Written by Nadiah Zainal
Lately we have been shocked by the news of students being bullied at school, especially in boarding school. These past months, three bullying incident has occurred in three different MRSM schools. The boarding school bullying patterns are still the same, the exact pattern when I was in boarding school donkey years ago. The senior students will bully the junior student by instructing them to do their daily chores like washing the seniors’ clothes and shoes, ironing their school uniform, and evening buying them food with the victim’s money. No amount of teaching will lessen the bullying cases and it will continue until something drastic is being done. The case of the UPNM student who was bullied by beating and even putting hot iron on the victim’s body shows that something is not right somewhere.
What is the root to all these bullying? Did it start from home? Are these bullies having psychological problems? Do they need psychiatric treatment? Who should we blame? The parents? The school management, the school system, who? We truly need to get to the bottom of these bullying issues because it has led to two deaths just recently. One was of the boy from the religious school, the other was the student from UPNM. Punishing them alone is not the answer. Sending them back home for two or three weeks only gratifies them and the get to sit at home and do nothing. Are they sent for psychiatric evaluation? The councillors at school and at the universities need to prepare a standard operating procedures on what would be the best way to treat this issue which is beginning to spread.
According to Stump (2015), one of the reasons that bullies continues to bullying other people is they have lower levels of depression. It has become a trend and if this is not treated it will lead to a society that has no sense of compassion, sympathy and empathy. What happened to the moral values that have been talked about and also in the Malaysian Education Blueprint (2013-2025)? Have they not been inculcated in the curriculum by the teachers? Has it been ignored by educators? So many questions but there is no one single answer that could see the light to the solution. Students look upon elders as their role model. The adults among our society have shown so much of bullying that it doesn’t come as a surprise that school children at whatever age will emulated these acts of bullying by the adult and more mature society. We need help, and we need to act fast. Stop the bullying before it worsened and becomes a cycle. We need to adhere to proverbs like “do onto others as others do onto you”. The national philosophy of education stated that education is supposed to inculcate values that include being tolerant, compassionate so that we are able to live harmoniously in a society that has several races and religion. What has happened to that? Someone definitely need to be responsible and do something to fix it. A bullying society is a sick society and this has to STOP!!
Reference:
Stump, S. (2015 August 4). Study: bullies have higher self-esteem, social status and lower
levels of depressions. Today. Retrieved from http://www.today.com/parents/study-bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-status-lower-levels-t36271