INTRODUCTION
Bullying has always existed among us, but only today is it widely discussed in the media and has aroused growing interest in our academic circles. This work intends to publicize this social fact and its consequences in our country. Multidisciplinary, bullying has aroused the interest of different branches of activity, such as education, health, and, recently, the legal area.
In this article, we will deal with school bullying in Brazil based on the latest national research on the subject. Initially, we will conceptualize and characterize bullying.
Soon after, we will know the position of some experts on the subject on the measures to be taken in the event of this fact in school environments. We sincerely hope that this article can contribute to clarifying this social cancer that affects many children and adolescents in our country and in the world.
1. The testimony of a victim of bullying
On the blog Observatório da Criminologia, we found the following statement: My name is Daniele Vuoto, a 22-year-old gaúcha. I came here to tell you a little about my school life. Since preschool, when I saw a classmate being laughed at, I would go there and defend them. I didn’t think it was right! Over time, this turned against me: by becoming friends with the victims, I became one. The excuses used at the time were banal things: me being too white, too blonde, high grades, and later on my tendonitis became a joke too. When I was 14 I decided to change schools. I thought the change would be a fresh start, and I wouldn’t suffer anymore. That was a big mistake. That school was a nightmare:
there, I was seen as a haunt, people treated me like I was a freak. They screamed when they saw me, pushed, laughed a lot, stole things, and the worst: some teachers supported the attitudes of my colleagues. I switched schools in the middle of that year. The following year, I went to another school: the last school I attended. There, I did as usual: I saw who was alone, and made friends. More than ever, I was seen as the different one. But I managed to make two friends, and the following year I made friends with two more girls.
Soon, one of them began to say how much the others spoke badly of me. That was bothering me a lot, because I was humiliated every day. This made me even more depressed. I was walking to school, and I stopped looking as I crossed the street. For me, dying would be gain. I was alone again in a huge school, trying to take refuge in the library, and even there I was being chased. I started eating less, cutting myself and seeing everything as a possible weapon to end my suffering.
In the winter break, I closed myself even more, I couldn’t go back to any school. I saw my parents looking like crazy looking for me a new school, and it got even worse for that. That’s when I asked to see a psychologist, and she told my parents that, in that state, I wouldn’t be able to face a new school. I started treatment with her, and then with a psychiatrist. Today I am 22 years old, I no longer take medication or undergo treatments. The biggest lesson I took from what happened is that we can’t believe everything they say about us, but believe that things can change, and fight for it! After all, while we are alive, we still have a chance to change our history.
Bullying makes many victims. In 2005, shortly after being discharged from the treatment she had undergone for being a victim of bullying, Daniele created a blog to publicize the issue in Brazil.
Today, she no longer updates her blog, but, in addition to collaborating with the dissemination of the subject, she left us all an excellent example of overcoming obstacles.
2. Bullying: concept, characteristics and characters
The word bullying originates from the English term bully which means: bully, bossy, bully.
Educator and researcher CLÉO FANTE describes this social phenomenon as follows: Bullying is a term used in Anglo-Saxon psychological literature to designate aggressive and antisocial behavior in studies on the problem of school violence.
Universally, bullying is conceptualized as a “set of aggressive, intentional and repetitive attitudes, which occur without evident motivation, adopted by one or more students against another(s), causing pain, anguish and suffering, and performed within a relationship unequal power, making victim intimidation possible.” The educator adds that “ridiculousness, intimidation, pejorative nicknames, threats, persecution, defamation, humiliation, are some of the behaviors employed by perpetrators of bullying.”
In addition to these commissive behaviors, there is bullying by omission, which can also be devastating, as explained by prosecutor LÉLIO BRAGA CALHAU: It can be produced with acts of ignoring, “freezing” or isolating the victim. If provoked by a group of students in a classroom, they can be devastating for a child’s self-esteem, for example. In general, bullying practiced with omission is more affectionate to that practiced by girls and is very subtle.
It’s almost invisible. If you analyze the isolated act, it may not mean anything, but they are like small aggressions, which little by little undermine the psychological integrity of the victim. Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus established some important criteria so that we can correctly identify cases of school bullying.
