Rude vs Mean vs Bullying
In this article Angela Bell (DP: Senior Campus), offers a deeper understanding of the distinction between bullying and other mean behaviours , focusing on how we address this within our school community.
Rude vs Mean vs Bullying
(Article quoted : “Rude vs Mean vs Bullying: defining the differences” Signe Whitson, 2014)
At Te Kura o Puhinui we endeavour each day to aspire to our vision statement which is “success for all”. We also endeavour to live our values of manaakitanga and whakawhanaungatanga. As with all communities who gather together, we have a diverse student population from different backgrounds and contexts. Our role as a community is to be responsive and reactive if we are concerned about student safety and/or happiness. In this regard, we often hear the term “bullying” being used to define what may be occurring for students. It is a term that is used to describe multiple scenarios. Whilst we do want to be extremely careful not to minimize anyone’s experiences, it is important to differentiate between rudeness, meanness and bullying.
Within a school context “rudeness” may be a student burping in someone else’s face, jumping ahead in a line, bragging about being better at something. On their own these behaviours may appear to be bullying but when looked at in context, incidents of rudeness are normally spontaneous, unplanned, based on thoughtlessness, poor manners or narcissistic behaviour but they are not meant to actually hurt someone ( physically or mentally).
“Meanness” is when a student purposefully says or does something to hurt someone once or maybe twice. The main distinction between rudeness and meanness has to do with intention. While rudeness is often unintentional, mean behaviour aims to hurt or depreciate someone. Students are mean to each other when they criticize clothing, intelligence, coolness or just about anything else that they can find to diminish the other person. Very often, mean behaviour in students is motivated by angry feelings or a desire to make themselves look or feel better in a power struggle. It can also be to impress friends and to work towards being accepted by peers. Meanness can sound like “ I hate you! “ or “ You are so fat” or “you can't play with us today” etc. Mean behaviours can hurt students deeply and at Te Kura o Puhinui we work actively through our restorative practice process and our emphasis on our values to stop this behaviour. Yet meanness is distinct from bullying and requires a different intervention.
Bullying is defined as intentionally aggressive behaviour that is repeated over a long period of time and involves an imbalance of power. All experts agree that bullying entails three key elements: an intent to harm, a power imbalance and repeated acts of aggressive behaviour. Students who bully others do so intentionally, repeatedly, with no sense of regret or remorse even when the target shows or expresses hurt or tells them to stop. This can be physical, verbal, relational and/ or it can happen in the cyberworld.
You may ask why it is important to make the distinction between these three things. Globally, in the past few years there has been a collective voice to eradicate bullying from society. We have made a number of gains in this regard. When parents and students use the terms inappropriately and attribute everything to bullying we run the risk of “a little boy who cried wolf” scenario with the overuse of the term preventing anyone from taking the actual issue that is bullying seriously.
At Te Kura o Puhinui we endeavour to eradicate meanness, rudeness and bullying from our environment so that it is a safe and happy place. We understand that this is an ideal that we aspire to but will always be working towards. If we use the terminology correctly then we can work to create resilient students who can stand up for themselves and build healthy relationships. We know that in any school, students are developing and defining who they are and this can often involve conflict. Conflict in friendship groups is common and our role is to work with students to resolve this. Each year we conduct an anonymous wellbeing survey to gather information at how successful we are being. We use this information to strategically plan to address issues of wellbeing and relationships.
As a school we work tirelessly to have effective systems and processes in place to eradicate bullying. Please do not hesitate to speak with your child’s guardian teacher first, the Community Leader and then the senior leadership team if you feel that an issue has not been resolved. We will investigate promptly and will do our best to resolve issues as swiftly as possible. Some of our student stories are complex and behaviour modification can take time. We look fo rward to continuing to work together as a community to grow and strengthen all of our tamariki to be able to build their confidence as resilient and empowered learners.
