Mobile phone bullies
Bullying has always been a problem at school and probably always will be. I can't remember much bullying in primary school - back in those days the teachers were firmly in control. High school was a different matter. The big kids mercilessly picked on the little kids, who, if they didn't want to get their faces rearranged, kept quiet about it.
I can clearly remember two bullies in particular. One morning little naive freshman me was on the way to school. Just as I cleared the front of the post office, two guys I'd seen at school but didn't know, lunged out, grabbed me and dragged me behind the convenience store next to the post office. Their exact intentions I didn't know and didn't need to know, these guys weren't playing and I had to get away. Summoning up the adrenaline powered strength available to the very frightened I somehow managed to break free and run off. The matter didn't end here though.
Several days later, walking home from school, these same two guys pulled alongside me on a Vespa they had borrowed. Whichever one was on the back jumped off while the scooter was still moving and stumbled slightly. Instantly I was off and, since I only had to make it about a hundred meters to the post office, where adult friends of the family worked, I easily outran them.
I was confronted with a dilemma here folks: to let the bullying run its course or tell my parents. The main problem was one of geography: unless I wanted to walk way out of my way there was really only one route to school. These two fuck-ups were bound to successfully ambush me eventually. So I told my mother, who rang the school to demand something be done. I was now a squealer, taunted by all. The thugs never did get me but my freshman year was a horror.
Today's young bully has other options for pursuing his hobby. The mobile phone is the ideal bullying tool. All the bully need do is get a victim's phone number, turn off the caller ID on his phone and then taunt by phoning or SMSing. And, phone bullies have 24 hour access to their victims. It's one of the downsides to modern technology folks, and even though it might not rank up there with identity theft, it's a big problem, especially for kids.
School, the ideal face to face bullying environment, is also suited to phone bullying. NSW Premier Bob Carr plans to implement a big government solution to the problem: students will be required to have a parental note giving them permission to carry a phone at school, and all schools will compile a register of all students' phones along with their phone numbers.
This will create a huge administrative burden for schools while doing nothing at all to solve the phone-bullying problem. Kids frequently change phones. They frequently use borrowed phones. They can easily swap SIM cards. A phone's outgoing ID is easily turned off. This plan doesn't make sense.
Why not simply announce that, because of the bullying problem, mobile phones are not to be used at school and any phone seen being used will be confiscated and held until the end of the day? Such an approach would make students directly responsible and wouldn't create a huge additional admin burden. I can already hear the kiddies, "you can't take my phone, I'm going to ring my mother ..."
Life is so complicated for kids today.
Update: USA Today has a sort of related article on cyberbullying here.
I can clearly remember two bullies in particular. One morning little naive freshman me was on the way to school. Just as I cleared the front of the post office, two guys I'd seen at school but didn't know, lunged out, grabbed me and dragged me behind the convenience store next to the post office. Their exact intentions I didn't know and didn't need to know, these guys weren't playing and I had to get away. Summoning up the adrenaline powered strength available to the very frightened I somehow managed to break free and run off. The matter didn't end here though.
Several days later, walking home from school, these same two guys pulled alongside me on a Vespa they had borrowed. Whichever one was on the back jumped off while the scooter was still moving and stumbled slightly. Instantly I was off and, since I only had to make it about a hundred meters to the post office, where adult friends of the family worked, I easily outran them.
I was confronted with a dilemma here folks: to let the bullying run its course or tell my parents. The main problem was one of geography: unless I wanted to walk way out of my way there was really only one route to school. These two fuck-ups were bound to successfully ambush me eventually. So I told my mother, who rang the school to demand something be done. I was now a squealer, taunted by all. The thugs never did get me but my freshman year was a horror.
Today's young bully has other options for pursuing his hobby. The mobile phone is the ideal bullying tool. All the bully need do is get a victim's phone number, turn off the caller ID on his phone and then taunt by phoning or SMSing. And, phone bullies have 24 hour access to their victims. It's one of the downsides to modern technology folks, and even though it might not rank up there with identity theft, it's a big problem, especially for kids.
School, the ideal face to face bullying environment, is also suited to phone bullying. NSW Premier Bob Carr plans to implement a big government solution to the problem: students will be required to have a parental note giving them permission to carry a phone at school, and all schools will compile a register of all students' phones along with their phone numbers.
This will create a huge administrative burden for schools while doing nothing at all to solve the phone-bullying problem. Kids frequently change phones. They frequently use borrowed phones. They can easily swap SIM cards. A phone's outgoing ID is easily turned off. This plan doesn't make sense.
Why not simply announce that, because of the bullying problem, mobile phones are not to be used at school and any phone seen being used will be confiscated and held until the end of the day? Such an approach would make students directly responsible and wouldn't create a huge additional admin burden. I can already hear the kiddies, "you can't take my phone, I'm going to ring my mother ..."
Life is so complicated for kids today.
Update: USA Today has a sort of related article on cyberbullying here.
posted by Anonymous at 12:23 PM |
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