that they think violence increased at their schools. Two hundred eighty two thousand students are physically attacked in secondary schools each month. More youth violence occurs on school grounds as opposed to on the way to school. Eighty five percent of these cases do not look for any type of intervention.
I feel really strongly about this topic and I believe this is very unacceptable. How could someone go to sleep at night knowing that they are the reason that a kid killed themselves or that they are the reason that a kid is very antisocial and hates the world. School should be a place to have fun, a place to get away from all the bullshit that every day brings, and to not even be able to feel comfortable at school, hell I don’t even know what I would do.
This is a major topic that can’t be handled lightly. People have turned their back on these types of things for too long already, and we can’t be allowing kids to be going through this and killing themselves over the hateful and selfish people that bully them. People can help because one voice won’t make anything but a murmur, but if a million voices spoke up maybe we could end this once and for all. There are plenty of websites to help people just have to open their eyes and look.
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