Table of Contents
Introduction
Early childhood education of many people was riddled with either being victims or subjects of bullying. It is one of the vice that has been on the schools for quite some time without a robust solution being instituted. For many who have gone through institutions with such a vice, they have developed some form of resistance or tolerance in manner that they perceive it as being a normalcy. It is a situation in which victimization of weaker student has been more of decriminalized in schools where most of the educators takes it as being moments of hardening in life. However, in reality, the victimization and the bullying have far much reaching effects if it is not going to be dealt with.
It is a vice that has worse future effects than its flouted present effects in schools. Such effects include dropout rate increases, completion rates of students is halted, and the performance is negatively affected. The bullies on the other hand graduate to hardcore criminals, they end up being social deviants among many other effects that are not healthy for a society (Lester and Pearce, 2017). It is from such a holistic view of bullying that I personally derive my philosophies of social reform and justice with main purpose of stopping bullying and victimization. Bullying can be stopped if the reforms takes over normalization of the vice as being process of hardening.
Now the legal authority in the country has entrusted me with duty of training and being in charge of children on behalf of the society. The experience I have reveals the degree of the problem through heart wrenching reports of bullying and victimization that make it to my pigeon hole and the school suggestion box. In most of the cases, the reports are ignored by my colleagues who have the same perception that the bullying and victimization is the process of hardening that every student has to go through it (Waters & Mashburn, 2017). In some of the cases, teachers are opined that bullying is process through which boys graduate into men. It is such a sorry state because most of the teachers do not associate the poor performance of some of student with the endemicity of the bullying and victimization in the school. The understanding of bullying and victimization is so myopic and abstract to an extent that it has compromised the process of social reform, justice and provision of conducive environment for children in school.
Professional Philosophy
At a personal point of view, the teaching philosophy that has influenced my career was inspired by renowned psychologist by the name Albert Bandura. Albert Bandura came up with a theory that was orientated to the provision of conducive environment for a perfect learning to take place. According to the environmentalist learning theory, a child is influenced with what is in his or her immediate environment. A child will takes most of the behavior from the people, the instituted culture or the family where he or she lives. If the behavior that is within the environment of children is conducive and positive then learning will be actualized and achieved at optimum. However if it is negative, then learning will be compromised and the performance will dwindle.
To that effect, the theorized concepts by Albert Bandura opens up to a broader idea of bullying and victimization as a culture that is within the environment of students. It is a theory when dovetailed with social reform and justice, then it is possible to equalized and make the learning environment to be even for the students. Most of the educators go against the aspirations of Albert Bandura theory by attempt to normalize and accept bullying and victimization of students. Bullying and victimization has been institutionalized thereby making it an immediate environment of the children (Waters & Mashburn, 2017). Children with the tendencies of being bullies or victim find an established environment of their tendencies hence the vice is perpetuated. The environment also hampers training and teaching thus resulting in poor performance and drop out due to bullying that goes to extreme extents of assaults.
Being a believer of social reform and justice for an environment that has institutionalized a vice bullying and victimization, there is a chance for the environment to be made conducive for all the students to achieve their objectives of teach (Waters & Mashburn, 2017). More importantly, cleaning up the environment for the students opens up for better things that children can learn from their immediate environment. If the students from their respective home come and meet in a school that abhors bullying and victimization, then the culture will die out on its own. However, if the educators are ambivalent and indifferent to bullying on the pretext that it is a season of hardening, then the culture will be surround the children, negatively influence their learning and also form part of what they learn. It becomes worse when what they learn is from the bullying and victimization since most of the hardcore criminals have a history of bullying. As seen with the trends of performance, completion rates and cases of assault occurring concurrently with bullying, it is healthy to redress the problem for the environment to be conducive for learning.
- Lester, L., Pearce, N., Waters, S., Barnes, A., Beatty, S., & Cross, D. (2017). Family Involvement in a Whole-School Bullying Intervention: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Communication and Influence with Children. Journal of Child & Family Studies, 26(10), 2716. doi:10.1007/s10826-017-0793-6
- Waters, S., & Mashburn, N. (2017). An Investigation of Middle School Teachers’ Perceptions on Bullying. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 8(1), 1-34.