Bullying – a reflection on the failure of Indian educational system

Yesterday, a bizarre and highly deplorable event took place in one of the leading schools of the nation. The “bullying” of a 7^th standard EWS student by seven 6^th grade students at the modern public school, located in the vasant vihar area of New Delhi shook the nation and raised many questions regarding the quality of the education given out to the children in India. The barbarity of the event was so much that it would have made even the hard skinned stoics emotional. What is more troubling and shocking is that the incident happened in one of the better schools in the country, with children who were involved in the incident all hailing from good family backgrounds. “Bullying” at its worst form.



So the first question which comes to our mind is “what actually bullying is”. “Bullying” is basically the use of force, power, threat to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively imposing domination over others. People who indulge in bullying have a tendency to insert their behaviour over others resulting in domination which can lead to mental, physical, verbal harassment of the victim. Bullying over a period of time becomes a habbit and hence presents a danger to the society. Bullying if continued uninhibited over a period of time can lead to mental illness, resulting in psychopaths. It inflicts injuries, not just physical but also mental, on the victims. The scars left by such incidences on the victim have a long lasting effect.




Bullying is not new to us. It has been there for decades and its degree of prevalence in schools, colleges, offices is just staggering and mind-boggling, but still no comprehensive policy has been framed by the govt. to counter its menace. Our judicial system doesn’t even recognize bullying as an offence. The presence of bullying in society reflects on the failure of our educational system. It’s the fault of both schools and parents. Too much focus by the teachers in schools on getting marks leads to less peer interaction, which hinders the development of soft skills in children. Children find it difficult to cope with these situations alone as they don’t find proper support from parents. It’s the duty of the parents to interact with their children and help them learn the art of interaction. The children involved in the incident yesterday lacked even the basic manners. You can’t blame only school for that. Parents need to take the blame for it as they have failed to inculcate the basic manners in their children. Parents and schools need to work in collaboration with each other to help their children from becoming a bully. A comprehensive policy by the govt. would also help in reducing the menace of bullying. We all somewhere or the other have suffered from bullying. It’s the time we put an end to it.