Bullying in The Maldives: Cyber and School Bullying

Most researchers and organizations have different definition of bullying. The classical definition is first proposed by Olweus as “intentional and repeated acts that occur through physical, verbal, and relational forms in situation where a power different is present”. According to Olweus student is bullied when one or more student is repeatedly exposed to negative outcome of bullying. (Olweus,1994, P.1173). The center for diseases control (CDC) define school bullying as any unwanted aggressive behavior by another group of young people who are not siblings or current dating partner which involve power imbalance observed several times and likely to be repeated. (CDC, 2016). In addition, most definition of the bullying has similarities with regard to the characteristic of bullying such as repeat offending, attempting to inflict harm, power imbalance, and all highlighting the chronicity of bullying.

The emerging version of bullying is called the cyber bullying. Cyber bullying and traditional bullying both is present in school. From 1970s to 2004 traditional bullying is the only type of bullying in school and other context. After 2004, stated of text messages, and email bullying increases through mid-2000s. Since then, however, the development of smart phones and the increases used of social networking sites have offered many new tools to those who wish to hurt others. (Smith, 2013).

The systemic abuse of power can be described as bullying. Power relationship will always exist in social group due to strength or size, ability, force of personality, sheer numbers or recognized hierarchy. Bullying can be occurring in many contexts, including work place, home, prison, and also in schools. While not denying other context of bullying, school bullying may give rise to particular repulsion as the problem is so general. School bullying can affect anyone as child. Because children do not have rights or awareness of adult’s right so the impact will be high.

Bullying is a complex problem in school students. This problem either effect bullies, victims and others who are involving inter personal violence. All the types of bullying effect child individually, collectively and contributes in child’s bullying. Bullying is considered as a global problem that effect emotional, social, and physical wellbeing of school children’s. Moreover, school bullying affect academic achievement of the students. Because bullied kid feel fear and vulnerability while influencing the students’ personality and self-confidence.Victims who have been target of bullying may have long term emotional and behavioral problem that may lead to post-traumatic disorder. Bullying victim have elevated risk of depression and anxiety that can persist in adulthood. (Tsai & Gomba, 2012).

Bullying is the most common type of school violence. School bullying is major problem throughout the world and is one of the most common antisocial behaviors among teenagers and children. Bullying has been linked to other social problems such as suicide and impact on behavior of the young generation. During the past years, school bullying emerged as a social problem of epidemic proportion within academic, news media and public discourse in the Maldives. According to the 2014 global school-based student health survey, one in four children is bullied in the school. Same survey concludes that, student face mental and physical bullying in school. According to this survey, adolescent who is bullied in the Maldives, seven percent are frequently kicked, hit, pushed, shoved or look indoors. Moreover, countless number of students faces cyber bullying within school and outside school. A part from this, before the strategy used to deal with the bullies is suspending the student. But now a restorative method is using to deal with students who bullies others.

Bullying and victimization of adolescent students, in primary schools of Male’ study found that prevalence of bullying is very high among the students. Most of the students were bullied verbally, followed by physical and indirect bullying. Looking at bullying incidence in this report, 48% of students said they were physically bullied, and 56% of students said they were verbally bullied. (Azlifa, 2015). Moreover, large number of students who have been bullied victim and who bullies later in their adult hood join Gang violence. A research on Rapid situation assessment of Gangs in Male’ states that, large number of member who join gang is to get revenge for being bullied at school. And some of the participants states that most of the times teachers are not aware of what is happening in class and even if they knew they do not do much about it. In addition to point, other participants’ reports that discrimination among rich and poor often make them isolate and when they grew up they often join gang to overcome the feeling of powerlessness and inferiority. (Naaz, 2012).

Current policies in the Maldives

UNICEF and Ministry of education have teamed up to create and enforce a national anti-bullying strategy to tackle bullying in its all form. The policy development along with its activities requires the involvement of teachers, students, parents and community members. Moreover, the new policy is based on 14 consultation involving student with all age to nearly 500 people. These consultations helped structure the policy and led to the combination of measures students themselves believe will have a greater impact. The current policy encourages everyone in the education system to take the responsibility for the prevention and elimination of bullying including parents. In addition, the policy suggested creating parent’s groups and holding awareness sessions for caregivers. In the current education system, the policy also attempts to address the lack of trained counselors available for the students. (UNICEF, 2019).

