LAST week Education Minister Ruairi Quinn, unveiled a series of anti-bullying measures for schools across Ireland, with every school required to have the measures in place by Easter.
The new procedures place particular emphasis on cyberbullying and homophobic bullying, with cyberbullying linked directly to a number of child suicides in recent months.
There is now a specific responsibility on school principals and teachers to formally report instances of bullying, and for these cases to be acted upon accordingly.
With an added obligation for each school to publish its anti-bullying policy on its website, educators now have a greater responsibility than ever before to tackle the bullying epidemic head-on.
For young teachers who are also attempting to familiarise themselves with the task of organising lesson plans and controlling groups of children, this is another difficult challenge.
However, the new procedures are being implemented with the most important thing in mind, namely the well-being of children in their most formative years.
The proliferation of mobile phone use among young people has given rise to malicious online activity, with many school-goers frequently active on social media.
Websites such as Ask.fm, where users do not even have to reveal their identity, have been abused to the tragic extent that some children have taken their own lives as a result of grossly offensive comments. Much of this harmful online content can stem from activity that happens in schools, where homophobic bullying is, sadly, a fact of everyday life.
For a society which is apparently becoming more liberal towards a diversity of sexual orientations, that there is a need for homophobic bullying measures to be implemented shows that some of us still have a lot to learn. Minister Quinn’s proposals should make bullying cases more transparent and ultimately less frequent.
