This is the best of our knowledge, a presentation of national productions.
Technology and social media have made communication and staying in touch easier than ever.
Unfortunately, it's also made bullying easier than ever, and the problems expected to get worse.
When you're not looking someone in the eye, you can say a lot of terrible things that you would never say face to face.
Today on the best of our knowledge, our series on bullying goes cyber.
We'll also hear how some students really feel about high school.
Follow some students as they travel from Canada to Russia and spend an academic minute finding out what sign language reveals about the brain.
I'm Bob Barrett, and this is the best of our knowledge.
Technology has changed the face of bullying.
The rise of social media and the explosion of texting is led to what's known as cyber bullying.
In part two of our series on bullying, the best of our knowledge is Paul Tuthill reports.
The Taunts, insults, intimidations and threats hurled on the playground can now be found on Facebook, in chat rooms,
and conveyed via text messages.
I think people like fighting and I've heard of people like killing each other and killing themselves over stuff like that.
It's outrageous, like what teenagers go through, and then like some stuff you can never get away from, like rumors, you never get away from that.
As the means of communication and social interaction by young people change, bullies have found new ways to brutalize their victims.
The internet is a place that's not that different from a hallway or a bathroom or a carpool lane where kids left unattended are going to have conflict or drama as they often call it.
Rachel Simmons, an educator bullying expert and author of the book Odd Girl Out, the hidden culture of aggression in girls, explains that conflict which goes on and on, unresolved can be considered bullying, especially when it's between people with different social status.
Let's say a girl angers two or three other girls and those two or three other girls go online and they start to post nasty comments on the target's wall.
They say things like, you know, you're ugly, you're disgusting, no one likes you.
You know, I wish you were never born or we're going to get to you after school. There can often be threats of conflict in real life.
These girls may also be texting her at the same time, similar messages.
Because it's happening in the public venue of a social network like Facebook, other students are seeing this. They may jump into the fray, they may make comments, which of course exacerbates the humiliation of the target.
And this can go on for a long time.
Simmons says cyber bullying appears more common among girls than boys.
Girls, there's often a seamless integration between their online and real lives. And so what happens in the hallway at one hour in the second hour can then move into texting.
And later that night can go on to Facebook where when you're not looking someone in the eye, you can say a lot of terrible things that you would never say face to face.
20% of youth bullying victims report they were bullied online, a number that has held steady for the last few years according to the cyber bullying research center.
Cyber bullying is not spiraling out of control. You know, it's not this epidemic that it's sometimes painted as, but it is affecting a meaningful portion of youth.
Sameer Hendoja is co-director of the Cyber Bullying Research Center and an associate professor of criminal justice at Florida Atlantic University.
When it comes to bullying and cyber bullying, we definitely still see that the percentages for bullying are higher than cyber bullying.
And I'm not really seeing a shift from, let's say, the playground or a classroom or always to online. It's just another environment to which we're asking it taking place and then the youth are capitalizing on the fact that their profession with the technology and could quickly go online to be mean or hurtful.
Cyber bullying seems to reach its peak with children in the middle school grades. As children grow older, most develop more self confidence and focus on academic success and extracurricular activities.
Also, there's a growing awareness that what is said in cyberspace can follow someone as they attempt to get into college or get a job.
Victims of cyber bullying can feel as if there is no escape. Bullies can be emboldened by physical distance and anonymity, according to Elizabeth Stasinos, a bullying prevention expert and professor at Westfield State University.
More good things are happening online for kids and enjoyable things, games, information news, then there are negative things just like in real life.
On the other hand, for a kid who has other risk factors, and I think this is true in person as it is in cyberspace, with kids who have other risk factors, I think that the online world can become a very distorted place where they can feel both very afraid and they can feel like there's no consequences.
Bullying can be a gateway to other bad behavior, including hate crimes and domestic violence. Victims can have academic problems, truancy and juvenile delinquency.
Also, youth gang violence is being instigated on social media. According to Tony Petaway, the Violence Prevention Coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The New York City Police Department recently announced a doubling of the size of its gang unit to monitor social media for clues to turf battles and other trouble.
