Back To School: a third of students will be bullied. Here is what we can do about it.
Previously, I posted on school security measures as response to the national school safety debate. However, I believe that schools must be protected from threats both inside and outside their walls. Within the mental health segment of the issue lies one key cause of suffering in schools: bullying. In 2016, National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) found that 33 percent of students who reported being bullied at school indicated that they were bullied at least once or twice a month during the school year. This figure shows that bullying is a chronic issue. In 1999, two ex-bully victims killed thirteen people in the Columbine Massacre. Georgia was the first state to enact anti-bullying laws only months later. For the next 10 years, we saw the culture shift. Movies and documentaries premiered detailing kids’ experiences with bullying, the media reported on extreme cases, and schools and governments began to make change. The federal government began collecting data on school bull...