I know that we have all discussed bullying many times. I do not think that any would argue against the fact that parents need to be responsible for their kids. However, we all have our own opinions on bullying, and our parents also have their own opinions. Some parents just think it is part of life, and they do not try to do anything about it. In addition, there are some parents that do not know the full extent of their kid being bullied. I think that there is a major group of kids that we are forgetting about. Kids that are emancipated do not actually have a legal guardian. Also, there are many kids that get shuffled around in foster care, and some of the important information falls through the cracks.
I do think that teachers and schools need to be responsible for any acts of aggression that harm students' safety and learning environment. Acts of aggression that occur outside of school are not dealt with directly, but rather indirectly by dealing with the resulting effects. I think by saying that schools are only responsible for bullying that occurs on campus is like saying the status quo is working. If the status quo was working effectively, I do not think the bullying issue would be as controversial as it is today.
I think being in a supervisory role comes with a small part of being a "babysitter." My husband is a supervisor in the military. Even though there are situations that come up that do not deal in any way, shape, or form with his job, he has to deal with them. He can't just say he didn't see it anything was wrong. Soldier morale is probably one of the more important things in the military.
I realize that school is not a dramatic as military situations, but students need to feel safe in order to be able to learn. For me, I think it is a little extreme to say teachers would be babysitters if they are responsible for the effects of off campus bullying. I just think that part of being a supervisor, like a teacher, comes with the responsibility of making sure that the students' morale is not hindering their learning capability if it can be helped.
Obviously the kids should know right from wrong, and parents should be able to keep their kids under control. However, with bullying being such a prevalent issue that is not enough. Something does need to change in order to protect students' safety and to make their learning more effective.
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I would have to agree with you that schools usually are the initial start of most bullying and I believe that we should try to provent bullying where it starts. I would have to say that schools are where groups form and where differences appear between kids. Differences are usually what causes bullying to occur. If bullying occurs in school its most definitely going to occur outside of school. One example that I can think of is kids don't just go home and forget what happened at school, they are going to keep thinking about who they should pick on or who was picking on them, who they are going to date, who are the most popular people and who is not. That is going to lead to kids bullying outside of school as well. I still don't know how to change the way to prevent bullying becuase parents can't just assume that teachers are going to take care of all thier kids problems and vise versa. Maybe if the teachers suspect something they can take the initiative to tell the kids parents. If the parents are suspicious maybe they can get information from the teachers.
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