Standing up to bullies

Results of the latest Pisa study, the Programme for International Student Assessment survey published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development alarmed the public recently. This was because Filipino students ended up at the bottom for reading comprehension and second-to-last in science and mathematics among students from 79 countries. Getting minimal attention, though, were results of another aspect of the study. According to the Pisa, based on the students’ own self-assessment, at least 6 in 10 Filipino students are being bullied regularly. The frequency of bullying in local schools is nearly three times higher compared to rates reported by students from developed countries.

A detailed examination of the results showed that about 65 percent of more than 7,000 15-year-old Filipino students “reported being bullied at least a few times a month.” The figure, it was noted, is higher compared to the 23-percent average reported by students from 36 developed nations, including the United States, Japan, China and European countries.

What’s more, the same study found that 26 percent of students here felt “lonely at school.” The study noted that “in most countries and economies, students were more likely to report positive feelings when they reported a stronger sense of belonging at school and greater student cooperation.” However, they “were more likely to express sadness when they were bullied more frequently.”

The silver lining to this dismal situation, though, is that “95 percent of Filipino student-respondents said they sometimes or always feel happy,” while 84 percent said “it is a good thing to help students who cannot defend themselves.”

Early this year, the Psychological Association of the Philippines (PAP) urged parents to listen to their children and take reports of bullying seriously. The National Baseline Study on Violence against Children has found that three out of five Filipino children have experienced peer violence.

The association alerted parents that “children may not disclose experiences of bullying because they believe such reports may be trivialized, seen to be their fault, or responded to in ways that may worsen rather than solve their problems.” Thus, it urged parents to engage in “consultations with teachers, conflict resolution sessions or constructive advocacy work,” while schools were encouraged to take a “holistic or whole-school approach to bullying prevention.”

“This approach nurtures a positive school climate and is more effective than programs focusing only on the victim and the perpetrator,” said the PAP, which also pointed out that bullying is a “systemic problem,” meaning there are family, peer group, school and sociocultural factors that perpetuate bullying. “(Bullying) is not solely rooted in the child,” it noted. A child’s “brain and character are developing and is strongly influenced by his or her relationships and environment.” To this, we must add our voices against the new, even more alarming forms of bullying carried out through social media, where such incidents end up even farther away from the eyes of parents and caring adults, unfettered by civilizing norms of proper behavior and language, and by their very reach utterly dangerous. According to a Unicef study published in September, cyberviolence affects almost half of Filipino children aged 13-17, and that “One-third of cyberviolence… are in the form of verbal abuse over the internet or cellphone, while a fourth are through sexual messages.”“Violence against children, in all forms including online bullying or cyberbullying, has devastating effects on the physical and emotional wellbeing of young people,” warned Unicef. “This can create lasting emotional and psychological scars, even physical harm.”Indeed, it can be safely said that a nation that tolerates and even encourages bullying, in whatever form, among its citizens, but especially among its children, would reap the whirlwind of a generation of adult bullies, who know no language other than intimidation, character assassination and worse, aggression, violence and even murder.

What are adults who were bullied as children to do? The habits of accommodation, compromise and cowardice are difficult to shake off, true, but we can begin now by standing up for our own children—by demanding safer spaces for them at school, in the community and online; by calling on the government to see this issue as a matter of serious public interest; and by teaching young people to value themselves, to find within themselves the fires of defiance and self-defense, and to take to heart what Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”