This is the best of our knowledge, a presentation of national productions.
As efforts to end bullying in schools continues, a lot of time and study is being put into
trying to find out who may be the most likely targets of bullies and why.
Those are individuals that feel scared, they feel powerless.
Today on the best of our knowledge, part three and our five-part series on bullying.
We'll also talk about another student safety issue, the safety of students who travel abroad
and what can be done to make sure your child is safe while studying in a foreign land.
We'll meet a young lady who's proud to be a nerd and will spend an academic minute finding out how social media is affecting our behavior.
I'm Bob Barrett and this is the best of our knowledge.
As research advances on school bullying, sociologists are understanding not just who's affected, but that some may suffer more academically as a result.
In the third installment of our five-part series on bullying, the best of our knowledge is Lucas Willard reports on the sociology of bullying from grade school to high school.
As bullying becomes a more researched and discussed topic among parents, teachers and students,
communities are taking on their own efforts to define what exactly bullying is, who's affected and what could be done to further understand and prevent it.
That's exactly what one group in Pitsfield, Massachusetts is doing.
Karen Cole is the coordinator of the Pitsfield Prevention Partnership at the Berkshire United Way.
Together with the Northern and Southern Berkshire Community Coalition, they're implementing the Prevention Needs Assessment Survey
for eighth, tenth and twelfth grade students across Berkshire County.
For example, we're asking about the incidents of bullying and why students feel they are being targeted for bullying by students or possibly by teachers or school staff
and the response in the school after reporting the bullying.
The Pitsfield Prevention Partnership is working with the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office and Pitsfield Public Schools to educate parents about bullying.
There's sort of three key components of bullying behavior that you want to look at to see if it's a true bullying situation.
Ann Marie Carpenter is a unit leader for school counselors and school psychologists at Pitsfield Public Schools, a district whose bullying prevention work has been observed as a model by the state government in Massachusetts.
It involves an aggressive behavior and that aggression can be both direct or indirect. It typically involves a pattern of behavior that's repeated over time and then it has to have some kind of imbalance of power or strength between the individuals involved.
Robert Kinzer works in the Berkshire District Attorney's Office and said that in partnering with the schools and Berkshire United Way, one of the main targets of their prevention work focuses not on the aggressor or victim but rather on the bystander.
Those individuals that are aware of the bullying, either from seeing it, from maybe even participating in it on some level, witnessing hearing about it.
Those are individuals that feel scared, they feel powerless. They sometimes are afraid that the bully is going to turn on them.
Kinzer said that though a bystander may not be the direct target of aggression, witnessing bullying can have a significant effect on their lives both in and out of school.
And they can see their grade suffer, they can see their relationship suffer, their empathy starts to diminish. And frankly, their educational, emotional and social growth is really stunted because they don't know how to address this type of situation.
And in that way, Kinzer says bullying at school affects everyone, but are some communities or individuals more likely to experience bullying than others.
And what's the impact of bullying on school achievement?
In 2011, at the American Sociological Association's Annual Meeting, Lisa Williams of Ohio State University and Anthony Pagaro of Virginia Tech revealed their findings in the report,
the impact of school bullying on racial and ethnic minorities. Dr. Pagaro said that for young ethnic and racial minorities, many of them face stereotypes in school that perceive them as having to achieve in school in a certain way.
And is bullying, that's what Lisa and I had this question, is bullying in this type of victimization detrimental towards racial and ethnic minorities who break these stereotypes?
So in other words, within this study, and this is what we found in that study, is that black African American and Latino American students who are higher achieving, who are victimized, are their achievement score have a much more significant decline.
And they relied on information from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, which collected data on involvement of bullying in students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
The study found that black students with a GPA score of 3.5 in their freshman year and were bullied as sophomores saw a decrease in their senior year GPA by 0.3 points.
For Latinos, they declined by 12th grade increased at 0.5 points. Meanwhile, white students with a 3.5 GPA in the 9th grade and who were bullied in the 10th saw a decline in their 12th grade GPA by only 0.049 points.
Pagaro said that schools with a more racially and ethnically diverse student body are typically located in communities with less money to combat bullying and school violence.
And so these schools that are poorer have less resources to respond to violence and aggression within their schools are also in communities that have higher levels of violence, have less resources to respond to community violence as well as school violence.
