The incidence of bullying at schools has significantly dropped from last year, the Children’s Welfare League Foundation said yesterday, adding that a large majority of victims suffer not only physical bullying, but also “relational aggression,” a type of bullying that is easily overlooked and hard to detect, but can result in lasting psychological trauma.
Bullying in schools has decreased since 2007 due to government efforts and rising public awareness, the foundation said.
However, anti-bullying initiatives still face several challenges, it said.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Teachers and parents often overlook relational aggression, with victims choosing to remain silent as they believe that speaking out about bullying will not help.
According to a survey conducted earlier this year, 16.3 percent of fourth, fifth and sixth graders were said to have experienced bullying at school.
Of those, 94.8 percent were victims of relational bully.
Children’s Welfare League Foundation research and development director Chiu Ching-hui (邱靖惠) said that relational bullying often involves the intentional social exclusion of a victim or spreading rumors to ruin the victim’s social networks, and can cause the victims to feel detached and depressed.
“However, according to another survey conducted online, 93.7 percent of parents and 88.7 percent of children polled take school bullying to be physical violence only, while 30 percent of them think that boys are more likely to become bullies. What’s more, 26 percent of children do not consider peer exclusion as a kind of school bullying,” Chiu said.
Relational bullying has also been aggravated by the Internet.
The survey shows that 62.4 percent of children consider cyberbullying more serious than real-life bullying, reflecting the fact that it is easier to victimize children in a world where real-life rules and adult oversight are lacking.
Many victims do not reveal the bullying to adults, for fear of revenge or being slighted as a “whistle-blower” or because they fear adults’ countermeasures.
Children’s distrust is actually disappointingly justified, the foundation said, as the survey found that 78 percent of reported cases were not resolved properly or even deteriorated.
As worrying as children’s distrust is parents’ distrust of teachers, Chiu said.
“Nearly half of the parents felt all channels of help were closed to them when they needed one, and more than half of them do not believe teachers can be trusted in solving the issue if their kids are bullied,” Chiu said.
While more government attention and action are necessary, the children’s foundation is also asking for children’s assistance in eradicating school bullying, encouraging them not to ridicule, exclude, slander or reinforce bullying, but to respect fellow students and take action against bullying.
Bullying is a group phenomenon, Chiu said, adding that “both the individuals involved in a bullying case and the class as a whole have to be educated.”
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS