A Better Approach to Bullying?
The nature of a bureaucracy is to develop policies to address problems. Policies are a standardized set of rules and consequences that can be applied to various situations that generally mean less actual consideration of the facts by the individuals authorized to apply the consequences. Policies are seen as an efficient way to move forward and get past a broad spectrum of problems the system may experience. Because they are broad in scope and purposely disregard specific details, policies are often ineffective. This is never more obvious than when you look at school policies. Stripped of the cumbersome details of the individuals and circumstances, consequences meted out according to policy are often out of proportion to the infraction and, frustratingly, never seem to make the problem go away.
Take the problem of bullying. Can anyone point to an effective policy against bullying? Not really. There are
Take the problem of bullying. Can anyone point to an effective policy against bullying? Not really. There are
