In her blog last week Jana discussed the issue of bullying. As Jana pointed out we are seeing the issue and the irreversible repercussions of it in the media and in the schools. At the end of her blog Jana asked "what are we going to do about it?"; this struck me as a sort of call to action for us as future educators. I agree that this is something that we will have to contend with in the school environment and we have to decide what approach we are going to take. This is very challenging because there are so many sides and possible causes of these issues. This begs the question of how do we rally against something, when it comes from so many directions, some of which we cannot directly see or change?
When I read the part about their being a website, dedicated to the sole purpose of calling young females sluts after others post their picture on the site, I began to realize the bullying culture that we have come to know is not accident.
We are a society, that is in many ways built on competition; people, especially children/ adolescents, and pushed to be "better than", "do better than", or "look like" someone. The media is not solely to blame even though there is a lot to be said for an entity that does not hesitate to call a healthy looking young actress "overweight" then wonder why our young girls/ women have body issues. A television or magazine shouldn't be raising us so, where are the parents or families of the young people? Sadly they are sometimes right beside their children, making fun of or putting down someone else. Where are the roots of the culture of bullying? Is from a competitive mentality as a society that has gone to far? Is a quest to fit in the has taken on a violent persona? Is it a breakdown of support that pushes a person to victimize or become a victim? Is it the media's blatant disregard for its influence and the responsibility that comes with that? These are all questions that as we confront the issue of bullying, we have to contend with and try to understand.
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