Quotes of the Day
Last month two 11-year-old boys committed suicide within 10 days of each other. The apparent reason: their parents claim that both boys, one in Georgia and the other in Massachusetts, were bullied by classmates who accused them of being "gay." Their families say the boys hanged themselves rather than face another day at school. It's unclear who was told what and when — or whether the schools could have done anything to prevent the deaths. But the cases have highlighted the continuing problem, in an age when children can torment one another via text messages and social-networking sites, of old-fashioned name-calling and physical bullying in school hallways and on playgrounds across the country.
In the wake of last month's suicides, a bill was introduced in Congress that would protect all students — including gay or transgender ones — from bullying and harassment and would require schools to report on the prevalence of such harmful activity to the Department of Education each year. But bullying is a problem teachers and administrators say is hard to define, let alone monitor — and one that could leave schools open to more lawsuits from the parents of bullied children. Indeed, a lawyer for Atlanta resident Masika Bermudez says she plans to sue the DeKalb County School System for a "substantial amount" for alleged negligence involving her 11-year-old son, Jaheem Herrera, who hanged himself in his bedroom closet on April 16. Bermudez says she complained to officials at Dunaire Elementary School that the fifth-grader was being taunted by bullies who called him "gay" and a "snitch" and who once put him in a sleeper hold in a school bathroom. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)
The school system released an internal report today that concluded Herrera had not been subjected to more teasing than his peers. At a press conference, retired judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, who was brought in by the school district to conduct the investigation, pointed to the difficulty Dunaire, like all schools, faces in monitoring bullying. "There is name-calling, there is teasing, but I will tell you that it is almost always done outside the presence of adults," Moore said. "There is a code of silence among the students."
Bermudez's lawyer, Gerald Griggs, said today that his client will nevertheless go forward with her intent to sue the school system. He said that Bermudez complained to the school about bullying eight times, but the school system only acknowledged five of those complaints. Each time, Griggs said, Bermudez complained to the principal and to her son's homeroom teacher. "Who did [DeKalb County Schools] talk to in this independent investigation?" he said.
Griggs said the National Action Network will stage a protest outside of Herrera's former elementary school on Friday and that the Rev. Al Sharpton is planning to attend a town-hall meeting next week about what happened at Dunaire. Since Herrera's suicide, other parents in DeKalb County have come forward alleging that the school system ignored their children's complaints about bullying.
The case has renewed national attention on bullying and how schools define, prevent and respond to it. The federal anti-bullying bill introduced in the House of Representatives on May 5 would require schools receiving funding from the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act to implement comprehensive anti-bullying policies that define categories targeted by bullies — among them race, religion and sexual orientation. Another provision would require states to report bullying and harassment data to the Federal Government. Although current laws provide federal support to promote school safety, they do not focus on issues of bullying or harassment.
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Suicide as a result of bullying or any other cause is rare among children under the age of 14. Recent statistics from the CDC cited one suicide for every 100,000 kids, which is down slightly from six years ago. But an estimated 160,000 students stay home from school every day because of bullying incidents, according to Dr. Allan Beane, a former teacher and bullying expert who authored The Bully-Free Classroom. "These kids get angry and frustrated, and it creates this sort of toxic shame within them," he says. "They also have gotten to the point where they can't trust adults to handle their situation right, so they wonder how they'll cope."
After the Herrera suicide, the DeKalb County school district hired Moore to conduct an independent investigation of its response to Bermudez's bullying complaints and brought in a school-safety expert to review the district's anti-bullying system. DeKalb County uses the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate program, which integrates lessons about diversity into the school curriculum and makes students sign a pledge of respect. But ADL regional director Bill Nigut says the anti-hate program does not involve teacher and student training about inappropriate behavior and is not designed to protect students from harm. (Read about teen suicide pills.)
Like several school districts, DeKalb County relies on outside organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League or consultants like Beane to identify bullying problems in its schools and show how to address them. But Beane says the challenge is ensuring that schools make bullying prevention part of their culture, with staff who are trained on what to look for, students who understand the consequences of picking on a peer and parents who enforce discipline and respect at home.
"We are working hard to make sure there is a universal understanding of what bullying is," said Dr. Gale Thomas, director of student-support services for DeKalb County schools.
In general, Thomas said, bullying can be reported to any adult at school. A report leads to an investigation and appropriate discipline. After three reports of bullying, an accused bully is supposed to face a hearing, Thomas said. Complicating the Herrera case is Moore's findings that the boy sometimes actively participated in fights. Can the bullied also be bullies?
Although many schools across the nation have anti-bullying and anti-hate programs in place, experts acknowledge that these programs can be challenging to maintain, especially when teachers are already stretched thin.
"Maybe we've reached a time in society when we can't allow school kids to be unsupervised in hallways and parking lots and stairwells," Beane said. "Some schools, for example, have an adult at the top and the bottom of the stairwell, monitoring kids between classes. These schools have cameras in the hallways. They have a culture in place that is preventative instead of reactive. But all of that takes money and training to understand what to look for and how to handle it."
Although bullying is not new, administrators and experts say there is a greater understanding of the need to keep it in check.
"Bullying isn't swine flu," Nigut said. "It's not some new virus that's come out of nowhere. It's something that has been around at least since I was in school. But back then, we didn't look at it as destructive behavior. Now we know that bullying has strong repercussions, and more and more schools know they need to address the problem."
See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball.
- Paige Bowers
- A Georgia 11-year-old's suicide has raised anew questions of how much schools can do to prevent schoolyard taunting from turning into tragedy