Adam Scott
Reneé Saulter
ENG 111
31 March 2015
Bullying
Bullying has been around for many years; it is a major problem in our society. Everyone is affected by bullying in some way, shape, or form at some point in their life. For example, you have never been bullied, it is possible you have been a bully at some point in your life. Bullying can have negative effects on people’s lives. However, bullying can be stopped with child and adult bullying education, eliminating zero-tolerance policies, and the bullied becoming more confident. Bullying must be stopped; one way to achieve this is by educating people about bullying. Both children and adults need to be taught the symptoms of a bully. Educating adults will decrease the chances of their child being a bully. Seeing your child come home in tears from an incident that happened earlier in the day is something no parent wants to deal with. There could be class time set aside for young, elementary-aged children to be informed about bullying in order to prevent them from bullying classmates. In an article by the National Bullying Prevention Center, they state that parents who contact their child’s school requesting that bullying be dealt with can help prevent future bullying. The zero-tolerance policy restricts the bully from getting in trouble. The zero-tolerance policy makes it easier for the bully to get away with their behavior. This policy ensures a bully’s safety. It doesn’t make sense to ensure the safety of a bully after they have been hurting people. The zero-tolerance policy allows school administrators to sweep bullying under the rug when, in reality, if this policy was not in place, more people that are bullied would have a chance to stand up for themselves without facing such hard consequences. Some may say the zero-tolerance policy has been working just fine since it was implemented. This policy has prevented less fighting and bullying. It has also made a fair way of dealing with bullies. But, in reality, what has actually happened with this policy are more instances of bullying happening without any repercussions or resolutions. This policy does not allow victims of bullying to fight back without facing harsh punishment for their self-defense action. What should be changed about this is someone who is defending himself or herself should face little to no punishment and the person who was doing the bullying gets the harsher punishment. Victims of bullying must be confident and not let bullies dig away at them. The bullied must stand up for themselves when a bully is in their face. These victims cannot let bullies get into their heads and must stay confident. Standing up for your self is a huge step in getting rid of a bully because the bully will see that this individual
