Death caused by bullying a wake-up call
KUCHING: The recent school bullying case which resulted in the death of a Primary 1 pupil of a boarding school in Kapit is a wakeup call for all quarters to come together to end this negative vice in schools.
In stating this, PKR women national vice president Voon Shiak Ni said: “As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child.
“We are all aware that bullying in schools is not something new but it has been going on. It happens everywhere and it is a social vice which transcends race and socioeconomic boundaries,” she said in a press statement yesterday.
We are all aware that bullying in schools is not something new but it has been going on. It happens everywhere and it is a social vice which transcends race and socio-economic boundaries. Voon Shiak Ni, PKR women national vice president
Voon said based on statistics from the Education Ministry, there were more than 14,000 bullying cases in schools between 2012 and 2015.
Additionally, she said Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation statistics showed that 84 per cent of children in Malaysia suffered from some form of bullying, with 33 per cent having been bullied online.
“The issue now is how are we going to provide a safe environment for our children in schools?”
Voon acknowledged that when an incident like school bullying happened, the blame game would start from the schools to the parents, with issue of negative influence from social media and peers cropping up as the potential cause of the social ill.
“Many said that the school ragging system cultivates aggressive behaviour, while others said that violence can be picked up from home as many parents used corporal punishment on their children at home. Some said the extensive social media is the factor.”
She added that Deputy Minister of Education Datuk P Kamalanathan was also quoted as saying that children could pick up bullying tendencies from their surrounding, for example, at home as they spend more time there compared to at school and that children replicated what adults did and not what they said
While agreeing that there can be many causes of bullying in schools, Voon believed that the most positive approach to deal with the social vice was to work out a holistic approach with the school and parents.
“The schools and us, parents, will never want our students or children to be rascals. But the issue here is there are many instances whereby bullying took place without being noticed until the incident got out of hand, resulting in serious physical injuries and being admitted to hospital and even death.
“Only then, we see the act of bullying is being addressed and the school bullies being punished. But the cost is we may lose the life of a young child or putting the victim at risks of suicide and bodily harm and injuries.”
Therefore, she said the biggest challenge was to identify the problem earlier.
“We suggest that anti- bully campaigns be launched not only in schools but as a public campaign. It should be designed to encourage the public to report on elements of bully happening around them.”