Darrell Moss, a mayoral aide in Springfield, Massachusetts who specializes in youth issues, says bullying and gangs have always been closely linked.
We have young people who have always joined gangs because bullying, if I'm getting beat up, I go grab all the neighborhood buddies and we kind of align ourselves.
The experts agree that when it comes to preventing cyber bullying, it is up to adults to teach children proper digital citizenship.
But just staying current with technology can be daunting, concedes Gianna Allentuck and Adjustment Counselor in the Springfield schools.
I personally and professionally feel behind the curve, it's just every time you turn around, every second there's a new kind of technology or software, program or Twitter and tweeting and Facebooking.
I've just learned of one the other day, I can't even remember the name, but I remember it's just another way for kids to be able to either say mean things or pass mean pictures.
So it's definitely I do feel behind the curve.
49 states have bullying laws, but just 15 includes cyber bullying.
Some states attempts to criminalize cyber bullying have run into claims of free speech protection.
Bill Newman, director of the Western Massachusetts Legal Office of the ACLU says existing laws are clear about when free speech does not apply.
I think this notion that cyber bullying is different, at least analytically than other kinds of bullying and threats.
I don't think that's true and I think the framework to look at this is what would be a criminal act in any event, whether or not it happens through electronic media or social media or email.
Or Facebook or Twitter or any other way.
Would it be criminal if it happened face to face all state bullying laws direct schools to have prevention and intervention policies and punishments eight states, including Massachusetts and New York, include off campus behavior.
And that is significant because now it says to educators, you are on the hook for making sure that you are aware or at least don't turn a bull.
And I, to this kind of communication, when you have reason to know about it, I don't think it says you have some obligation to act as the police force of cyber space.
Newman says courts have ruled school officials can sanction off campus behavior if it results in a disruption in school.
School prevention and intervention policies typically do not differentiate between cyber bullying and traditional bullying.
Connie Mahoney, the director of Safe Schools Programs for the Springfield Public Schools, says cyber bullying is included in staff training and the anti-bullying curriculum.
It's a challenge, it's a balancing act. We want them to use technology, but there has to be regulations around that.
We just have to look at the students as the individuals that they are, you know, and take a look at each student, each classroom, one at a time, and give the students the support that they need.
If you witness cyber bullying, you can report it as a violation of the terms of service that govern access to most social media sites.
Elizabeth Stasinos, a bullying prevention expert and professor at Westfield State University believes a grassroots campaign akin to mothers against drunken driving can stop cyber bullying.
The dangers of the cyber world are real in terms of the kids formation of identity in terms of how they're harmed, in terms of how they think of their peers as being frenemies, all that stuff is a real danger.
You know, that kids get a warped social sense, that they're not going to be able to achieve their goals, that they're not going to be able to live in community.
You know, and I'm being an optimistic anthropologist here and saying that I think we can achieve healthy communities in healthy schools.
I'm Paul Tuthill.
So what do students actually think about high school? Independent producer Janie B asked seven students were their thoughts about living the life of a day-to-day high school student.
I'm George Acquon, 11.
Laura, 10.
Eric Sihuts in 12th grade.
Joshua, grade 12 senior.
Corey Vratting, 10th grade.
I'm Kenneth. I'm Trent. We're both sophomores.
How do I feel about grades? I feel like they're not an accurate representation of how much a student learns.
My grades are good. I make A's and B's in one C.
Our harsh teachers need to come in some slash.
I mean, why don't you just go to school and have a good time and do some more sheets and stuff?
I'm not going to go to school. I'm still in our old blood.
I think public school is a bit better because you get to be more people.
I've been a more of a stressful scary environment. Whereas to private school, along with the fact that it waste a lot of your parents' money,
it also kind of tends to shelter you from the world. When in public school, you're just out there in it.
Being able to connect on an educational level as well as a social level.
My favorite subject is the AP calculus because it provides a great challenge.
Science because I like doing experiments.
Math because it's really interesting and it's part of what I want to be of my career.
Math because it's easy.
