Bullying Speech

Bullying, it’s an issue that has been around forever and occurs every day with over 282,000 physical attacks occurring in secondary schools per month, yet do we take bullying seriously enough? Sure we know it’s bad and majority of us would not just go up and fight someone, but the thing we don’t understand is that bullying is not just physical harassment, it can be verbal harassment, cyber bullying or even stalking. Bullying is not limited to age, gender, sexuality, cultural or religious background which means anyone can be a victim to bullying anywhere with our schools being the main place where bullying occurs.

I’ll be honest, I’m not perfect, I’ll be the first to come out and admit that I have been on both ends of bullying, it not something I’m not proud off, but it has made me realize how it feels from both perspectives, and yes it’s not fun to be put down or to be made to feel like you’re not good enough, but then going and doing it to someone else is not the answer. Who in this room as is willing to admit to being involved in some sort of bullying, whether that be bullying someone, being bullied yourself or even just witnessing it? This shows us just how common bullying has become in our everyday lives, yet statistics show that 85% of the time teachers have no effect in stopping these bullying cases, the reason behind that is both the bully and teacher often do not realize that what is occurring may actually be hurting the victim inside and may only be seen as a joke. Cases like these cause the victim to be anxious and can cause a major drop in concentration in and out of class, which leads to low attendance rates with a staggering 160,000 secondary students staying home and avoiding school because of their fear of being bullied.

13 year old Megan Meier had been the victim of continuous cyber bullying. A 16 year old male thought it would be a fun idea to create a fake account named “Josh Evans” and become friends with Megan to find out more about her