DUBAI // As bullying increasingly moves from the playground into cyberspace it poses new challenges for schools and teachers.
Taaleem runs 10 schools across Dubai and has a zero-tolerance policy on bullying, but the company admits it is an issue that requires a nuanced approach.
“What we tend to see more nowadays is bullying in cyberspace, with messages posted on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram,” said Andrew Wood, principal of Taaleem’s Greenfield Community School, in the Green Community.
“Unlike other forms of bullying, it is very difficult to spot because teachers only see a child with their mobile phone.”
In most cases schools are alerted to an incident only after it has been posted online, he said.
“The natural tendency for parents of children being bullied is to deal with the issue themselves, but I try to advise them that it’s better for their child to learn to resolve it on their own,” said Mr Wood.
“This means they will be better prepared to handle such situations when they are older and in the work environment.
“Obviously, this is more suited for secondary school children rather than primary-age kids.”
The school receives a complaint of bullying about once a week, with the vast majority involving some kind of verbal or psychological aspect.
Physical bullying is a rarity, said Mr Wood.
“In many cases it is a case of picking on someone who looks different and speaks in a different accent.”
To try to combat the issue the school has run anti-bullying campaigns through all grade levels.
“It’s not simply a case of punishing the bully because what will then happen is that the perpetrator will go back to the victim and threaten them again,” he said. “We try to ask why they have acted in the way that they have and educate all our children in behaving in a moral way and to think before they act.
“We focus as much as we can on prevention and encouraging children to be assertive as well as standing up for one another.”
Taaleem encourages victims of bullying to alert schools or administrators immediately of any incidents.
“Educators that state that bullying does not exist in their schools are deluded,” said Clive Pierrepont, Taaleem’s director of communications.
The safety of their students is the main priority, he said.
“Schools have the ultimate responsibility of not only ensuring that children are safe and secure but also happy in their educational environment,” he said.
“Taaleem schools all have policies in place that relate to bullying based on zero tolerance. We have regular, age appropriate, anti-bullying campaigns in our schools. These age-targeted campaigns begin by creating an unequivocal awareness of what bullying behaviour is.”
They have also coordinated with the Irish company XRayData in developing software that can monitor social media and block offensive or bullying messages and alert parents to their content.
“With the UAE being such a multicultural society, it is sometimes a challenge to arrive at a common understanding of what constitutes bullying behaviour,” he said.
“Especially prevalent today is cyber bullying, which can be insidious and cruel and can have catastrophic effects on children, young adults and, ultimately, their families.”
Taaleem has a policy forbidding children from accessing social media during school hours.
nhanif@thenational.ae