Lunch because that's the best part of the day. Oh wow.
School is not even long. It's all right. It just needs to start at a different time.
Maybe start at 11 and get out at like 3.
It's not bad and it's an okay time. So I don't see being too long to be short.
It is too long. I feel so we should have a good solid hour and do like a period every 10 minutes or so.
I believe I would tell myself to stop dressing terribly in middle school and not to ask assos you don't like.
I meet new people every other day.
Pretty cool.
You have to take it more seriously than what you would have.
Don't go to high school. Yeah, drop out in elementary school and you can't.
Don't do it. And don't join newspaper.
Yeah. I thought I was going to be like there's a class of five where people get stuff that lockers and bullied.
Learn something new every day. There's more things to do and I enjoy.
Those are the thoughts of seven high school students put together by independent producer Janey B.
Still to come, a group of students from Canada are continuing a tradition of touring the world's hot spots.
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.
Every year Montreal's McGill University takes a compliment of students, faculty and alumni to a city considered an emerging economic power.
Past trips have included tours of Israel, Dubai, India and South Africa.
This year the hot cities tour took 34 students plus faculty and alumni to Moscow.
More from the best of our knowledge is Pat Bradley.
Participants in McGill's Desitel Faculty of Management hot cities tour blog about their trip.
One page includes some tidbits of trivia for the Moscow travelers.
Along with being the most expensive city in continental Europe, there are 79 billionaires living there, ranking first globally.
The city is home to a third of all billionaires in Europe.
McGill University Desitel Faculty of Management professor Carl Moore says Russia shares many commonalities with Canada in both size and natural resources.
They're both fairly strong economies. Russia is growing at a fast-rearing Canada, but Canada is doing fairly well.
We have a lot of mining companies, mineral oil exploration.
Some of the technologies we developed in Canada are extremely cold.
The other difficulties we face up here are ones that would be also very much useful in the Siberian northern parts of Russia.
It's also interesting the cultures that are very long and rich cultural history in Russia.
Because of the size of the country and the Arctic weather and the darkness of it, I think it resonated with our Canadian souls to some degree.
Unemployment in Russia is 6% and more says there is growth potential for American industry.
The wonderful technology around fracking that you developed in the US, the oil industry obviously out of Houston and Texas, there's enormous American know-how.
Because of the size of the country 10 times Canada, there would be more American know-how than even Canadian know-how that the Russians would really appreciate and want to take advantage of.
So I think there's a really big opportunity for American business in Russia even more than Canadian business.
Karl Moore notes that Russia and Moscow's political dominance is resurgent after waning during the 1990s.
I think what we see now is Russia is resurgent and it's not going to ever be as important as I don't think it was in the past.
But Moscow has come back to being somewhere where the world has to pay more attention to because of the resources and because those resources have led to greater economic clout, Russia is feeling a little bit more of its oats and it's starting to comment on things like Syria more.
And starting to be a bit more of a player. I don't think I'll ever return to the days of the Cold War.
But again, I think Moscow is back a bit and the US and Canada needs to pay a little bit more attention to the Russians.
A native of Plattsburg, New York, Lauren Merkel is an MBA student in global strategy and leadership.
She was impressed with the business opportunities and would consider working in Moscow.
I considered it when I was there. It's really a place for opportunity and a lot of the places we met with really expressed that and a lot of people we met with said this is definitely a place to make money, maybe not the easiest place to do business.
But there's definitely a lot of opportunity. I was very excited to get the pulse of the people and understand a little bit about who they are and what they think and how they think.
And for me, it was really those one-on-one conversations I had over there that I'll remember the most and that I think gave me the best insight into Russia.
The McGill delegation met with Russian business leaders, including IBM Moscow, Sachi and Sachi's Russian division and the chief economist for the Moscow Office of Bank America, Merrill Lynch.
Lauren Merkel and the other students also discussed business education and the legal aspects of Russian entrepreneurship at the Skolkova University of Management and Norton Rose, a global law firm.
15, 20 years ago everything really opened up and there's such a need now for consumer product goods. People are really coming into their own over there and there's so much opportunity in terms of everything, especially the tech sector.
