7 Effective programmes to prevent bullying have been developed, largely dependent on having a strictly enforced policy against bullying, making it quite clear to all students, teachers, and parents that bullying will not be tolerated and training teachers how to handle it. Much bullying takes place because staff and school monitors turn a blind eye when they see it occurring. Children also need to learn to take responsibility for themselves and for their own health and well-being. It is, after all, they themselves who will make the decisions about whether they will smoke, whether they will have sex, whether they will take drugs, how much they will drink. All too often, however, children are encouraged to take a passive, dependent position where the teacher is the expert.
Children become the passive recipients of knowledge only, and it takes a strong child to break out.
I have an identity of my own, not dictated by my parents or my teachers. In this way, they can confirm their own identity. Yet this represents a failure of school, and possibly a failure of the home. To take another example, most schools, for instance, encourage competition. This can be a spur to high achievement, but competition usually means that the majority are losers and there are only a few winners.