A research team from the University of Texas, Arlington, has some bad news: students at schools implementing anti-bullying programs actually were more likely to have been physically, emotionally, or sexually harrassed by peers than at schools without such programs.
The study used retrospective data from the 2005-2006 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study, a quadrennial WHO initiative across 43 European and North American countries, plus Israel ("membership of HBSC is restricted to countries and states within the WHO European region"). It's a robust set, 7,000 students strong, but there's little but speculation that we can make of the reasons why we'd see more bullying in schools with prevention programs.
Quoted in the UT-Arlington News Center, co-author Seokjin Jeong said,
“The schools with interventions say, ‘You shouldn’t do this,’ or ‘you shouldn’t do that.’ But through the programs, the students become highly exposed to what a bully is and they know what to do or say when questioned by parents or teachers.”Definitely a hypothesis worth exploring, Seokjin. Especially when fueled by the insight with which you closed your paper:
Furthermore, given that bullying is a relationship problem, researchers need to better identify the bully-victim dynamics in order to develop prevention strategies accordingly.The blog that led me to this study (catchily titled "Why anti-bullying programs are written by dishonest fools") agrees, proposing that anti-bullying programs reinforce the sense of bullies' power and targets' weakness, perpetuating cycles of violence and shame.
Although the article itself is unfocused at times (and links off to material on quantum physics), I appreciated the author pointing to the emotional and physical traumas that can contribute to bullying: we need to erase the causes of aggression as much as the conditions of suffering it.
To close out, some sense from Mr. Einstein:
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.If curriculum designers write with Bullies and Victims in mind, they are scripting those roles for the kids (and teachers) who use them. What might change if programming showed all children respect for their strengths and grace for their weaknesses?
