SummEr/FAll 2011 - Nazareth College

NEWS|views
n School of education
Bully to the Max
by Alan Gelb
Did we ever imagine
that we could become
nostalgic for a punch
on the playground?
Bullying has always existed, but
in recent years technology has
given rise to cyberbullying, an
insidious new form that uses the
internet, cell phones, or other
devices to send or post text or
images intended to hurt or embarrass
another person. Jennie
Schaff, Ph.D., associate professor
in the department of language,
literacy, and technology in the
School of Education, has studied,
written about, and lectured on
cyberbullying, which she terms
“epidemic” within our society.
Schaff, who was awarded
tenure this year, examines the
connections between education and technology and the issues that
can arise at that nexus. Her interest in cyberbullying goes beyond the
academic, however. “As someone with three young children, I know
how early kids are introduced to technology and how fascinating and
scary that can be,” Schaff says.
In February, Schaff gave a talk titled “Cyber-bullying: Preventing
Online Bruises” as part of the School of Education Lecture Series,
sponsored by the Education Technology Specialist Program and the Office
of Graduate Admissions. Her focus was on parental and educator
awareness and intervention.
As Schaff points out, the social platform for today’s youth has radically
changed. Where the playground or community center used to be
the main gathering place, today the primary social platform for children
as young as second and third grade and throughout high school and
college involves media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Formspring. “A
site like Formspring allows a student to ask his or her friends all kinds
of questions that they can respond to anonymously,” explains Schaff.
“So you can put out a question like, ‘Is Joe cute?’ and suddenly you
have 500 replies, many of them vicious.”
Particularly dire instances of cyberbullying, in some cases leading
to teen suicides, have been much in the news lately, and the statistics
around cyberbullying are increasingly alarming. According to a survey
conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project in 2008,
39 percent of teens with profiles on social networking sites report
being cyberbullied.
“Bullying is an issue that’s
always been with us,” says Bob
Armstrong, physical education
teacher and head tennis coach at
the McQuaid Jesuit High School
in Rochester. “Now, however,
technology has made it so much
easier to be a bully and to damage
someone profoundly. My
students and I discuss bullying
and cyberbulllying in particular
and how important it is to communicate,
face to face, person
to person, without any layers
of anonymity.”
So what are parents and educators
to do in the face of this
juggernaut? “The most important
thing is to listen to your kids,
and not to minimize incidents of
online bullying,” says Schaff.
To start out, parents should be sensitive to telltale signs that cyberbullying
is taking place. “The most salient sign is that the child wants
to be secluded when he or she is at the computer,” says Schaff.
“Other important signs are withdrawal and having issues with friends.
This is very similar to what happens when a child is being physically
bullied. And when cyberbullying is going on, a parent’s first and foremost
response should be to validate the pain and then to figure out
appropriate action steps.”
Most sites that are used in connection with cyberbullying, like Facebook,
Twitter, and Formspring, have built-in mechanisms for flagging abusers,
and all parents should know how to use those flags to alert the administrators
of those instances when someone is bullying. At the same time,
school districts around the nation are working out language by which
they can include cyberbullying in their overall school bullying policies.
Above all, education is the best antidote for this toxic behavior.
Schaff teaches about cyberbullying in her Issues in Educational Technology
course and is actively gathering data from teens, parents, and
teachers regarding their experiences with cyberbullying. “We all need
to become informed about the technology with which our children are
engaged,” she says. “Today’s school bully operates in a vast new world
that we call the internet, and what is possible there goes way beyond
what most of us are capable of imagining.”
Visit the School of Education at www.naz.edu/education
Alan Gelb is a freelance writer in East Chatham, New York.
14 CONNECTIONS | Summer/Fall 2011 www.naz.edu