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For all of the efforts schools put into reducing bullying, there’s actually a dearth of rigorous evidence about what makes for effective anti-bullying intervention. The classic approach — pile kids into an auditorium and lecture them on the dangers of bullying, perhaps including a sad story about its effects along the way — doesn’t appear to really work. Some researchers believe that the reason it doesn’t work is that students, like people in general, don’t really take their cues for how to behave from authority figures — they take them from their peers. If students think their peers enjoy bullying, or at least aren’t opposed to it, they’ll be more likely to not just engage in bullying themselves, but also to fail to intervene when they see other people doing it.
A trio of researchers decided to target this dynamic in a big, impressive new study of 56 middle schools in New Jersey. The results, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest their approach paid off. If subsequent research further bolsters what they found, it could forever change how schools handle bullying and other forms of conflict among their students.
Source: To End Bullying, Get the Cool Kids to Help — Science of Us
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