We met with a lot of entrepreneurs within that sector. There's really a huge demand, a huge need, you know becoming more westernized and coming up to par with where we are today.
Another thing that we heard as well is not only with entrepreneurs but for women leadership. We spoke with women leaders. They feel empowered there. It's a place where women feel comfortable to lead and it's accepted for them to lead and it sounds like a great place to be as a woman and as an entrepreneur.
Merkel was able to speak with Russians about their views of Americans, giving her valuable insight into cultural perceptions.
Something I was very curious about, I wanted to know, well what do you think of Americans? I said, do you hate Americans? They said, no, we don't hate Americans, we just think they're funny. I'm like, well what do you mean? They said, you guys follow the rules, we find ways to break them.
Another thing they mentioned of course was the smiling. They think Americans are very emotional people. That's not something that they do, especially not in public.
And then the third story that this one girl said as well, you know if a media right fell in Russia, Americans would say, oh my goodness this is crazy and Russians would say, how do I get around the media right, I have to be in work in 15 minutes.
So you know you really get to see the differences in the two cultures.
Each hot city's trip includes tours to an impoverished area and the students raise funds for a charity.
Lauren Merkel describes their visit to the Kitesh Children's Community, a commune for orphaned children and foster families.
It's about two hours drive from Moscow, snowy landscape, couple buildings that they've built by hand.
There are a group of families, foster children who come from orphanages or abandoned children and you really see how they're all working together, teaching responsibility, teaching values.
The families all work together, you have the older children taking part in helping to raise the younger children and it really is a community for me.
For me, I spend Israel before so it reminds me a little of a kaboots and when you think of the alternative, I mean it's really beautiful to see how happy and thriving these children are and that they're getting a second chance and a really good one at that.
Lauren Merkel will graduate in May and believes her biggest lesson from the hot city's trips is understanding that it is a global economy and not everyone does things the same way.
The best takeaway is that we can't view things through our own lenses, we have to keep an open mind and listening, listening more than talking to really gain these insights and approach things in a really understanding way.
Reporting for the Best of Our Knowledge, I'm Pat Bradley.
There are some features of American Sign Language that reveal some interesting features of the brain. That's the topic of today's academic minute.
Welcome to the Academic Minute. I'm Lynn Pascarella, President of Mount Holyoke College, the development of complex language likely accompanied the evolution of the brain in modern humans.
Evie Malia, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington, describes what brain scans and sign language have to reveal about our ancestors use of language.
Languages are complex systems with multiple interrelated levels and we still do not quite understand how humans develop them.
Research on how brain processes sign languages, visual languages, has shown a relationship between everyday visual processing of moving objects and linguistic structures in visual languages.
Suggesting a path from mental structuring of scenes to language development.
In most languages, two categories of verbs are present. Those describing a change like by arrive and those describing a homogenous activity like chrono read.
In American Sign Language, ASL, these two kinds of verbs can be distinguished not only on the basis of their meaning but also based on their form.
When a sign or uses a verb describing change, the motion of the hand rapidly decelerates at the end of the sign.
Signs describing continuous action do not have such speed changes in hand motion.
From studies on human perception, we know that all humans use speed and deceleration of objects to understand what is happening in their surroundings.
The use of similar visual features in everyday perception and in sign language comprehension shows that there are general perceptual abilities that languages build upon.
My colleagues and I conducted a neuroimaging study to understand what information signers extract from the decreased hand speed at the end of the sign.
The verb signs with high deceleration at the end, those describing changes, activated precunios in deaf signers.
This region is known for processing abstract scripts of events. This means that the signers were using the increased speed of hand motion and signs to trigger access to long term memory.
The finding that human perceptual ability contributes to creation of linguistic categories is exciting because it applies to all languages both spoken and signed,
since spoken languages distinguish between the same two verb types.
Our neuroimaging study uncovered the neural connection between motion recognition, language and memory access in the human brain.
That was Evie Malia of the University of Texas at Arlington. You can find this 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.
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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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