It's been a long time since we've had a "deeper" post so maybe just allow me to indulge abit.
One other reason I came back home this Easter holiday is to obtain some information/data that will hopefully help me in my 2nd-year project (counts towards the exams, urgh). I had a range of topics to choose from and I picked one that I could remotely relate to in terms of retrospective experience: anti-social behaviour. After some consultation with my supervisor, I settled on studying different trends of bullying behaviour in adolescent schoolchildren.
And so I got in touch with Mr. Eng who was really kind enough to grant my request to conduct a student survey spanning across Sec1-4. I was initially rejected by his department since that's the school's standard protocol dealing with outsider surveys. But I politely requested a personal meeting with Mr. Eng, and with the help of some name-dropping (thanks D and I), managed to earn his approval based on a "personal favour" basis. I've since obtained 3/4 of my sample data and the results have been extremely interesting! Let's rewind a bit shall we...
There are two main focus points of my project. The first of which would be the presence (if any) of various types of bullying behaviour in a high-achieving and competitive environment such as our alma mater. The impetuses for bullying are numerous, ranging from physical discrimination (remember sextoy?), racial discrimination (remember VM?), social identity (remember urghsuckyourmommashit-chee) to academic achievement (mugger, nerd, geek etc). I'm sure it's not difficult for any of us (who are on this blog) to recall past incidents which may fall under the category of bullying (though they are definitely mild!). My aim was hence to find the proportion of bullying behaviour that falls under the category of academic achievement. For example, some top students coming from neighbourhood primary schools could have once been ostracised for being 'way too smart'.
The second focus point would be on elitism, especially among students who know they belong to the brightest bunch of kids in the country (remember ms. get-out-of-my-elite-uncaring-face?) Perhaps they could be a relationship between bullying based on academic achievement, and traces of elitist sentiments? My existing data has shown that elitism is real in top schools, but numbers are among a handful.
Well, I have no idea where all this research is going to take me, but I'm looking forward to running some analyses and forming some preliminary conclusions. Out of curiosity, what do you guys have to say about bullying and elitism? We can always recount memorable (sometimes funny) incidents that happened back when we were still young! =D
p.s. I pledged full anonymity to the school for doing the surveys. Would really appreciate if we could keep our discussion within this blog, and like we always do, keep secretive about all identities. Thanks guys!
heyo...
ReplyDeletethis is why i suggest putting up a password lock for our blog. just to protect each and everyone of us here. of course, i am not insinuating that what we have typed or are going to type contains explicit material or content that could be highly offensive to the next person, but one can never be too careful right?
sorry dae, i will post my thoughts about it later on again.
interesting post, i will reserve my thoughts till after 28 April, but in short, i think it is very difficult to understand bullying when we are also advocates of it as well.
ReplyDeleteAnyway,what's your other reason for coming back for holidays?
and dz,as much as i think it pays to be safe, i don't think it is necessary. Sometimes, it's fine to run before we can walk.
i like this post.. now u guys know how i feel.. hahah.. just kidding.
ReplyDeletewah mel, you finally posted sth here ah, haha. When you coming back?
ReplyDeleteI think bullying exist because one feel more superior than the other. It could be physically, emotionally, academically. And bullying often involves group dynamics. The bullying we see, is very much always a group versus one, or a larger group versus a smaller group. Numbers do count, to a certain extent i think.
Well, there will always be bullying because we all r not created equal. We have different backgrounds, some indian, some chinese, some poor, some rich, some single parent, etc. That is not to confuse discrimination with bullying. One is more passive while the other is more active, i think you know which is which.
Bullying happens normally not because of the protagonist, but because of the one being bullied sort of allowed it to happen. The bullied need to find help, voice out, if they are being bullied, find bigger sources of power to get out of the situation. Bullying often involves the bullied doing something that he don't like, against his will. Well, if he likes to get bullied, then he's jus a slave, think sm, hahaha.
I think bullying have a lot to do with emotions, rather than anything else. It's that inferior feeling created within the bullied individual that is the crux of the problem. If they can come out fighting out of their situation, the table can very much be turned.
yeah.. I took awhile to figure out how a blog works. never wrote one in my life before.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I will be posting some photos of where I am soon.
Some people bully because they are inferior as well right? the lack of sense of security urges them to take such actions. don't they?
ReplyDelete