The three criteria established by Dan Olweus are as follows:
• Repetitive actions against the same victim over a prolonged period of time;
• Power imbalance, which makes it difficult for the victim to defend himself;
• Absence of reasons that justify the attacks.
Knowledge of these criteria, or characteristics, is essential to identify bullying and to distinguish it from other forms of violence unrelated to the phenomenon under study. Impetuous games typical of this age group, arising from that natural search for self-affirmation, are also not characterized as bullying. Briefly, bullying has three characters: the aggressor, the victim and the spectator.
But, according to CLÉO FANTE, scholars identify and classify the types of social roles played by the protagonists of bullying in five ways:
• The typical victim: who serves as a scapegoat for a group;
• The provocative victim: who provokes reactions that he does not have the skills to deal with;
• The aggressor victim: who reproduces the mistreatment suffered;
• The aggressor: who victimizes the weakest;
• The spectator: who witnesses the abuse. LÉLIO BRAGA CALHAU adds to these five types the figure of:
• Rookie: student transferred from school who is weakened in bullying situations.
3. The consequences of bullying
Regarding the possible consequences of these aggressions, we extract the following information from the booklet recently launched by the National Council of Justice, Bullying – Projeto Justiça nas Escolas: the victim of this social aggression can face the most varied consequences even in school and later throughout his life . Everything will depend on the structure of the victim, his experiences, his genetic predisposition and also the form and intensity of the aggressions suffered.
However, all victims, to a greater or lesser extent, suffer from bullying attacks. Many of these people will carry deep marks into adult life and, most likely, will need psychological and/or psychiatric support to overcome their traumas.
After a prolonged period of stress to which the victim is subjected, bullying can worsen pre-existing problems or trigger the following consequences: lack of interest in school, psychosomatic problems, panic disorder, depression, school phobia, social phobia, generalized anxiety, among others.
In more severe cases, schizophrenia and even homicide and suicide can be observed. Below are some cases where, unfortunately, we had a tragic ending: In 1999, at the Columbine Institute (Colorado, USA), Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, victims of bullying, entered the school and started shooting at teachers and classmates. After killing twelve classmates and a teacher, they committed suicide.
In 2005, a 16-year-old student killed five classmates, a teacher and a security guard at a Minnesota school (USA). In 2006, in Germany, a former student opened fire at a school and injured eleven (he then committed suicide).
In 2007, a bullied student at Virginia Tech school (USA) murdered thirty-two people and injured fifteen others. In November 2007, in Jokela (Finland), eight people were murdered by a student who posted a video on YouTube announcing the massacre.
On May 25, 2008, a 22-year-old student killed nine students and a teacher in Kauhajoki (Finland). Then he committed suicide. – In Brazil, cases of students who are caught inside schools with firearms are not uncommon.
In 2003, in Taiúva (SP), a former student returned to the school and shot six students and a teacher, who survived the attack. He was formerly obese and a victim of bullying, and after the attack, he committed suicide.
In 2004, in Remanso (BA), a teenager killed two and injured three, after being humiliated (he was also a victim of bullying).
4. The origin of studies on bullying
Bullying is as old as educational establishments. Despite having existed for a long time, it was only in the early 1970s that this phenomenon became the subject of scientific study. It all started in Sweden, when society, for the most part, showed concern about violence between students and its consequences in the school environment. This wave of social interest soon spread to other Scandinavian countries.
In Norway, parents and teachers have used the media for years to publicize their concern about bullying. However, the educational authorities never officially commented on the matter. At the end of 1982, a tragedy occurred in the north of that country that marked the history of national bullying.
Three children aged between 10 and 14 committed suicide.
Soon after, investigations concluded that they decided to kill themselves because they were subjected to mistreatment by colleagues at the school where they studied. In the following year, in response to the great national mobilization resulting from this event, a broad campaign was carried out with the objective of combating school bullying.
It was in this context that researcher Dan Olweus began a pioneering study in which approximately 84,000 students, 1,000 students’ parents and 400 teachers participated. The aim of this study was to assess in detail how bullying was presented in Norway.
The research concluded that one in seven students interviewed was involved with school bullying as a victim or aggressor. This revelation mobilized much of that country’s civil society and gave rise to a national anti-bullying campaign, which received broad government support. Olweus’ initiative was so successful that it triggered other similar campaigns in several countries…