How could Boarding Schools eliminate Bullying under current circumstances?

Bullying has been a problem in many schools for ages. Still, bullying cases have not been gaining much attention because of the slow spreading of information. After humans step into the information era, more and more bullying cases in boarding schools have been reported on the Internet and lead to people to be concerned about sending kids to boarding schools at a young age. In 2021, there was an 11-year-old pupil at Dowen college who was reported to have died of injury for being bullied by a group of seniors in his high school. When the video about the boy suffered from the pain broke a lot of people’s hearts which also led to a hot discussion on the issue.

Some experts argue that kids are meant to stay with their parents until they are 16 or even older until they are ready to leave home to go to college or start working. However, the author Azuka Onwuka, who has been studying in boarding schools since 12 years old, has a different opinion towards this case, and bullying overall. Azuka Onwuka has a full experience in the boarding school community, which he implies that a lot of boarding school kids would grant their experience of living in a boarding school since it helps students to enhance their comprehensive skills in living alone and keeps their lives organized starting from a young age. Still, he would consider the current boarding school systems are not perfect since in the pupil’s case, the school did not have a strict rule in protecting the boy from being injured. To further his point, Onwuka pointed out boarding schools should impose strict rules against bullying and harsh punishment to the bullies to limit the possibility of pupils being injured in school. (warrant & evidence)When posing this idea, Onwuka did recognize the disadvantage of imposing such policies in boarding schools. Parents and students would be less likely to choose boarding schools because of the rigid rules being designed. Still, in his perspective, to keep the current boarding school system in order would be the most essential thing which outweighs the cost of losing popularity among parents and kids.

Imposing strict rules in the boarding school system would be helpful since some of the kids who were afraid of getting themselves into trouble would follow the newly posted rules. However, it would only work out for a few students but do not solve the root cause of bullying. Also, imposing strict rules is the fastest reaction schools could do when a bullying case is being reported on social media. The public would be easily convinced by the quick reaction of the school and later focus less on how the case would develop in the future, or whether similar cases continue to happen in the same school.

I would consider the fast spreading of bullying cases on the Internet is a double sword which emphasizes the responsibility of boarding schools. In fact, in a lot of bullying cases, boarding schools are not the primary reason that leads to the worst result. The author Onwuka said, especially in this specific 11-year-old pupil case, the school failed to recognize the bullying and did not react fast enough to protect the kid. I think the school did have responsibility for reacting faster, but the root of this bullying case, and also most of the bullying cases, are because the bullies were having certain thoughts that resulted in them reacting both physically and verbally violently towards their peers.

Therefore, imposing strict rules against bullying is vital, but it does not prohibit bullying at all. Boarding schools should focus more on the students who started bullying and try to talk to these students to fix their current behaviors and mental issues. Most boarding schools nowadays would likely start during secondary school, in which students are approximately at the age of 11 and 12, meaning that they are just stepping into their adolescent years. Adolescent periods are pretty unique which transform kids into teenagers and later be ready to become adults and enter into society later on. At this time, kids tend to revolt against teachers and parents because strict rules and enforcement would not work well in disciplining students’ behaviors. A more gentle method would need to be imposed which hiring more psychologists in schools to communicate with these kids would be more effective. According to the requirement of psychology counseling, it creates a private space between the psychologist and the bullies which would be easier for the students to speak out about the inner reason behind why they would start bullying their classmates. For example, some of the pupils might be suppressed by their parents , therefore, they might have failed to recognize the idea of suppressing others was wrong, because that was what they have been witnessing or experienced in all their past years. Only by creating a private space between the psychiatrist and the bullies could the school further understand the inner reason of why bullies behave in a certain way, which entails the ulterior motive in bullies’ hearts. After the psychiatrist has a full understanding of the case, it would be more effective for the psychiatrist to communicate with the school and the pupil’s parents to be involved in how to shape the bullies’ mental issues in a correct way. Only after the bullies realized why their behaviors were incorrect would they be satisfied about the certain punishment they received from the school and their parents.

Although I would consider making a full analysis of each bullying case would be effective in solving the root cause of bullying, I could not deny that this method does cost more time and effort to boarding schools. Some of the schools would be unwilling to impose this method because they might refuse to spend more budget in hiring more psychologists and also some teachers might regret putting more effort on such cases. Also, these schools might consider announcing strict rules that would have an immediate effect towards the urgent situation. Still, I would consider it would be beneficial to do such an analysis since both physical safety and psychological health of all students are the key to success for every boarding school. As I have mentioned, social media could be a double edged sword towards boarding schools, but this sword could be used in a correct way. Parents would be willing to see their kids being nicely treated in schools, which even though they might start bullying it does not mean these kids were being seen as their life is over for making such a mistake. When I was a kid in primary school, I did suffer from school bullying but was not specifically asked from the school how they should deal with the bullies. However, after I grew up and entered high school a few years later, a lot of bullies at that time came to me and apologized for what they had done during that time. Therefore, It could be clearly convinced that students would be able to notice their mistakes at some point. It would be a lot better if the school could invite specific psychiatrists to talk with the bullies and make them realize their mistakes even earlier, to limit the effect on the ones being bullied. For adolescents, it would be never too late for them to realize their mistakes and make a change in the near future, since it is impossible for teenagers not to make any mistakes. They came to this world to learn knowledge and explore the world, which was meant to make mistakes, be corrected and try again. Boarding schools and parents should be tightly connected to each other to make the process of correcting mistakes flow more fluently with students and make them realize their mistakes in a less stressful way, but not imposing strict rules to cut the bullies entirely.

After the method of detailed analysis of each bullying case is being applied to more boarding schools, it would also shift the soceital’s stereotype towards the idea that boarding schools are easier to lead to bullying. When people start to realize the fact that bullying is made up of individual cases but not systematic issues, it would lead to a fair judgment of the boarding school system as a whole in the near future.