Have you bullied anyone to feel cool or superior? Or, have you been bullied, feeling scared and most of all, small?
A bully can be a classmate, a senior, an older sibling, or even a parent or teacher. In a display of power, bullies use physical force, tease in real-life or on cyberspace, speak sarcastically or simply ignore, spread rumours and isolate their victim from peer groups.
To fight this damaging power imbalance, five well-known schools in Jamshedpur have taken up the onus to make their campuses a No Bully Zone.
The five are Hill Top School (Telco), JH Tarapore School (Dhatkidih), Tarapore School (Agrico), Kerala Samajam Model School (Sakchi) and Motilal Nehru Public School (Bistupur).
While from this year, city-based NGO People for Change is working with the first four cradles to fight bullies, Motilal Nehru Public School has been working on this project on their own since last year.
NGO People for Change has identified "five traditional spaces of bullying". They are home, school, tuition, public space and cyberspace.
The main aim of this project is to explain children and adults what bullying means, deliberate aggressive behaviour that repetitively creates power imbalance and fear.
So, if group or one-on-one sessions work for senior classes, puppet shows and story-telling work for children of junior sections.
In all five schools, children have started understanding what the term means and have started reporting their experiences to school authorities.
So, when a school-goer mocks a peer on his or her Facebook page for weight or appearance, 'cool kids' make fun of someone's surname or economic status or circulate nasty rumours, or a maths teacher humiliates a student in class to exert pressure to join her private tuition, it all means bullying.
"We started the project this academic season. Every school faces numerous instances of bullying. But, with a few sensitisation sessions, students have now started opening up and sharing their bad experiences with us," Nandini Shukla, Kerala Samajam Model School principal, said, adding they had formed a committee to decide corrective actions.
The educator shared an interesting insight. "If boys bully with physical force or threats, girls employ the violence of sarcasm and abusive language. And it must stop," she said.
Hill Top School has included anti-bullying messages on its school diary, clearly stating bullying would not be tolerated in schools. NGO People for Change is also training students and teachers to handle situations where bullying may arise.
"I want to stress that a bully needs help. Aggressive behaviour is an outcome of a problem, mostly at home. We started this campaign last year, but this new session, the campaign is more vigorous," said Puneeta B. Chouhan, Hill Top principal.
Motilal Nehru Public School calls its anti-bullying campaign 'The Power of a Friend'. From role-playing, anti-bullying posters to nukkad nataks, the school is using many platforms to raise awareness against bullying.
"Role-playing sessions make children recognise their mistakes. For instance, at a session, a teacher may ask a bully to play the role of a victim. That way, bullies understand what they are doing is wrong," said its principal Ashu Tiwary.
What's the best way to tackle a bully? Tell ttkhand@abpmail.com
