The bullying seminar this past Saturday featured Connecticut State Consultant Jo Ann Freiberg and national bullying prevention speaker, David Long.
Yet the crowd of twenty students and twenty faculty members failed to fill Konover Great Room. One student who attended, Dana Earle, said she was appalled at the low attendance.
About the event, Earle stated, “It was really tragic to be honest. Bullying is a pertinent issue – over four thousand suicides per year are a result of bullying.”
Freiberg noted in her speech that Connecticut is the only state with laws set in stone about bullying.
In most places, when a student is sent to the principal’s office for bullying a peer, the principal reprimands the student and sends him or her back to class.
In Connecticut, on the other hand, bullies often get suspended from school.
Freiberg acknowledged that while this is a substantial achievement for the state, Connecticut has a long way to go before bullying is reduced dramatically.
Both speakers mentioned that emotional skills should be taught in schools, especially in elementary schools. Most schools only focus on Mathematics and English in order to prepare students for standardized testing.
If emotional skills were added the core curriculum, students would be more capable of dealing with bullying properly. It could improve students’ ability to avoid bullies, peer pressure and intimidation, or seek the right help once bullied.
It could also prevent bullying from arising in the first place because the bullies would understand the implications of their actions – on both the victim and themselves.
During the question-and-answer portion of the event, one woman in the audience asked a question that started uproar in the crowd.
From working in a school system herself, she has realized that a lot of psychologists are doing a lot of testing on bullied students with emotional needs rather than connecting with them and trying to help. “Who cares about defining the problem, just talk to the kid and try to help him.”
The audience went wild in response. The students and faculty members present agreed that psychologists should prioritize helping students rather than trying to categorize their situation.
Earle asked the speakers, “What about the people who turn a cold shoulder? How do you tell students to see the factors or signs of someone who has been bullied and needs help?”
The answer to her question was education. Freiberg and Long both believe that education of bullying prevention and intervention needs to be improved all over the nation if we hope to see a reduction in the number of tragedies that result from bullying.