They take lunch money, push students in hallways, call people names and, when taken to the extreme, might even seriously injure or kill, but schoolyard bullies may soon be meeting their match -- the Indiana legal system.
Being a bully is now considered a crime, according a bill recently passed by the Indiana General Assembly.
Focusing on the home environment, a lack of good role models and the old adage regarding overexposure to violent television and video games are some of the explanations being tossed around for why bullying has reached a point where laws are necessary to combat it.
"We just can't pinpoint one reason to cause this," Rebecca Adams, associate professor of family and consumer sciences, said.
The laws passed that address bullying have to do with acts of assault, aggression and other instances that would fall into similar categories, Jill Miels, chairwoman of the department of elementary education, said.
Regardless of the new legislation, all elementary education majors are taught how to deal with bullying and how to manage the classroom, she said. In fact, there is a three-hour course that focuses only on classroom management and that brings all the pieces together.
"This is something that we've seen coming," Miels said, and for the past 10 or 15 years, students have been showing less respect for their classmates.
According to Adams, part of the reason that students have less respect for others is the lack of parenting at home, and she said parents are finding it more difficult to teach respect and caring for others now, partly because of the importance society places on instant gratification.
"You can't get what you want all the time," she said, adding that parents sometimes work against this value by buying their children new toys as soon as they hit the stores. "[Children] just aren't taught that sometimes things don't work out," Adams said.
There is also a lack of character development in many families, and the "do unto others" mentality is not focused on very much, she said.
That doesn't mean parents have to apply these values in a religious sense, she said, but just in terms of people being able to get along with each other. And that is where role models come into play.
"I love football. I love basketball, and I love sports, but there's this 'in your face' attitude about them now, and students are getting these messages," she said.
Other times, the problem may not be from a lack of trying on the part of the parents, when the parent or parents might not even have the chance to see their children while they are awake, Adams said.
Adams also said that in many single-parent families, the children might only see their parent or guardian when he or she is stressed out after working a long shift, which is no fault of the guardians but also does not give the children a chance to learn the right way to act. This is where schools come into play.
Teachers can improve classroom interaction by identifying the possible bullies and victims early on because each of those roles has some telltale signs, Michael Putman, assistant professor of elementary education, said.
Another way to help prevent something serious from happening is for teachers to teach strategies to students who are being bullied that will help them defuse the situations, Putman said.
The schools do what they can, but there is still a lack of good role models for children to watch to figure out how to handle anger, Adams said.
Even something like parents watching movies or listening to iPods, instead of reading with their children, has changed the way families spend their quality time together, Miels said.
This generation of parents has also been taught to be more questioning, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it can rub off on a child the wrong way, Putman said.
Although she said that television and video games don't necessarily cause bad behavior, they have cut down on personal communication within families -- putting children next to each other in competition rather than in positions to work out their problems with each other.
With these circumstances, many children don't have role models to show them how to handle anger in a healthy way, so the children choose to yell at other or hit each other, Adams said.
Most teachers say that classroom management is the part of their job they fear the most, and making teachers aware of possible problems and more aware of solutions is a good way to curb the bullying problem before it reaches uncontrollable levels, Putman said.
The extreme types of bullying that Putman hopes can be prevented are the Columbine-style shootings, where the shooters had been bullied on a regular basis, and instances like when a nine-year-old girl stabbed and killed a seven-year-old girl.
Students talking about what is bothering them is much more healthy than keeping the feelings hidden until they come out as anger, and it also helps if children really think what they are saying makes a difference, Adams said.
In 2004, only 17 states had anti-bullying laws, many of which were formed after the 1999 Columbine shootings, and another 11 states proposed similar laws that did not pass, according to Stateline.org, an independent arm of the Pew Research Center.
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