What should schools be doing to combat cyber bullying?

What should schools be doing?

“Cyber-bullying is not so different than regular old school-yard bullying as the tactics employed by the offenders, the people affected, the resulting consequences, and the reasons for the bullying are all basically the same. Thus, many of the methods used to combat regular bullying may be effective to prevent cyber-bullying.”

In short the article is suggesting that rather than implementing an internet usage contract, like a number of schools are doing to attempt to combat cyber bullying, traditional methods used to combat school yard bullying can be used.

Some of the methods suggested are;

      Intervention- that is talk to the bully about their behaviour

      Counselling- for the bully to deal with the root cause of the bullying, and to teach the victims coping strategies.

       School assemblies- addressing the behaviour and highlighting the school policies against bullying (in any form) and the consequences that can occur for the bully.

      Students parents can be bought in

      Educating teachers about cyber bullying and how to safeguard their students.

References

FORD, A. (2009). School Liability: Holding Middle Schools Liable for Cyber-Bullying Despite Their Implementation of Internet Usage Contracts. Journal of Law & Education, 38(3), 535-543. Retrieved from Education Research Complete database.