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Carissa Steiner

Mrs. Feeley

2/17/14

10H Green 2

Bullying in American Schools and What We Are Doing About It

In recent years, America has seen an increased awareness in bullying due to events such as "Columbine", and "Virginia Tech". Both were school shootings that changed what society thought about school environments, but interestingly enough, both perpetrators were students who were being, or had been, severely bullied (Burns and Crawford 147-168). Schools and parents across the nation were frightened by these horrific acts, so organizations like "Rachel's Challenge" and The Hazelden Foundation formed out of a necessity to educate students and staff about bullying and its effects (Violence Prevention Works!). Unfortunately, bullying rates have only increased despite the efforts of parents and school administrators meaning that either programs that had been formed and crafted by professionals in behavioral sciences and psychologists were not working, or the schools were not using the tools they had been provided through these programs to the best of their abilities.

Physical bullying at school, as depicted in the fi...

No Bullying sign - School in Racine, Wisconsin

English: this is my own version of what bullying l...

(Could Ohio Shooting Been Prevented). All too often, children get bullied. Simply put, schools are not doing enough about bullying to keep their students safe.

Though one see's the evident danger in bullying with ease, there is still many both student and faculty member alike in schools that need to know just what exactly bullying is. Bullying itself is sometimes being left ignored by schools as stifling the harassment may cause the issue of "infringement

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upon one's basic freedom of speech rights" to rise up which becomes serious as it opens the door for legal action to be taken against the school instead of the bully. (Wocjik). Bullying in it's nature is some sort of situation where one individual, or many, take on unwanted harassment or assault from another. (Smith). "There are...