Province must strike a balance with bullying legislation
As someone who spent the bulk of her career as a teacher at Cobourg District Collegiate Institute West, she's come face to face with bullies and their victims, so much so, it's given her enough fodder to write the book, When PUSH Comes to Shove Back. She also serves on the Alnwick/Haldimand Township Police Service Board as a teen liaison and sits on the board for the Northumberland Community Counselling Centre. It must have provided her, and others alike, with some relief recently when the Ontario government introduced new legislation to combat bullying in schools. Ms. Irvine's novel chronicles one day in the life of two Grade 9 boys, one a bully, and the other his victim. She hopes it will act as springboard for conversations about bullying, both in school and at home, especially for parents who don't know how to approach the subject. To teenagers, being the victim of a bully is so hurtful, so devastating, it can drive some of these young people to consider taking their own lives, such as two recent incidents in Pickering and Ottawa, she said. Durham residents were horrified with the tragic story of the young Pickering boy, Mitchell Wilson, who committed suicide on Labour Day, a deeply personal choice he made while fighting a progressive, debilitating disease and while enduring the consequences of bullying. And Mitchell's story coincided with several other high-profile bullying cases which led to suicides this fall. An Ottawa high school student committed suicide after being bullied about his sexuality, and a teen girl in Quebec killed herself after years of peer abuse at her high school. This move by the provincial government underscores the gravity with which bullying is now being viewed -- something far more menacing than kids being kids, as traditional views have held -- and is providing another tool for educators to use. The new bill would allow for expulsions in cases of bullying, where now the limit is temporary suspension. This seemingly new obsession with the effects of bullying is not a media creation. A 2009 study conducted by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that nearly one in three students had been victims of bullies, while another 25 per cent admitted they had engaged in bullying behaviour at school. The Mitchell Wilsons of the world are the young people behind those statistics, the real boys and girls pushed to their deeply personal limits. And such numbers demand action. And while this new option for Ontario educators is welcome, expelled students -- the vast majority of whom will essentially still be children -- will require alternative forms of education. They'll require appropriate related programs to address, for instance, mental health issues, and those to explore the motivations behind bullying behaviour. In short, punitive measures must be balanced with campaigns to raise awareness and which focus on prevention, while allowing perpetrators to continue building the essential academic foundation required in today's society. The Ontario minority government will require the support of both the Progressive Conservatives and the New Democrats at Queen's Park to see the bill become legislation. We encourage flexibility and call on all parties to strike a balance that protects the victims of bullying while providing alternatives both for educators and the perpetrators in their classrooms.
-- Northumberland News Thank you for taking the time to read and comment.
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