The response to bullying to racial and ethnic minorities is not as I guess expeditious in terms of when we think about bullying that incurs a more affluent suburban schools where these other measures of school disorder is not as common.
Pagaro said that there's research that suggests school violence is not addressed as often for minority students because it's more commonly accepted.
The perception and the understanding of violence in racial and ethnic minorities lives is perceived to be especially amongst faculty and administrators as more normative.
And what I mean by normative is that this is part of the daily life.
And Anthony Pagaro said that his next question would be to ask what's going to happen in years ahead in terms of stereotypes and the achievement gap among minorities when white students are no longer in the majority.
How is it as a society as a school culture do we construct the notion of racial and ethnic minorities who are successful in our society.
Is this something that we need and especially in the broader context that within the next 10 to 15 years the racial and ethnic minority population is going to be considered the majority of students within the school.
There may not be an answer to that question right now, but Robert Kinzer in the Berkshire County District Attorney's Office said that his strategy in combating school bullying begins at introducing bullying recognition and prevention programming to students as early as kindergarten.
To me, the key is these younger kids and these programs were doing even at the kindergarten level. That's where we're going to start to make the difference.
The Anne Marie Carpenter of Pittsfield Public Schools says that her district will continue to work on understanding the who, what and why of something that seems common on the surface, but boils down to a more complex issue.
We're learning I think about the impact on individuals, both who are aggressors of behavior and who are targets of behavior and then learning much more about just witnessing behavior and what that does to a person individually.
The kind of psychological makeup as well as what that does to the overall school climate issues in her building. So this is a serious matter.
I'm Lucas Willard.
There was a time not that long ago when being considered a nerd was an invitation to being bullied.
The time set seems to be changing in places, though. In fact, there appears to be a tipping point in every nerd's life. The moment they accept that it's cool to be, well, uncool. Tracy Wu celebrates her inner and outer nerddom.
Go ahead. Ask anyone. I'm a huge nerd. I've learned to accept this, but I will admit I did not start out one of those proud to be me, so screw you types.
Actually, I desperately wanted to be cool, but it just was not in the cards. First, I will lay some of the blame at the feet of my parents. They were strict with me, and by strict, I mean they never allowed me to do or have cool things, which in retrospect was really brilliant.
I was allotted 30 minutes of television a day until junior high, and I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music.
I consider this the catalyst of my nerdish ways. If you can't watch TV or play with the newest most popular toy, what do you do? You read, you write, or pursue some other nerdish hobby.
My lack of 80s pop culture knowledge still shocks and horrifies my friends. I mean, I didn't watch the goonies until I was 25.
Part of this is my ethnicity, as politically incorrect as it may be to say. Asians are supposed to be smart, and while it's a stereotype, at least it's a positive one,
being one of only a handful of Asian kids in my town, I think teachers and classmates just assumed that I was smart, whether or not they were right.
So I was treated as a nerd practically on first sight, and while my parents were by no means the strictest of parents in our Chinese circle, my father certainly made it clear that academics were a top priority.
However, I can't blame my parents or educators for all my nerdishness. Throughout high school and college, I began to embrace it, and would happily admit to myself that I enjoyed tearing apart Shakespeare's plays and issuing the mainstream.
Of course, this was after trying to be cool, and pretending I liked the clothes, magazines, music, and whatnot that my peers were into.
But I found I never really truly enjoyed any of it, and I'm pretty sure everyone saw right through me, which probably made me even nerder in their eyes.
Now that I am an adult, I am proud to announce via public radio that, yes, I am a nerd, and I am proud of it.
I don't want to listen to pop music in my car. I'd rather listen to NPR and learn something of the world around me. I don't subscribe to tabloid or women's interests magazines, mainly because, as a nerd, I believe that it's a waste of paper and harms the environment.
That, and they don't teach us much more than who is sleeping with whom and how to wear lipstick well.
I will choose styles of clothing that I'm comfortable in, not because they're hip or in fashion.
At any given moment, I have half a dozen scrapbook games going on my phone.
I prefer thoughtful news and documentaries to trash your reality shows. I will constantly be in the middle of two or three books and stay up half the night reading them.
I am never going to have a clue who the newest it actress is until she's no longer it.
None of this is going to change, and I accept my permanent nerd card with pride. In saying this, I don't think that being a nerd is a bad thing. Some of my best friends are nerds.
