I had an interesting discussion today at the university about bullying and how far it has gone the past few years. Was it really this big when I went to school? It probably were it's just something you choose to ignore when you grow up I asume. Our discussion made me wonder, do students actually know what bullying is? Do they understand what a bully is? I'm actually not so sure about that since the word "bully" hasn't any affect on students in todays school. They simply don't care about what they do to each other and that words can hurt so much more than if they hit someone.

I'm thinking that students today think bullying isn't that bad since adults do it all the time on the internet. Adults comment, say mean things and bully other people on social media, so if the behaviour is okey when you are an adult why shouldn't it be okey when you are in school? For teachers it's really difficult to draw a line since adults step over it all the time and students who see maybe their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles bully people online then the behaviour is in one way accepted, the grown ups shows through their actions that this kind of behaviour is okey, so why should the students listen to the teachers saying it is not?

Social media has exploded during the last couple of years and it hardly even existed when I grew up, but today a lot of the bullying going on in schools are done in the cyberspace. Bullying going on on the internet, whose responsibility is it to stop it actually? In an article published in Skolvärden (link to article here) it says that The School Inspection thinks it is the teachers responsibility if the students involved attends the same school. My imediate thought about this is, how can it be the teachers responsibility if it happens outside of school during the weekend or a holiday break? Teachers cannot monitor the internet 24/7, it's not manageble, not with everything else the teachers have to do today. 

Bullying is a huge problem today, and there is still not a solution to it, but I do not believe that the responsibility should be put on teachers alone. Teachers see the students for 8 hours a day 5 days a week what about the 16 hours that are left? Shouldn't it be the parents responsibility to monitor what their children do on the internet when they are at home? It feels more logical that the adult that spend the most time with the child should be responsible and that is not the teacher it is the parent. It is the parents job to raise the child and that responsibility cannot be put on the teacher.