I appreciate all the effort that has been put into reviewing the causes of bullying. However, I'm again not impressed that psychologists and researchers tend to over complicating the problem, then try to force their opinions as the solution.
Looking over your article, I can agree with steps 1 and 2, but your steps 3 and 4 are flawed, and here is why:
First, Bullying doesn't end until the person bullied ends it. Period.
Your "solution" affects at most only a few people temporaily, and somehow inheritly believes that once the bully is removed from the situation, then everything will be okay. The simple fact is that there will ALWAYS be bullies.. from cradle to grave, from childhood to adulthood to even into old age. And as more cultures interact and blend into the American culture, we must realize that those from other countries will not "bend" to such viewpoints either, fully believing that "might makes right." and encouraging their kids in such behavior.
It is critical for a child to learn how to defend himself, both physically, mentally, and emotionally. Dad, teachers, the police are not always going to be there.. and in many cases, may actually be no help at all (and sadly, in some, they ARE the bullies). Their ability to adequately and correctly defend themselves when they are young gives them more understanding about how to adequately and correctly defend themselves when they are older, along with understanding the consequences of an over-reaction.
Second, It also assumes that bullying only happens in the area of the school. That alone would reduce many of your options to zero as school officials have no authority outside school zones, having the bully talked to by the police will only intensify the bully's response, and having the bully arrested will only put him in a situation where he will learn better ways of avoiding the police.
Now lets deal with your points, one at a time:
-"Increasing awareness of bullying among parents, teachers, and children—with meetings to disseminate information but also special meetings as needed with parents of bullies and victims." - Be realistic, most parents don't even have time to make it to Parent-Teacher conferences, and now you want them to have special meetings on top of having to deal with normal difficulties and time constraints of being a working parent?
- "Changing the school environment by giving teachers incentive and opportunity to be more supportive and involved with the students." - Right, in a time where more schools are losing funding and class sizes have ballooned. On top of this, school policies have made even causal physical contact between teachers and children ill advised if not outright "illegal". You have your profession to thank for that failure of forethought.
- "Making bullying a key theme—e.g., in explicit policy, in regular class meetings with children." This is the same as your first point, and thus suffers from the same failings.
-"Rewriting classroom rules to convey clearly that bullying is not tolerated." - Wow, you just restated point two. And since school principles and teachers have been neutered by fear of lawsuits, what exactly would happen? Would the bully be put into an enviornment with other bullies.. one where they can learn off each other's experiences?
-"Having the teacher keep an eye on past victims." - So.. if parents who only have a few kids to watch for can't get their kids to open up to them about bullying.. how in the universe do you expect a teacher to do that for the hundreds of kids they are likely to see in a day.
-"Administering anonymous student questionnaires and otherwise tracking bullying—ongoing monitoring and evaluation." - This defies words to tell how unrealistic this is. A.) School budgets are stretched thin and will always be stretched thin. B.) Apparently, while bullies are smart enough to know how to hide their attacks, they aren't smart enough to know how a kid will answer on an anonymous questionaire? Either bullies have gotten dumber since I was school, or you haven't considered how often this will happen. C.) With kids, nothing is anonymous.
-"Using buttons, posters, and mailings to keep all involved and to keep the message salient." - This will ONLY work if there is real punishment for those who bully. If not, then these are just a waste of money and an insult to kids' self-respect.
-"Using interviews with students to continue the educational process and evaluation of the program." - Remember what happened with the "No Kid Left Behind" program? You know, where schools stopped teaching important things and started teaching kids how to pass tests. Well, this suggestion will fall into that rut as well.. especially since your only options to enforce this is to withhold state/federal money.
In the end, your solution not only does not give the tools to child to help him defend himself, now or in the future and requires an unreasonable amount of support from external sources that cannot be relied upon. In fact, if the parent spent the amount of time you suggest for meetings with their kids learning self-respect (not pride) and how to deal directly with bullies, they would be much better off in the long run.
Also, as a side point, next time you quote a study, please link the actual study (preferably the raw data, along with the researchers' control information, expectations, questions, and how the researchers' determined their results) because its rather arrogant to believe that people can't understand how a particular piece of research was setup.