Actually, all of them are. They are intelligent, well read, thoughtful, insightful people who know what's up in the world.
They have ideas, they create things, and they're more wrapped up in improving things than they are in themselves.
And I consider all of these traits good things. So go ahead, embrace your inner nerd. It's the new cool.
That's Tracy Wu and yes, she's a nerd. This segment was produced by Patrick Skayhill in Hardford, Connecticut.
Still to come, we'll have a discussion about the safety of US students traveling abroad. That's next on the best of our knowledge.
Got any questions or comments about the best of our knowledge? Send them in. Our email address is knowledge at www.wamc.org.
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This is the best of our knowledge. I'm Bob Barrett. Millions of American students have traveled abroad as part of their educational experience and most have done so with little problems and wonderful results.
But there are always exceptions and problems, some of which can be dangerous or even deadly.
Here to talk about the issue of student safety abroad and how to keep your child safe is Cheryl Hill, the founder of the Clear Cause Foundation, who stated mission is to provide tools and information to help parents, youth and shaperones identify risks and take positive steps to mitigate these risks abroad.
Cheryl's son Tyler died on a student trip to Japan in 2007 at the age of 16. We spoke recently and I asked her just how many American students are traveling abroad at any given time.
That's actually a hard number to tap into. I know at the university level in 2012 it was reported that there were about 270,000 students that went abroad on university programs.
There are a lot more students going abroad on spring break and volunteer programs that aren't tracked in that. And I don't have a number for high school or middle school students going abroad on programs.
So where are the numbers that we do have and where we do know students are going whereabouts?
Global. They're everywhere. They're in third-world countries, Africa, Ghana, India, Nicaragua. What a mala. If you name a country, there's a study abroad program to that country.
The US Department of State has travelstate.gov. Travelstate.gov is a place where you can go and register your trip when you go abroad. When you register your trip and you put in your emergency context, the US Department of State provides travel warnings for the country you are visiting.
So there's some very powerful information there, including a register of the number of deaths of Americans in that country and cause of death.
And we're talking about common sense, you know, crime and prevention issues and health issues, or are there other things a little deeper, maybe some governmental issues in some of those places?
Well, I think that that's part of the naivete that I feel as a mother of Tyler Hill who died a preventable death on people to people when he was 16 in Japan.
So many things that we learned through his wrongful death lawsuit. We published a site called pilerhill.org, hoping to inform and engage and protect other students.
And what we heard were stories from so many others to numerous to mention and quite painful actually, who had been sexually assaulted, raped, abused, starved, abandoned, scammed.
And the types of deaths that I want your listeners to hear about are ones that are presentable and what they should know before their kids go.
We are so protected in America. We have OSHA, you know, we have rules and laws and accountability that isn't really available in other countries.
And it's not always a third world issue. There were last year about this time five students who jumped to their death in Paris because there were no fire alarms or protection in the housing that they were staying in.
Some of our kids are centipod on programs and they're told to find their own housing. You know, our kids do not know in many situations how to dial emergency services when they're abroad.
In Japan, it's 119, my son knew to dial 911, even if he would have been able to place that call. He did not know how to ask for help in Japanese.
So we're working right now on building a program called ASAP, a student abroad preparedness plan that will help kids and their parents know what to do and how to communicate with each other.
So ASAP will hopefully help us help these kids have the times of their life, which is really what these programs are intended to be and protect themselves.
So let's start off with the precautions. Where should they begin? Of course, registering with a Department of State makes sense as a good first step. Where should we go?
On ClearCuz Foundation, we've taken about five years of trips that have gotten south and we've created Stay Safe Advice. Get ready, get set, go.
Before you go, you have to vet out your program. You have to vet out your shab roads. You have to vet out the foreign country you're going to.
There is in Europe a really awesome tool that's inside Get Set Go, which is up my street.
If you go on to up my street and type in your address, it will give you really cool information like shopping bus lines, things you want to know, entertainment restaurants.
But it will also tell you the crime rate of the street that you're considering living in.
We vet that out when we're in America, but we don't teach our kids how to vet that out. And a lot of these kids have never left the country. Are they're state?
So they're the first time in a foreign country on their own. Most of them don't know how to place a foreign call from a foreign country.
So it's not the same as picking up and dialing one in a number. So that's part of what we're trying to get Ace have to do.
