Bullying and Ostracism

A common Facing History and Ourselves theme is that of bystanders. A bystander is a person or a group of people who see unacceptable behavior but do nothing to stop it.

A recent Boston Globe Magazine article by Neil Swidey titled “The Secret to Stopping a Bully?” offers a possible solution to reducing bullying in U.S. schools. Swidey explains that “none of the current anti-bullying programs . . . have been successful in reducing actual bullying among American students in any meaningful way.” In fact, University of Oregon researchers led by Kenneth Merrell “conducted a meta-analysis—a review statistically combining the results of many earlier studies—that examined the effectiveness of bullying intervention programs in the United States and Europe across a 25-year period.” Merrell and his researchers found that while “some programs produced modest improvements in students’ attitudes about bullying and in their feelings of social competence,” none of the programs “demonstrated a significant reduction in bullying behavior,” and “ ‘the average teacher actually reported more bullying after intervention than before.’ ” Swidey notes that one strategy gaining support involves bystander training: “the thinking is that we can reduce bullying by encouraging uninvolved students to step in to protest when they see [bullying] happening.” While bystander intervention might help reduce bullying, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of educational psychology Dorothy Espelage points out that data suggests “ ‘adolescents rarely intervene to assist victims.’ ” Swidey thus concludes that “the real goal must be to boost those willingness-to-intervene levels among students.” But Swidey’s approach doesn’t target all bystanders. Instead, he believes that “following the premise that the more targeted the approach, the better, it stands to reason that converting the kids closest to the bully would have the biggest effect.”