Oblivious Teachers | Teen Ink

Oblivious Teachers

August 2, 2015
By jessica Passaretti BRONZE, Hingham, Massachusetts
jessica Passaretti BRONZE, Hingham, Massachusetts
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Her eyes felt like daggers digging in and severing my skin. She spoke about me every day quiet enough for the teacher not to hear, but loud enough for her followers to hear. Allison whispers, “She’s adopted because her parents couldn’t handle her retarded-ness” pierced my ears daily as she kicked the back of my calves and poked me with her razor sharp pencil. As Allison continued tormenting me my teacher paid no attention to what this girl was doing to me right in front of her. Although she continued to bully me on Facebook outside of school the majority of it took place in the classroom. Teachers lack the ability to detect bullying therefore nothing is done about it on their part.

 

“Many teachers and administrators deny they have a “bullying problem, yet statistics show that 1:5 children have admitted to being a bully. Twenty three percent of children admit to having been bullied. With statistics such as these, how can anyone deny the existence?” Children are placed in schools to receive an adequate education not to be tormented by other students and have it go unnoticed.

 

With numerous cases of un-reported bullying in the school systems, the teachers themselves are beginning to sound like children within the quote “Many teachers tell me they don’t see it happen, so there is nothing they can do about it. It’s all ‘he said, she said” Teachers are the adults of the situation who are supposed to be setting a good example for children and teach them how to adequately solve problems. The way the teachers act in the classroom is unacceptable and are in direct correlation to being bystanders which is exactly what we are supposed to be teaching children not to do.

 

President Obama has noticed this growing issue of teachers not paying close enough attention to the tormenting taking place in classrooms and has implanted guidelines for teachers to follow Also Obama integrated campaigns to prevent bullying specifically for teachers. If Obama can see the problem and do most of the work coming up with ways to fix the problem why can’t teachers act on it and carry out the solution? This world is stuck in a revolving cycle of negativity. Individuals in our society see this issue on bullying and many other issues and don’t do anything about it

 

Unfortunately we are not able to solve the problem within a day but the more the signs of bullying go unnoticed the more likely it is that one of those bullied children will do something drastic such as suicide. Rates of suicide have risen significantly in the past year and the leading cause is bullying and cyberbullying.
                                                                                                                                                            

According to Gail Flint the pioneering research on this topic was done by psychologist Daniel Olweus at the University of Bergen in Norway. He began his work in 1970, but only received support from Norwegian school officials in 1982 after three boys committed suicide after being bullied and harassed. Since then, school systems in other countries have made efforts to address the problem of bullying. In the United States, bullying began to attract attention following school shootings by young men who had apparently been harassed by their peers. Bullying is now a serious matter affecting children as young as five years old entering kindergarten. The more it starts at this young o an age the more school shootings will occur within the next decade.



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