Sabadell City Hall publishes “Apunts sobre Bullying” and pedagogical proposal
SABADELL CITY HALL PUBLISHES "APUNTS SOBRE BULLYING" AND PEDAGOGICAL PROPOSAL
The Department of Civil Rights publishes “Apunts sobre Bullying” (Notes on bullying)and its pedagogical proposal which is offered for this academic course 2014-2015 in several secondary schools.
As the councillor of Civil Rights, Quim Carné, stated in the press conference this morning: “this publication is the starting point, a tool for youngsters, parents, teachers and every person who is interested in the subject.”
Carné also explained that “it is a delicate subject because we are talking about discrimination, which we can find of different kinds, such as gender discrimination, age discrimination, because of a functional diversity or the origin of a person. We should also pay attention to homosexual discrimination because children might be being bullied but may not be willing to explain it because they haven’t talked about their homosexuality with their parents yet. Carné insists that “ this is all based on values agreement, respect and freedom” and that this publication is aimed to be “a tool that empowers and strengthens children being bullied.”
Carné affirmed that anti bullying workshops are included in the programme Ciutat i Escola and that this is a critical debate about real cases, even though this programme is a “preventive action of situations that have always happened.”
This notes on bullying seeks to make youngsters think over the problem. Its goal is to raise awareness and encourage the young to adopt an active role in order to prevent bullying. They will learn how to access the resources available to face bullying and how to ask for support in order to solve it.
Bullying means “repeated harmful behaviour towards others.” Although children find many reasons to bully their mates, the most common ones are racism, xenophobia (discrimination because of the origin) and homophobia (discrimination because of the sexual orientation.)
Bullying can be physical, psychological, sexual, social…There are also many ways through which people bully: cyber bullying (by using communication technologies), humiliation, insults, violence… Whichever it is, victims who are bullied experience a number of negative emotions such as humiliation, helplessness, rage, vulnerability, loneliness, guiltiness, etc. Therefore, they suffer from social isolation during a very long time.
Education centres, together with the family and the whole society, play an essential role as socialization agents when promoting values such as plurality, respect to difference, social inclusion and culture of dialogue in our society. That is why they have a key role in order to prevent, detect and tackle bullying.
The Department of Civil Rights is willing to get involved in the eradication and solution of this problem. For that, it has designed and offered a pedagogical/educational proposal for education centres. This proposal aims to inform and raise awareness among the young about this problem, as well as encourage them to engage in the detection and report of the problem, that is, to become a bystander who observes bullying. Under the slogan “Break the silence”, they help to analyse the situation and work together to search a possible solution.
In concrete, this proposal targets first-year students in secondary schools because it is during this period, coming from primary school into secondary school, where most of the boys and girls experience growth and development. It is a period of changes, different school and classmates, which is considered to be favourable to strengthen values such as respect, tolerance, comprehension and dialogue, in order to avoid individual suffering and group conflicts. In other words, in order to achieve social cohesion and a peaceful coexistence.