And on our site clearcagefoundation.org, stay safe. There is Get Ready Get Set Go advice that so many of our kids are cash-strapped and underinsured that they don't even think insurance.
Many pro many universities are prohibited from mandating insurance when kids go abroad. Many of the insurance that our students have through family plans don't apply when they're overseas.
It's very important that students understand and apply for a student insurance. Sometimes these kids are hurt and it's $50,000.
And the hospitals want to get paid before they get the kid out of the hospital. And then you have to vet a back them home. And that vet a back can be $50,000.
So families are in it for $50,000 to $100,000 when their kids are hurt. In foreign countries especially if they're very far away from a prominent health center.
Let's talk about knowing the credentials of the program before you sign up for it. How does one go about looking into that?
We've garnered a lot of experience from families and one of the easiest ways to do it is to ask, right? You want to ask them very specifically. I want to see a list of everything that happens on your program.
We believe in transparency because knowing is being informed and if you're informed and aware you can hopefully prevent it.
So the first thing that we recommend is that you ask your program. I want to know, I want to see your statistical report. If they don't have one, they're not counting. And that's a signal.
The second thing that you can do is ask your attorney general for complaints about the program that you're studying abroad with.
The easiest thing to do is to go online and do a search on an engine that says things like death, rape, lawsuit, and you'll see what kind of complaints you have.
There is a very, very important element that we're working on right now and that is really to try to provide some thoughtful policies so that there is federal oversight, qualification standards, transparency on the safety record and sanctions against poor performers.
The U.S. Department of State provides that today for foreign students in America. We believe our students deserve equally as much protection.
So we are creating clear cause voices. So if you go to clearcauzfoundation.org forward slash voices, you can send a letter to your federal and state lawmakers and ask them to create those safety nets to keep our kids safe on those programs.
The Sheryl Hill is the founder of the Clear Cause Foundation. You can learn more about student safety abroad at clearcauzfoundation.org.
And you can learn more about Sheryl's son Tyler at Tyler Hill dot org.
Did you know that your contacts on social media may be affecting your behavior? You will because that's the topic of today's academic minute.
Welcome to the academic minute. I'm Lynn Pascarella, president of Mount Holyoke College.
Whether you are trying to diet, save money, or improve your academic performance, self control is an important component of success.
But as Andrew Stephen, assistant professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh reveals, your attachment to social media may be holding you back.
My co-authorized it out to investigate the effect that using the popular social network Facebook would have on users self control.
To investigate that question, we conducted several studies with a total of about a thousand U.S. Facebook users.
In one notable study, we had a participant see the check Facebook or renews articles on CNN.com for five minutes.
After that, they chose between eating a granola bar or a chocolate chip cookie.
We found that those who'd brown Facebook were more likely to choose the cookie.
A conclusion from this is that you get a boost to self confidence from going on Facebook and feeling you have close ties to all these people.
But that undermines your self control. So you log off Facebook and you feel good about yourself and that could make you feel like K about choosing the cookie instead of the healthier option of the granola bar.
This is called a licensing effect. It's been observed in a number of other instances, but ours is the first paper to show that using online social networks can actually affect self control.
We also conducted a survey asking for participants height and weight, how much credit card debt they had and how many friends they had offline.
The result suggested that strong ties to Facebook friends, for those who use Facebook more, may translate to higher body mass indexes, increased binge eating, lower credit scores, and higher levels of credit card debt.
This result that using Facebook can have a detrimental effect on self control is potentially important because self control is an important tool for maintaining well-being and social order.
This finding could help researchers and policymakers understand which consumers might be vulnerable to the potentially negative consequences of social media.
That was Andrew Stephen of the University of Pittsburgh. You can find this, other segments, and more information about the professors on our website, academicminute.org.
Production support for the academic minute comes from Newman's own foundation in partnership with Mount Holyoke College.
That's all the time we have for this week's program. If you'd like to listen again, join us online at our flagship stations website.
Go to www.wrg.org and click on the programs link. And if you have any questions or comments about the program, send them in. Our email address is knowledge at www.wrg. I'm Bob Barrett. Be sure to join us next time for another edition of The Best of Our Knowledge.
Bob Barrett is producer of The Best of Our Knowledge. Dr. Alan Shartock is executive producer. The Best of Our Knowledge is a production of WAMC Radio's National Productions, which is solely responsible for its content.
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