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A recent KSL Editorial lauded a new initiative by the Utah State Board of Education to get a handle on schoolyard bullying in Utah. The school board’s action followed a series of Eyewitness News reports earlier this year on bullying.
State Representative David Cox of Lehi, who is also a 5th grade school teacher, responded with another viewpoint.
"I appreciate your efforts to reduce bullying in the schools. However your efforts have several consequences, none of which includes reducing bullying.
Because of your reporting on the issue the State Office of Education felt they had to do something. So they came up with a plan to prevent anyone from saying they were ignoring the problem. Notice I didn't say "solve" or "improve" the problem, only to prevent anyone from throwing blame at them. They came up with more forms to fill out!
The first negative consequence is more forms for schools to waste time filling out. Second, this will mean USOE needs at least one more employee to collect data and evaluate it, thus growing the bureaucracy. This will, of course, lead to more programs, because these new people, (it will grow to be more than one), will need to justify their salaries.
Thirdly, it will take teachers, who already have too much required of them, away from their classes to fill out these forms and even more to be trained in somebody's program who isn't even in the classroom.
Fourth and perhaps the worst consequence is that this will lead to much litigation. The lawyers would just love to get into the courts to define bullying. More than likely they will be suing schools more than bullies. The courts are going to be chuck full of tattletales!
The state cannot solve bullying! Only parents and teachers working together can and there is no one-size-fits-all solution for how. To solve this we need to look at why bullying is happening.
Bullying is a natural behavior and will happen unless students are taught and well monitored. No teacher wants or likes bullying, so why is there a problem? The research is clear. There is much more violence, apathy, and anger in large schools. Our schools are at least twice the size research agrees they should be. The research can be found on my website at www.smallerschools.org.
The larger we get, both in schools and school districts, the less teachers are able to take responsibility or solve problems. They just get more mandates. If we continue to build schools that are too big, we will continue to have more problems, which will create more state and district regulations and mandates, which won't solve anything except cause more frustration.
Let's get to the root of the problem and SOLVE it! We need smaller, neighborhood-size schools! We don't put adults in work places this size. Why do we put kids in them? If this causes people to become aware and realize the real problem and solution, your reporting will have great and wonderful consequences instead of the ones I mentioned!"
