One major social issue that many children still face to this day is bullying. The article “How to Stop Bullying in Schools” from www.usnews.com by Ulrich Boser, discusses the impact bullying can have on children and certain approaches to help eliminate bullying in schools. In the beginning of the article Boser talks about how many people view bullying as just a part of someone’s childhood and how it is almost normalized. Boser then goes on to explain how the University of Virginia went on to make a study on how to help students develop better social-emotional skills in an effort to address bullying. The team conducting the study made a framework known as “Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports” to help aid student discipline and academics. Boser gives three explanations on how the framework is innovative. First, it helps put students and teachers on the same page of what ethical behavior looks like. Second, it sets clear behavioral expectations which allows the teachers to catch bullying behavior before it even starts. Lastly, the framework provides support for victims and bullies by getting individual or group counseling to help with social-emotional skills. Boser then ends the article by making a call to action asking the audience to better understand bullying in order to help prevent the social issue.
Although bullying may never fully be eliminated, there are tactics to help reduce the social issue. In chapter 18 of “ Social Problems In a Diverse Society” by Dianna Kendall, the book explains that eliminating or even reducing social problems can be a challenge. This could be due to costs, lack of understanding the social issue, and other factors. Eliminating social problems can also cause other problems to arise. Although it can be difficult to take on the challenge of reducing social problems, it is critically important to alter social change. This means modifying public policy, culture, or social institutions over time. Functionalists, conflicts, and interactionalists all have different perspectives and approaches to solving social problems. Out of the different perspectives I would have to agree most with the symbolic interactionist perspective. This perspective states that certain behaviors arise because of how individuals and groups engage in that behavior. Symbolic interactionist approach to handle social issues is to first clearly understand the deviant behavior and then finding a solution to solve the behavior. For example: if an individual is labeling another individual or group. One possible solution to reduce labeling changing the individuals perspective through decriminalization. All in all some social issues may never be fully eliminated, but my making subtle effort when noticing these issues can pay off over time.
Word Count: 438
Sources:
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2018-02-27/how-to-stop-bullying-in-schools
Kendall, Diana. 2012. Social Problems in a Diverse Society. 6th edition. Pearson.