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How to Stop Bullying in Schools?

The act of bullying in schools is not a taboo anymore for many years, this is actually one of the big homework that must be completed by the school as a place to get education and character development for children. Bullying which is detrimental to many people should getting more attention from the school to do prevention and termination before bad things happen that are not desirable. As it’s known, bullying has many negative effects, especially for young people especially children. It can decrease their self-esteem that will affect their mentality and lose confidence in the future. For the worst case, they will not think twice about doing self-injury or even suicide. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with stopping bullying in schools, there are educate the bullies, giving punishments for the bullies, and protecting the victim.

The first is educate the bullies. The reason behind the frequent occurrence of bullying, one of them is the lack of awareness of the bully on how much they have hurt the victim physically and non-physically. Cases like this can be prevented by holding anti-bullying programs in schools. For example, anti-bullying program held by Valhalla School in New York, United States. This anti-bullying program is called Ryan’s Story, which is intended for parents and teachers. John Halligan, he is the father of Ryan, will try to share the story of his son who committed suicide in 2003 as a result of bullying. The program, which was held on March 10, in addition to bullying, also discussed cyber-bullying and depression among young people. Not only at Valhalla School, an anti-bullying program was also carried out by North Ridgeville School, Ohio, United States last year. This anti-bullying program is highly recommended to be held in other schools. In this program, there will be counseling on how to reduce the number of bullying in schools which will provide many benefits for teachers, parents, especially the bully. Hopefully, the bullies might be aware of the impact of their treatment which can harm many people. Not only that, this program will further build cooperation between teachers and parents of students in overcoming bullying at school.

The second is, giving punishment or sanctions to the bullies. This is the next way the school can do to stop bullying at school. Schools can enforce strict regulations that can make the bully discourage him from carrying out these actions. If they violate the rules and are found guilty of still carrying out bullying, then they must accept the punishment in the form of being expelled from school. In Indonesia, detiknews.com reported that there were nine students who were perpetrators of bullying released from schools in Central Jakarta. In foreign countries, it can be monitored based on data obtained by Virginia University through surveys showing that the number of students dropped out of school due to bullying reached 29%. Other data also noted an increase in the number of students released from school from 18.6% to 25.3% due to ridicule and bullying. Even though it only reached 20%, the school's actions were good in eradicating bullying using this method. It can be concluded that the school still prioritizes safety, comfort and reduces the number of bully who roam the school environment.

The last is to protect the bullying victims. Bullying victims are those who do not understand self-defense and do not know how to protect themselves from the bully. Those who are already afraid of the threat of the bully are only resigned when it is implemented badly. Receive ridicule, racism and others. Therefore, the school did not continuously focus on reducing the number of bullying perpetrators. Schools can also protect and protect victims by telling victims that they are not suitable to be bullied. The school should provide direction, advice and support to increase the victims' self-defense and self-worth so that in the future, they will no longer feel too much negative impact when they get bullied. In Finland, a study in that country found an anti-bullying program called KiVa which succeeded in reducing the level of depression in 77 schools with students reaching 7,000. KiVa contains ways and simulations of how other students eradicate bullying and provide benefits for raising bully victims' self-esteem. This method is quite effective because the benefits provided are very large. And it is expected that other schools can apply the self-defense program for these bully victims as good as KiVa so as not to add to the list of bully victims.

In conlusion, there are many ways that can be done to stop bullying in school. The three methods above will succeed if there is cooperation between all people who get involved t. The more people care about eradicating bullying in schools and in other environments, the bullying action will certainly decrease rapidly.