Day 2(b), Scientists: Kill bullying with kindness

School bullies eating your lunch?  Science may have found a solution.

A team of researchers from the US and London has been testing a school-wide intervention that focuses on bystanders — including teachers — as much as the bullies or victims. And the method is showing early promise. The study was released this evening by the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Lead study author Peter Fonagy, a psychologist at the University College London, says bullying indicates a school-wide culture of disrespect where the bystanders are actually the glue. Dissolve that role, and the system breaks down. The key, Fonagy and his co-authors say, is called “mentalizing.” (I think a yogi might call “awareness.”)

“The most striking aspect of ‘by-standing’ to me is the lack of thought about what is happening,” Fonagy wrote in an email. And while some thoughts may be secondary — such as I am in danger, This is not my problem, or He had it coming to him — “the underlying mental state is one of a kind of blankness adopted defensively by all (often adults as well as children).”

One of the study co-authors, Stuart Twemlow of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, has written an extensive program that is free for the taking on his website. The content emphasizes a school-wide acceptance of blame followed by actions to identify improper roles in the dysfunction — whether bully, victim or bystander. With input from martial arts programs, students are taught a new role: “gentle warrior,” which embodies non-violence and awareness of one’s own feelings as well as the feelings of others. Buttons, take-home certificates and classroom posters are included which reiterate the overall theme of responsibility and respect.

The researchers tested the program for three years each on 1,345 third to fifth graders in nine US elementary schools. In all, about 4,000 children were exposed to the study protocol. Treated schools were compared with schools receiving no intervention, and with schools that consulted with a psychiatrist, which is just one component of Twemlow’s full approach.

The researchers say they found more positive bystanding behaviors, greater empathy for victims, and less favorable attitudes towards aggression in schools that tried the whole program. Teachers reported more respect in the classroom, and the students were less likely to characterize their classmates as bullies, victims or aggressive bystanders. “The impact on educational performance was an unexpected but helpful byproduct” that’s been reported in previous studies by the team, Fonagy said.  

So far, the statistics aren’t as impressive as the observational evidence: Over the course of the study, bullying increased across all three types of schools being monitored. At the start of the study, 13 percent of children in the treated schools were victimized, compared to 19 percent at the end. In schools relying solely on consultation with a psychiatrist, the increase was from 15 to 25 percent. Percentages of victimized kids in untreated schools went from 14 to 26 percent. The authors say the narrower increase in bullying was actually a marked success for the treated schools, under the circumstances: “This school district had numerous socioeconomic problems over the course of the study.”