Malcom Smith, a life and family policy specialist and associate professor at the UNH, spoke about bullying in Portsmouth last night, and the title here is a quote of his. What he said was distribing. Here's another quote. "This generation that's coming up, the generation in school right now ... they are the meanest generation of kids that we've ever had, and they have more ways to be mean to each other than any other generation."
It's a short story but here's a link to the article in today's Portsmouth Herald if you want to read more.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20110204-NEWS-102040393
Smith says the issue of bullying is so important that NH's top children's advocay group, the Children's Alliance of New Hampshire, has made bullying its top educational priority for 2010.
Because bullying has become so complex in the digital age, Smith has developed a 16-page pamphlet through UNH's Extention Department. If your school is working on a bullying policy, it's worth checking out:
http://extension.unh.edu/Family/documents/BullyBro.pdf
Thank you for posting this Denise. Bullying and Cyberbullying has grown out-of-control and I too and deeply concerned and a little scared at what our students are doing to themselves and to their peers. This didn't appear to be an issue when I took over the MLTI Tech Lead position at the middle school in 2007, but it sure is an issue now. It's sad that for every new technology we create to do bigger and better things somebody finds a way to use it to do meaner and more destructive things. *sigh*
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