CyberBullying
To make this more ICT-looking I've added the obligatory additional CapitalLetter - jeez.
Today I saw three very similar headlines:
Government acts on cyber-bullies BBC
Schools to tackle web and phone bullies Guardian
Stamp out 'cyberbullying' urges schools minister TES
Damn, once again the internet + various other technologies feared-by-adults/the establishment are shown to be tools of the devil that should be monitored at all times.
As usual, the press hasn't been to bothered reading the actual research - they seem to have read it as carefully as the minister concerned. Let me sum it up with a less rabid approach.
The headline figure is that one in five pupils had experienced some form of cyberbullying. That is a truly worrying number - if we assume that it requires another one if five to be doing the bullying that means that 40% of school children are involved in cyberbullying: OHFORGODSAKE PULL THE PLUG!!!!!
Hmmmm, not quite the case when you read the report, which was funded by The Anti-Bullying Alliance, in case you were interested. And it did not, as the Guardian claims, 'discover' 7 types of cyberbullying, it defined 7 types to investigate.
So, 160 questionnaires were mailed to 20 schools with no direct control over which students filled them in except that they were split equally male/female and in years 7-10. 92 students returned questionaires. So we have a sample of 92 out of the total population of years 7-10. Further, we /might/ suspect that those who had experienced cyberbullying would be more likely to respond so the sample is generally pretty suspect.
Out of this deeply dodgy sample, where does the 20% figure appear??? Well, 5.5% bullied by e-mail, 1.1% in chatrooms and 14.3% via SMS (the little darlings). Now, the study if very clear on what constitutes bullying, it says it must be consistent, take place over a period of time and yet 15.6% (count them) said they'd only been cyberbullied 'once or twice over the last two months' - does that sound like consistent and over a period of time? It leaves about 6% being bullied more than once a month.
The problem, of course, is the way in which we open up the meaning of bullying so that it encompasses anything. This deeply unhelpful as it brackets texting 'U SMELL MOLESWORTH' once for a larf with a year's worth of dinner-money theft and beatings.
The question is, who benefits from such huge inflation of the situation? Certainly not the kid beaten up for a year as he has to get in the queue with everyone else upset because 'he looked at me in a funny way'. It's bad coz it minimises the pain of those truly bullied by diluting it - if everyone is a victim of bullying then no one is special.
The final insult of course is that the bloody government them comes out with guidelines - I kid you not: www.dfes.gov.uk/bullying/index.shtml
Hmmmmm, it's not easy to write a blog, is it :-/
Grumbs
Today I saw three very similar headlines:
Government acts on cyber-bullies BBC
Schools to tackle web and phone bullies Guardian
Stamp out 'cyberbullying' urges schools minister TES
Damn, once again the internet + various other technologies feared-by-adults/the establishment are shown to be tools of the devil that should be monitored at all times.
As usual, the press hasn't been to bothered reading the actual research - they seem to have read it as carefully as the minister concerned. Let me sum it up with a less rabid approach.
The headline figure is that one in five pupils had experienced some form of cyberbullying. That is a truly worrying number - if we assume that it requires another one if five to be doing the bullying that means that 40% of school children are involved in cyberbullying: OHFORGODSAKE PULL THE PLUG!!!!!
Hmmmm, not quite the case when you read the report, which was funded by The Anti-Bullying Alliance, in case you were interested. And it did not, as the Guardian claims, 'discover' 7 types of cyberbullying, it defined 7 types to investigate.
So, 160 questionnaires were mailed to 20 schools with no direct control over which students filled them in except that they were split equally male/female and in years 7-10. 92 students returned questionaires. So we have a sample of 92 out of the total population of years 7-10. Further, we /might/ suspect that those who had experienced cyberbullying would be more likely to respond so the sample is generally pretty suspect.
Out of this deeply dodgy sample, where does the 20% figure appear??? Well, 5.5% bullied by e-mail, 1.1% in chatrooms and 14.3% via SMS (the little darlings). Now, the study if very clear on what constitutes bullying, it says it must be consistent, take place over a period of time and yet 15.6% (count them) said they'd only been cyberbullied 'once or twice over the last two months' - does that sound like consistent and over a period of time? It leaves about 6% being bullied more than once a month.
The problem, of course, is the way in which we open up the meaning of bullying so that it encompasses anything. This deeply unhelpful as it brackets texting 'U SMELL MOLESWORTH' once for a larf with a year's worth of dinner-money theft and beatings.
The question is, who benefits from such huge inflation of the situation? Certainly not the kid beaten up for a year as he has to get in the queue with everyone else upset because 'he looked at me in a funny way'. It's bad coz it minimises the pain of those truly bullied by diluting it - if everyone is a victim of bullying then no one is special.
The final insult of course is that the bloody government them comes out with guidelines - I kid you not: www.dfes.gov.uk/bullying/index.shtml
Hmmmmm, it's not easy to write a blog, is it :-/
Grumbs
posted by Grumbletweezer | 6:29 pm
|
0 comments