Anti-bullying policy has clearly identified the roles and responsibility of the each person involve on this policy. Responsibility of education ministry, responsibility of the principle, and responsibility of school employees are clearly written in the anti-bullying policy. In addition, this policy has mention about awareness programs to be held to the certain groups involving in this policy. Additionally, this policy was made to create awareness among students and those employed in the education. (Anti-bullying policy, 2019).

There are some limitations in this policy. While 213 schools are operated in Maldives, not every school is designated with a health officer and a counselor. The policy states that each school must plan support plan for the bullied victim. So, without a proper certified counselor these goals might not be achieved. Another limitation is school staffs, parents and students are not aware of this policy. The most important thing to make a policy is to keep others aware of what is being published. So, raising awareness among parents and teachers and also student is very essential.

Another limitation on this policy is, there was infrequent mention of cyber bullying. Cyber bullying is a current emerging issue in Maldives. So, anti-bullying policy must stress out the interventions that need to be done to prevent cyber bullying. Today, there are no students who don’t use internet or any other social media on their daily basis. There are no specific statistic of cyber bullying in Maldives to say the prevalence rate. Cyber bullying has grown very rapidly, and educators and researchers are understandably concerned that this problem is growing more rapidly than educators and parent ability to respond effectively.

One advantage of anti-bullying policy is that they can influence the behavior of students, teachers, and administrator as well as organizational practice of school. Policies may also include certain actions such as requiring teachers to notify administrator about bullying incident and requiring administrator to review bullying case. Furthermore, policies at school level can guide administrative activities, such as setting up protocols for report bullying incidents and setting up public- safety committee to develop and implement school-safety policies.

Another advantage is, policy itself is an intervention for bullying problem in system level. This intervention require more targeted interventions programs, practice and services at the organizational, group and individual level. For example a policy is established within the education ministry, all the school should apply same policy. Thus, policies lay the groundwork for a number of more concrete and tailored measures to be implemented in schools by setting priorities and recommendations in the policy paper. (Hall, 2017).

Recommendations

Effective laws and policies are an initial steps in guiding researcher, educators, and policy makers to work together to create positive school climate. Maldives anti-bullying policy is a very new policy which was implemented on 2018. The awareness among students, teachers and parents are very low. Implementing a policy mean everyone should be aware of the policies. It is important that everyone in this area to be familiar with the definition of the bullying, bullying prevention policies, symptoms of bulling and the code of conduct. This will make sure same policy is being enforced in all the schools. Teachers should participate bullying prevention programs in order to learn more about bulling and their obligations. Moreover, it is important to clearly explain the students, what behavior is considered as bullying.

Another recommendation is, in the class room, teach specific skills and strategies such as emotional awareness, viewing the perspective of others, alternative thinking strategies and solving problems. In addition, students and parents should be trained and supported with multiple ways to seek help with bullying. It is important that policies include anonymous reporting procedure. School policies should include guideline for educating all the staffs to prevent and recognize bullying. And also, this training should include to recognize of the overlap between bullying and illegal behavior. (Cornell & Limber, 2016).

To prevent bullying it is important to have a bullying prevention action plan in all the education services. Today, the most advance type of bullying is cyber bullying. It is very important to give a clear cut definition of cyber bullying on the current policy. Apart from this, without creating a separate policy regarding cyber bullying add cyber bullying a type of bullying covered by part of anti-bullying policy. In Maldives there are no research done regarding cyber bullying but this issue is now becoming the most emerging issue in Maldives and other part of the world. Current anti-bullying policy has only mentioned cyber bullying as a type of bullying. Instead of mentioning cyber bullying as a types of bullying, policy maker can include cyber bullying as part of a broader approach to bullying prevention.

Policy should include the evidence based intervention for the students how to handle incidents if they appear to be of increasing importance. Furthermore, policy should include the confidential reports of cyber bullying to prevent young people from getting help. (Citic, 2011). While it is difficult to monitor cyber bullying in school and district. So, policies must be in place to educate students and assist victim since the consequences of online bullying often arise in school. Educations and schools who maintain proactive approaches of cyber bullying and whose policies include providing education, counseling and pro-social outlet are going to be much success in reducing the prevalence of cyber bullying.

Today in Maldives not only Maldives students are studying in schools. There are very high chance of these students become a victim of bullying. Prejudicial bullying is also a type of bullying that should be considered in the anti-bullying policy. Prejudicial bullying is bullying related to race, religion, faith, ethnicity, nationality or culture of a student. So, it is very important to cover this area on anti-bullying policy.

