GILLIAN LUCKY

From sev­er­al in­ci­dents re­cent­ly re­port­ed in the news­pa­pers, it ap­pears that the fu­ture of our na­tion is no longer in the school­bags of our chil­dren but in their use of weapons, mis­siles and oth­er ob­jects to in­jure and hurt their col­leagues.Vi­o­lence in schools has un­doubt­ed­ly in­creased over the decades and this is not sur­pris­ing bear­ing in mind the pro­lif­er­a­tion of gangs and gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and the con­tin­u­ing de­struc­tion of our so­ci­etal fab­ric.Ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy have made ob­scene and in­ap­pro­pri­ate ma­te­r­i­al avail­able to chil­dren and even with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of meth­ods to block adult chan­nels and ac­cess to dan­ger­ous Web sites, our young peo­ple are ex­posed to the worst kinds of vi­o­lence and ex­plic­it pornog­ra­phy, de­pict­ed in at­trac­tive for­mats that en­cour­age par­tic­i­pa­tion and pro­vide jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The young mind left ex­posed to the bar­rage of filth that ex­ists in the un­char­tered and un­con­trolled world of the In­ter­net is at risk of be­com­ing over­dosed with feel­ings of hate and anger to­wards oth­ers and the in­abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish right from wrong.So while tech­nol­o­gy has tak­en us for­ward to a whole new world, we have left be­hind the tenets and prin­ci­ples that dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed man from beast. And if our so­ci­ety does not im­ple­ment, in rapid haste, mech­a­nisms to con­trol and mod­i­fy de­viant and de­fi­ant be­hav­iour among our youth, then we would re­main a na­tion at per­il.Bul­ly­ing in schools is be­com­ing more fre­quent and this is a glob­al trend that has forced many coun­ties to en­sure that with­in their re­spec­tive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems there are poli­cies to ad­dress com­plaints of bul­ly­ing.In some in­stances, ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions have been the sub­ject of lit­i­ga­tion brought by peo­ple who suf­fered in­jury, men­tal or phys­i­cal, at the hands of bul­lies who were al­lowed to walk the hall­ways freely de­spite nu­mer­ous com­plaints about their be­hav­iour.

In many of the law­suits, in­clud­ing those in which the lit­i­gants were un­suc­cess­ful, the courts made it clear in their de­ci­sions that any form of bul­ly­ing should not be en­dorsed, en­cour­aged or tol­er­at­ed and that there was a heavy onus on those in charge of learn­ing in­sti­tu­tions to en­sure that all chil­dren were pro­tect­ed all times from the po­ten­tial and ac­tu­al harm­ful acts of their peers.

It would be ex­pect­ed that some bul­lies would fall through the cracks and go un­de­tect­ed de­pend­ing on the covert­ness of their op­er­a­tion, but the usu­al case is that a bul­ly can be de­tect­ed and iden­ti­fied from a very ear­ly stage and pre­ven­tive mea­sures put in place to help both the per­pe­tra­tor and his pos­si­ble vic­tims.There have been cas­es in which vic­tims of bul­ly­ing have felt that the in­di­vid­u­als who as­sault­ed them were treat­ed with kid gloves and re­ceived greater sym­pa­thy than the in­jured par­ties.

And while there must be em­pha­sis on help­ing those young peo­ple who may have anger-man­age­ment is­sues and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tions that may ac­count for their volatile and ex­ces­sive con­duct, at­ten­tion must al­so be giv­en to coun­selling chil­dren who, be­cause of their phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance or men­tal ca­pac­i­ty, are easy tar­gets for bul­lies.There are sev­er­al meth­ods that can be used to suc­cess­ful­ly deal with the prob­lem of bul­ly­ing. The Gov­ern­ment must be com­mend­ed for ap­prov­ing funds to en­able qual­i­fied peo­ple to work in the pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to tack­le the is­sue of bul­ly­ing and oth­er dys­func­tion­al be­hav­iours.School­teach­ers al­ready bur­dened with com­plet­ing, in­tense cur­ric­u­la have a role to play in en­sur­ing a safe and pro­tect­ed learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for their stu­dents but they need the sup­port of pro­fes­sion­als in or­der to iden­ti­fy the pupils at risk on both ends–the bul­lies and the bul­lied. Both tar­get groups may dis­play sim­i­lar symp­toms of lack of con­fi­dence and low self-es­teem, ex­cept that the re­sult man­i­fests dif­fer­ent­ly–one as at­tack­er and the oth­er as the at­tacked.

And while sym­pa­thy will flow both ways be­cause the con­duct, how­ev­er of­fen­sive, in­volves mi­nors, any de­viant or vi­o­lent be­hav­iour of bul­lies, left un­at­tend­ed, could re­sult in the com­mis­sion of the most se­ri­ous and heinous crimes.There should al­so be a na­tion­wide cam­paign to ed­u­cate school­child­ren and par­ents about bul­ly­ing, which should in­clude, most im­por­tant­ly, teach­ing peo­ple the signs to look for in de­ter­min­ing if a child is at risk of be­ing bul­lied or a bul­ly him­self.We are an ex­pres­sive peo­ple and so we must use all avail­able av­enues to pro­mote an an­ti-bul­ly­ing cam­paign.There should be ad­ver­tise­ments on all elec­tron­ic and print me­dia with the theme: "Say no to bul­ly­ing" and cre­ative com­pe­ti­tions and de­bates at all lev­els to pro­mote a bul­ly-free learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.Con­grat­u­la­tions and thanks are ex­tend­ed to 11-year-old na­tion­al ju­nior ca­lyp­so monarch, Jeromy Ro­driguez, for his ini­tia­tive to launch a cam­paign to bring at­ten­tion to the prob­lem of bul­ly­ing.It is tru­ly com­mend­able when a young per­son does a pos­i­tive act to as­sist in ad­dress­ing and deal­ing with a na­tion­al prob­lem. In this case, it would be good for oth­ers to fol­low in the foot­steps of this child.