Peer Support in Action
Andrew Mellor on Finding Out About Bullying
Andrew Mellor argues that pupils have their reasons for not speaking out and that schools should also explore other ways of getting at what is really happening, in order to ensure that 'talking and telling' is rewarding and relevant.
"I would tell anybody bar the teachers. They do nothing for you. They do nothing for you."
This statement by a twelve year old boy is typical, argues Mellor, on the basis of research conducted under the auspicies of the Scottish Council for Research in Education. Finding out about bullying is indeed not easy, and if attitudes as expressed in the above statement are common, the problem remains hidden.
It would be easy to dismiss the boy's comment as inaccurate or unfair but that would be a mistake, Many children keep quiet about bullying, partly because they fear what the bullies will do to them if they tell, but also because experience has taught them that adults often are not interested or, when they are, give bad advice (see also Ian Rivers' article, which iterates similar comments).
Mellor quotes some anecdotal evidence from his recent work:
" I was contacted by the mother of a ten year old boy who was very distressed because of the bullying he was suffering at school. She had done the right things - encouraged the boy to talk and contacted the school - but the advice she had been given by the headteacher was to tell her son to hit back. Not surprisingly, this just made the boy even more upset and did nothing to stop the bullying."
Even those adults who are keen to help sometimes make mistakes. One headteacher said:
" I just can't stand it. This means that I am apt to dive in before I should ".
Children know that bullying is not easy to stop and may well be wary of approaching an adult, however well-meaning, who is known to act before thinking.
Mellor mentions different ways of finding out about bullying in schools. In an anti-bullying pack (issued by SCRE), Mellor suggests that teachers and headteachers could observe social relationships between pupils, keep records of bullying incidents, investigate pupils' views by asking them to write a story on bullying, discuss potential problems with colleagues, ask pupils to write about areas of the school which are safe or unsafe and what should be done about this, and carry out a questionnaire survey. He argues that whatever method schools use to find out about bullying, information collected from pupils, parents or teachers should always be fed back to the school.
Apart from aiding in finding out about bullying, peer support can actually help in preventing. Therefore, more research is required into its long term effectiveness.
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