I remember that during my school years, bullies were less than subtle. They either 'rolled you' in the playground, or perpetrated terrible acts upon you in the toilets - I had my head held under in a full sink of water on one occasion, and some of my mates were less fortunate. It was a rite of passage, and prepared me for the much more subtle bullying I would experience later in work, particularly with insecure bosses or inadequate and threatened senior colleagues in some of my previous jobs. But it cannot be condoned of course. Bullying should be loathed in any sector of society, and when my own kids are bullied, I take it very personally.
It was with great interest then, that I came across an article in the Independent Newspaper today, with the title: 'Teachers fear growing cyberbullying by pupils'. There's a worrying trend for pupils to take digital pictures of their teachers and post them with derogatory comments and/or obscene images to sites such as RateMyTeachers and YouTube. A survey of teachers showed that one in six had been a victim of cyberbullying by one of their pupils. Of these, 45 per cent had received e-mails written to upset them, 12 per cent had received photographs which made them feel threatened, embarrassed or vulnerable, and 10 per cent had read a message about themselves on an internet chatroom. The report doesn't say what proportion of these were male or female, but we can guess can't we?
Teachers are now threatening to take legal action against websites that host this kind of material. Oh, the times, they are a-changing....
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