Cyberbullying - Curbing its tentacles

Late January this year, the Telstra Foundation announced it had provided a $400,000 social innovation grant to a youth-led movement against bullying known as Project Rockit. The project engages Australian school students between 7-9 years in learning and understanding the issues of bullying, cyber safety and leadership. Personally, I see this as an extremely encouraging development given the regular number of cyberbullying cases sprouting in schools/institutes globally. A McAfee survey in 2014 concluded that the number of school children in London being bullied on the internet has doubled in the past year, with more than one in three victims.

India is no exception. Some weeks back when I was rushed into a closed door meeting to tackle one such instance. A couple of students had made a fake Instagram account of a classmate and sent across messages to other classmates and a student from another school. The students involved and their parents were spoken to. The police officer of the area police station, investigated the matter and addressed the students and the parents in the presence of the principal, making them aware of the detrimental impact of such an involvement.

The advent of technology has not only shifted children out of playgrounds to their living rooms with their gadgets but with it, bullying too has shifted from playgrounds to the virtual world!  In fact, the ‘viral’ nature of cyberbullying makes it so much more convenient and simple to send humiliating texts, pictures, videos while still remaining anonymous. Cyberbullying occurs when children lose sight of the consequences. They fail to think that sending messages which they see as “just messing” or “joking” is actually a form of bullying, and don’t understand how it can hurt and emotionally uproot a person.

Internet anonymity empowers the perpetrators to believe they will not be known and traced as they see the internet as not a real world. As with traditional bullying, pressure from friends can be a trigger for cyberbullying too or a mere act to appear cool or have some fun at the expense of another. In more serious cases, it entails receiving threats that can seriously dent the self-esteem and emotional health of a child.

This brings us to an important question. How prepared are we as custodians of our children to tackle this? Clearly, any step needs to be tailored in congruence with an empathetic and sensitive approach for both the bully and the victim. Remember, children may not want to let you know that they are victims of bullying due to embarrassment or fearing intrusion on their personal space. Teachers and parents both must keep a vigil over any sudden behavioural change or attitudinal shifts.

At our school we are creating awareness among students about

- Their rights and responsibilities online.

- Making sure they are aware that the internet is not a ‘private’ place.

- Advocating the positive use of technology.

- Promoting good netiquette and personal safety issues.

- Inculcating a “telling” atmosphere – so that their peers will report cyberbullying, publicise different ways of reporting cyberbullying to give confidence to bystanders.

- Anti-bullying policies will be set which will be constantly updated and amended to deal with cyberbullying as it evolves.

Some of the ways parents can help tackling cyberbullying are -

1.    Choosing battles wisely: It’s best to not engage with unpleasantness or vile behaviour; it is what bullies target for. However, limits definitely need to be set for taking stern action against the perpetrator.

2.    Privacy settings – Block the bully or any unknown numbers from contacting on child’s phone. Consider logging off altogether if the app or messenger only seems to distract your child, for a couple of months.

3.    Report fake profiles/information – Report any occurrences of fake profiles and indecent pages to the website as well as the cybersecurity cell.  

4.    Trust your child – It won’t be easy for them to come out and admit something to you, so don’t judge them.

5.    Listen – This is the most undervalued skills but one that can give an idea about the state of the mind of the child either bullying or getting bullied.

 Our students are being encouraged to make friends and promote a positive and supportive atmosphere in the school which will ensure that cyberbullying or any form of bullying does not thrive.  Forbidding technology is definitely not the solution but to guide the students from making choices responsibly. What worked for us undoubtedly is the bringing together of the parent, the management and the law on the same platform to address the children together. This should be a combined body working as a unit to empower the students to make each of their voices heard. 

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A Mixed Bag - Budget 2017 for Education

Budget 2017 seems to have been a mixed bag of sorts with higher education, unsurprisingly, been given maximum impetus. School education once again seems to have been given the raw end of the deal with hardly any developments or thrusts.  The budget while crafted on the premise of good intentions  clearly seems ambiguous in terms of tackling key implementation challenges. A few observations -

1. National Testing Agency to conduct all exams higher education - To begin with positives, The National Testing Agency should definitely help in terms of reducing burden on students preparing for multitude of entrance tests. It should also enable CBSE and AICTE to focus on its core areas of improving academic milieu.
2. More autonomy to quality education institution - Autonomy to be given to ‘quality’ institutions should definitely up the quality of education and has been the need of the hour but the criteria to discern quality education through accreditation/rankings would hold the key. It will also need to be guarded closely since institutions could take advantage and commercialise courses.
3. System to measure learning outcomes in schools - There seems to be much ambiguity in terms of the implementation of it. Conducting learning assessment programs require huge resource when you consider the 2.5 crore students studying across 14 lakh schools. Whereas school assessment program has been allocated a meagre Rs. 67 lacs against Rs. 5 crore the previous year.
4. Leverage ICT with launch of Swayam which has free courses - virtual attendance taught by best faculty - Swayam which got a soft launch last year is a good initiative but will face issues due to lack of infrastructure and technology. Alos, like other massive open online courses (MOOCs), will face challenges like low completion rates. So, emphasis should be given to strengthen public education system and building up strong teacher training.
5. Setting up of AIIMS and steps to increase post graduate seats for medical seats -  The setting up of the two AIIMS as a move to get more qualified doctors is welcome though again the key challenge is to also get trained faculty as well as integrating it with a strong public healthcare infrastructure system.
6. Innovation Fund - Creation of the innovation fund is definitely needed and could help in bringing about enhanced learning outcomes in backward blocks. However, like the national testing agency, the budget doesn’t give any clue in terms of the allocation for this fund as is with the incorporation of National Testing Agency.
7. Increased allocation to IITs/IIMs - While thrust seems to have been given to IIMs and IITs and higher education in general, in terms of increased allocations, this in itself will not take care of dearth of expert faculty and also quality of students getting enrolled in such institutes. This is where the school education system needs to be strengthened from pre-primary to higher secondary! Unfortunately, school education has been left wanting of critical reforms required. No impetus placed on Teacher training programmes which is critical for the implementation of improving learning outcomes.
8. Increase of Rs. 1000 crore and Rs. 300 crore allocation to SSA and mid day meal - The midday meal scheme got a mere Rs. 300 crore increase, not enough for the millions of malnourished children in schools and to improve the quality of food being served in schools. A meagre increase of Rs. 1000 crores in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan won’t be very helpful in ironing out the multitudes of problems the program has run into. Two deadlines have been missed due to inadequate resources. The universalisation of education from pre-primary to secondary education still seems like a distant dream to come true and in this 21st century for us to not have completed this basic milestone is not only unfortunate but shameful.

Overall, we have a long way to go in terms of improving our education system which is the backbone of any nation. We require bold moves and structural approach to really work on crucial issues troubling both school and higher education to bridge a phenomenally huge gap in the dissemination of education, inclusion, infrastructure and technology, curriculum. Remember, we will have a working population of over 860 million by 2020!  A mere 3.8% allocation of GDP to education against a 6% allocation proposed by the education commission back in 1964-66 shows the abyss we will be staring at, if we don’t make education our top priority.