Dr Aishath Ali Naaz have given recommendation on her research paper regarding the bullying situation in Maldives. This study states that school based religious values education with a particular focus non-violence and dealing with the problem of bullying is very essential. So, the policy can include certain programs that need to be conduct each year regarding bullying issues. Policy should include the Islamic perspective of bullying and how to overcome bullies. Moreover, in this research many participants has mentioned about teachers are not aware of what is happening inside the class room and some teachers ignores the class situations. To deal with the bullying teachers are the one of the most important people working in this area. Policy can include teachers must complete certain trainings with regarding bullying and techniques to manage bullies in the class room. In addition, policy can include, the teaching course must include policy awareness classes and on the studying ground they should have an idea on bullying.

School administrator need to ensure school rules include specific language on cyber bullying and the impact on cyber bullying and work diligently with teachers, parents and students to raise awareness. Moreover, effective school policies should include specifically has to define all the possible meaning of bullying and should education should be provided to aggressors. Also, policies should specifically address off-campus incidents, how these incidents will be addressed. School should establish a reporting procedure and how bullying cases will be investigated. Move on to cyber bullying, many parents do not possess the technical knowledge their children do. In that mind policy should include parental education regarding technology and cyber bullying. (Wiseman, 2011). On the other hand, policy should include what behavior from the student will be reported to police and the procedure of these reporting system must be included.

When implementing anti-bullying policies, there are some important things to keep in mind. Those are:

1. Education ministry should take initiatives on leading and organizing bullying prevention programs.
2. Zero tolerance policies fail to minimize bullying and may have negative consequences.
3. Education ministry of the state should provide evidence based alternative intervention strategies for bullying prevention.
4. One positive solution is the use of restorative justice. Where those who bully make amends for their conduct and use pro-social ways.
5. School board should work together to communicate the scope and function of anti-bullying policies.

Conclusion

In conclusion anti-bullying policies play a vital role in preventing all form of bullying. There are very limited research done in Maldives regarding bullying within school system. And no research is done regarding the cyber bullying. By making a policy and publishing want give a best result on preventing such issues. Researches must be done before writing a policy. Research will help to identify all the form of bullying and how to overcome bullying within school system. Moreover, it is very important to raise awareness in schools and through media about the anti-bullying policies. Teachers and parent should be aware of anti-bullying policy to prevent bullying within school and society.

References

1. Azlifa, A. (2015). Bullying and victimization of adolescent students, in primary schools of male’. Retrieved from http://saruna.mnu.edu.mv/jspui/bitstream/123456789/1537/1/Aminath%20Azlifa%20November%202015.pdf
2. Citic, B. P. (2011). the prevalence of cyber bullying among adolescence. school psychology international. doi:10.1177/0143034311401700
3. Center for diseases control (CDC). (2016). understating bullying. Retrieved November 28, 2019, from https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/digital-citizenship/files/CDC%20Understanding%20Bullying%20Fact%20Sheet%202016.pdf
4. Cornell, D. G., & Limber, S. P. (2016, February). Do U.S. laws go far enough to prevent bullying at school? Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/02/ce-corner
5. Hall, W. (2017). the effectiveness policy interventions for school bullying. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved from DOI: 10.1086/690565
6. Naaz, A. A. (2012). Rapid situation assessment of gangs in male’. the Asia foundation, 16. Retrieved from https://asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/GangViolenceReportFINAL.pdf
7. Olweus, D. A. (1994). Bullying at school: basic facts and effects of a school based intervention program. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 35(7), 1179. Retrieved from DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01229.x
8. Smith, P. K. (2013, March 1). School bullying. Retrieved from https://journals.openedition.org/spp/988
9. Smith, P.K., & Sharp, S. (1994). School bullying: insight and perspectives. London: Rutledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xww&AN=83006&site=ehost-live
10. Tsai, K. C., & Gomba, C. (2012). effect of bullying in school: teachers' perspective. journal of society and communication. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283083561_Effects_of_Bullying_in_Schools_The_Teachers'_Perspectives
11. UNICEF. (2019, March 5). UNICEF and the ministry of education take steps toward decreasing bullying in schools. Retrieved November 28, 2019, from https://www.unicef.org/maldives/stories/unicef-and-ministry-education-take-steps-toward-decreasing-bullying-schools
12. Wiseman, B. (2011). Cyber bullying in schools: A research study on school policies and procedures. University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 52-54. Retrieved from https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1912&context=thesesdissertations