A candid look at bullying from the educational environment
Today we find ourselves in a social environment more concerned with labeling problems than with finding solutions, and we find this both in diagnoses of syndromes that affect learning and mental health and in serious relational problems.
Having a diagnosis of ADHD or dyslexia is not the end of the line for labeling a child and justifying their problems, but rather a starting point for finding and implementing solutions that help improve, minimize, or resolve some of their learning difficulties. This also applies to mental health issues. Specialists have warned us about the overuse and misuse of terms: the names of some disorders are used to describe moods, such as "being depressed" or "being paranoid," minimizing and taking out of context mental health conditions that are serious enough to warrant trivialization.
The same thing happens to us with the word bullying or school harassment: it is used among peers or among adults, out of context or ironically, joking among themselves and causing an underestimation of what bullying really is.
The issue is particularly sensitive because, on other occasions, real bullying situations are trivialized and downplayed, either by turning a blind eye or underestimating their importance to the person repeatedly experiencing inappropriate relationships. This has happened and continues to happen in school and leisure settings, environments where education in coexistence and respect are paramount values.
Therefore, we need, from the entire educational environment, a calm reflection on bullying and cyberbullying , with the perspective and advice of expert professionals, in order to detect them properly in their early stages and to implement mediation and reparation actions as soon as possible to help the affected children and young people, as well as, at the community level, to establish relationships based on respect.
Listen, contextualize, and help recover from bullying
Bullying can be assessed using objective criteria, but above all, it's crucial to be very attentive to the feelings and perceptions of those who suffer it. When a child or adolescent feels attacked, belittled, or ridiculed by other classmates, whether in person or online, we must act urgently: listen to them, understand the context of the situation, and, above all, help them recover their well-being and find solutions. Some students protect themselves to minimize the pain and pretend that it doesn't affect them, that they don't care about inappropriate jokes, name-calling, or exclusion from their peers. And here, the role of the educator is key to helping them, to guiding them so they can express their true feelings, because if we don't start by acknowledging what is happening to us, we cannot move toward a positive solution.
We must work on these solutions within the group context: prioritizing restorative solutions for the victim and, from there, rebuilding relationships among them based on respect and affection. Often, we will need to work with the students involved on models of positive relationships and coexistence. We will never truly resolve a bullying issue if we don't modify the patterns of interaction among peers, and this requires in-depth work from the entire team of educators, both at school and in leisure activities, and always with the collaboration and consistency of the family environment.
When peer relationship models are not thoroughly and consistently addressed, we often encounter rebound situations where the roles of aggressor and victim alternate. Students become aggressive to avoid being attacked themselves or because they have been attacked. In these situations, we have put a band-aid on the problem, but we have not addressed the underlying issue, and, to continue the wound analogy, we have neglected the health of the student.
We must work in all educational settings to guarantee a well-founded and serious emotional education that is not approached in an ethereal and vague way, but rather established as a priority educational focus. This education must systematically and coherently address both interpersonal relationships, starting from the recognition of each individual's uniqueness and the positive value of difference, and the distorting role of interpersonal relationships fostered by the supposed and false anonymity on social media.
We also need to address a serious issue that we often try to ignore: the consistency and exemplary behavior of all educators is crucial, not only in addressing bullying in the classroom but especially in establishing positive role models . Some mocking or ridiculing comments made by educators (teachers, coaches, families), sometimes ironic or sarcastic, can serve as a model, legitimizing abusive relationships among peers.
Lucía del Alba Benito Fernández
And what happens when relationships deteriorate online , often damaging what hurts teenagers most—their self-image—through various video and photo platforms? Here, the aggression can be direct or indirect bullying . Often, it's not directed at a specific person, but it affects those outside their immediate circle. This happens when someone doesn't like a classmate's videos or photos, when photos are posted of someone posing in a way that requires exceptional physical ability, or when exclusionary comments are made that only insiders understand. This is also bullying , and it often causes even more pain to those affected.
And all of this goes beyond the classroom walls, or what happens in young people's family or leisure environments. This is a problem that affects us all; it's the flip side of 360° Education, and it's what we must prioritize and address, without looking for someone to blame, but working together as a community that educates coherently, putting children's well-being first and helping them grow with the tools for relationships and coexistence.
We need to get to the bottom of the problem in order to solve it, and we will need a reconstruction effort and, often, a good rebuilding of the self-esteem of all the people affected and a complete rethinking of the relationship models.
We must provide spaces for listening to children and young people; we must establish the conditions to allow them to speak; they must be in contexts of trust where they can ask for help, and have close adults with whom they can verbalize their fears. And here we must attend to all students, primarily the victims but also the aggressors, because advancing relationships of affection and respect, understanding difference, valuing others and caring for their well-being is crucial to building a more respectful and empathetic real and virtual society together.
Featuring
