Just when you thought that respect for girls and women was on the marked improve comes yet another reminder that things are not what they seem:
During the 2010-11 school year, 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment in person or electronically via texting, email and social media, according to a major national survey being released Monday by the American Association of University Women.
The survey, conducted in May and June, asked 1,002 girls and 963 boys from public and private schools nationwide whether they had experienced any of various forms of sexual harassment. These included having someone make unwelcome sexual comments about them, being called gay or lesbian in a negative way, being touched in an unwelcome sexual way, being shown sexual pictures they didn’t want to see, and being the subject of unwelcome sexual rumors.
The survey quoted one ninth-grade girl as saying she was called a whore “because I have many friends that are boys.” A 12th-grade boy said schoolmates circulated an image showing his face attached to an animal having sex.
In all, 56 percent of the girls and 40 percent of the boys said they had experienced at least one incident of sexual harassment during the school year.
After being harassed, half of the targeted students did nothing about it. Of the rest, some talked to parents or friends, but only 9 percent reported the incident to a teacher, guidance counselor or other adult at school, according to the survey.
In my view there are two main reasons for this disturbing set of figures:
1. Schools have become hamstrung when it comes to access to appropriate and effective consequences for infringements such as bullying and harassment. Call the parents? No big deal. They gave up long ago. Suspensions? Nowadays you get a suspension for talking out of turn. Suspensions have lost their impact because they are metered out out too readily. In the end, no punishment given seems to come close to matching the crime.
2. Schools have been notorious at turning a blind eye to incidents. I am not talking about all schools, yet in truth, plenty goes under this category. Teachers have been taught not to get emotionally involved with their students. The result being, an emotional distance which inhibits the teachers capacity to pick up on these things, Teachers must have enough of a connection with their students (within the obvious professional parameters of course), as to notice when things are not right with their them. They are intrusted to look after their students and must do so by being proactive. Kids are told from an early age not to dob on a classmate. If teachers wait around for things to get reported to them, they will miss the opportunity to intervene and change a potentially abusive situation.
We must expect schools to be proactive with harassment. They must be able to use tough and uncompromising punishments and show enough of an interest in students as to detect a problem before it gets completely out of hand.
Tags: AAUW, American Association of University Women, Catherine Hill, Child Welfare, Education, Email, facebook, Fatima Goss Graves, Knowledge Networks, life, National Women's Law Center, News, Niobe Way, Parenting, Psychology, Sexting, sexual harassment, social media, Students, Survey, Texting
Topical Teaching 
November 8, 2011 at 10:25 am |
Michael, I have taught in schools where students routinely swear at and abuse teachers. To deal with such and other incidents teachers are subjected to copious paperwork which routinely goes nowhere. Ultimately teachers have to “manage” (i.e. put up with) student behaviour. The perception is that if a teacher is abused or sworn at little, if anything happens. If a principal is abused or sworn at then it is a completely different thing and something happens. Why? because the current crop of principals (there are some exceptions) only believe their own eyes and ears and not those of their staff. Everyone is scared of possible litigation and educational administrators discourage any action that might have political consequences. Cyberbullying is no exception. One student I recall had pornography in his folder on the school’s computer system. I reported it. Nothing happened.
I believe the problems with school discipline exist because we live in a pluralistic society where there of right and wrong vary accordingly. There is certainly no recognised, absolute authority to which one can appeal. The only sanction that many schools can apply is suspension. This leads to conflict with parents and conflict with departmental administration leaving the teachers in a no win situation.
There are solutions. Firstly behaviour needs to be viewed as a moral issue, primarily, and not a psychological one, though there certainly are psychological aspects.
I will leave it there as I have to go out. If you are interested we can pursue this discussion further.
November 8, 2011 at 1:19 pm |
I’m very interested and have been leading up to a more in depth focus on the inability of teachers to enforce appropriate consequences for the types of behaviours you wrote about. Thanks for your brilliant contributions!
November 11, 2011 at 10:26 pm |
That kind of education should start at home. Discussing it with their parents.