Schools face a difficult balancing act in addressing bullying.
On the one hand is the obvious need to protect the victim. Given the recent attention on suicides by bullying victims in Ontario, it’s clear that society has to do something to keep them safe.
On the other hand, schools have a duty of care to the alleged perpetrators as well. First, they have to investigate the allegations properly and avoid acting hastily to, in a sense, convict them of wrongdoing.
At the same time, they must make efforts to address the perpetrators’ actions in a constructive way by, for example, providing counselling and other help to try to stop the offending behaviour.
Schools are different from the courts, of course, so the tough-on-crime rhetoric doesn’t apply in the same way.
The offenders are young, so it’s important to undertake interventions that will help them succeed and resolve their behaviour early on rather than taking a purely punitive approach.
Privacy considerations are also a factor in how schools handle a case, particularly when it comes to communicating with the victims’ families.
The government, then, has taken a reasonable approach with its proposed accepting schools act. It would require schools to be proactive about bullying by making it clear that the consequences will escalate up to expulsion.
At the same time, it would make them support students who want to lead activities that promote a more harmonious environment and designate the third week of every November as bullying awareness prevention week.
The legislation is by no means a panacea. Getting tough on perpetrators has its obvious attraction but it doesn’t always work. In the high-profile case of Pickering, Ont., boy Mitchell Wilson, officials transferred the alleged perpetrator to another school.
Yet the bully’s friends who remained at Mitchell’s school continued to harass him, a fact that likely played a role in his eventual suicide as he feared going back to class.
Nevertheless, cases like this one show that the government had to act. Schools, in fact, have already faced lawsuits, many of them in the Small Claims Court, from parents who claim officials didn’t do enough to stop bullying.
The need for action, then, is clear. Hopefully, though, the legislation will result in a measured approach. Rather than rushing to expel the perpetrators, intervening early to provide help to both them and the victims is a better option.
Overall, the government has struck a good balance by allowing for tough and escalating sanctions but also emphasizing awareness and other supports.
In doing so, it has made it clear that schools have an added duty to act, something the parents who have been launching the court actions have been looking for.
— Glenn Kauth
For more information, see
"Small claims rules prompt lawsuits against local school boards" and
"Legal battle over school bullying escalates."
