How Bullying Contributes to School Violence

“Shaming someone involves a loss of face, diminished self-esteem, and induces a sense of rage. For
some people, rage and shame are turned inward and may result in self-destructive behavior, such as
eating disorders, stomachaches, drug abuse, or even suicide. For others, rage precipitates an explosive
action towards others.”

- Garbarino & deLara (2002, p. 80)

Most bullied children do not become violent. In fact, bullied children tend to be kids with more empathy
and a less aggressive personality. Yet bullying also has an indisputable effect on school violence, since
even the soundest of individuals can only internalize so much before they explode. While most bullied
children do not lash out violently, OTHERS DO resort to violent acts as a direct result of the bullying they
experience. This violence can take forms ranging from fist fights to Columbine-style school shootings.

Bullying as a form of school violence

In the most direct way, bullying is related to school violence because much of what bullies do IS
physically violent. Shoving someone into a locker, kicking or punching them as they walk down the halls,
or shoving them down stairs all qualify as significant acts of violence, and can even lead to serious injury.
One boy, for example, was left paralyzed from the neck down after being shoved down a staircase at his
school by a bully. Other children are attacked by groups of aggressors, sometimes jumped on their way
home from school. Rocks, hard objects, or other items may be hurled at them - sometimes launched in
their direction from a moving car. These types of assaults would be treated as a potentially serious
criminal act if we were dealing with adults, and we should take it just as seriously when our kids
experience them. This violence affects not only the bullied child, but other children who must spend
their day in a violent environment where such assaults are considered commonplace.

How bullying leads to retaliatory violence

On the other side of the equation, the psychological harm done to a bullied child can often incubate
violent tendencies or spark a violent act in retaliation. Bullied children are shamed on a regular basis,
and psychologists have long known there is a strong causal link between shame and violence. (Gilligan,
1997) Bullied children also face alienation from their peers. This social exclusion is known to lead to
distraction, preoccupation, lethargy, and a sense of meaninglessness, which in turn breeds violence.
(Twenge et al., 2003) There's only so much torment and humiliation bullied children can take before
many resort to lashing out in return.
When New York magazine surveyed teens about their reactions to the Columbine shootings, one 19-
year-old captured this sentiment when he stated, “To be honest, when I first heard about it, part of me
feels like, ‘Yay!’ This is what every outcast kid has been dreaming about doing since freshman year.”
(Jacobson, 1999) His feelings are more common among mistreated teens than parents might imagine.
Thankfully, most children remain stable enough through it all to keep from acting out such vengeful
thoughts in the real world. Yet for evey bullied child who goes on a shooting rampage at school,
countless others act out in less-dramatically violent ways on an everyday basis all around the country.

School shootings & bullying

“Much of the violence in schools is really caused by children who are retaliating against bullies and other
forms of peer pressure. In fact, among 48 incidents of recent school shootings, most of the shooters
were responding to having been mercilessly bullied.”

- Malcolm L. Smith (2010)

Following the tragedy at Columbine, the media rushed in to frame Klebold and Harris (the two shooters)
as two demented psychopaths whose actions were entirely independent of their environment, while
going to great lengths to downplay the bullying and harassment they experienced at Columbine High
School. Let us be clear: there is no excuse or justification for the horrible crimes they committed that
day. Yet pretending that this tragedy had nothing to do with bullying or social dynamics at the school is
also a cop-out, and a gross distortion of the facts.

http://www.keepyourchildsafe.org/bullying/bullying-and-school-violence.html