Survey details effect on third-graders

Thursday, March 9, 2000

Survey details effect on third-graders

By JOE RANKIN, Staff Writer
Copyright © 2000 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

Most Maine third-graders say they experience only milder forms of bullying, such as teasing, and then only rarely.

But a substantial percentage report experiencing threats or physical violence on a more frequent basis.

Staff photo by RON MAXWELL

Chuck Saufler, co-director of Maine Projects Against Bullying, chats with stiudents in the cafeteria at Wiscasset Primary School. where he is a guidance councelor.

One in four third-graders who took part in a 1999 survey reported being frequently threatened and one in three reported being frequently hit, kicked or pushed by other children at their schools.

The survey results were released in January.

Some 4,500 third-graders at 127 schools — about a third of the state's third-graders — took part in the study by the Maine Project Against Bullying. The data was analyzed at the University of Southern Maine.

Among the findings:

44 percent of students say they feel "very happy and good" about being at their school. Girls were more likely than boys, and kids from larger schools more likely than those from smaller ones, to say that.

Children feel very safe in their classroom, lunch room and the hallways — places normally under adult supervision — and less safe at bus stops, walking to school or on the playground.

22 percent said they were threatened frequently — either every day or one or two times a week or month; 37.5 percent said they were hit, kicked or pushed with the same frequency.

Students from larger schools said they experienced less bullying than those in smaller schools.

14 percent of kids surveyed reported having hit, kicked or pushed other children at least one to two times a month. More than 80 percent said they never did that.

Almost 20 percent of boys and more than 9 percent of girls said they bullied other children frequently.

Of the third-graders who said they had been bullied, 42 percent said the bully was in a higher grade.

When confronted by a bully, more than 90 percent say they do something, with 44 percent saying they tell an adult.

Of those who told someone, almost half said the situation got better, while 37 percent said it got worse or nothing changed.

Chuck Saufler, a guidance counselor at Wiscasset Primary School and a co-director of the Maine Project Against Bullying, said he was surprised "at the high percentage of kids (14 percent) who self-identify as frequently engaging in bullying behavior.

"That's about twice what you'll get in other research," he said.

Also significant, he said, are the 37 percent who say that after they tell an adult, nothing changes or it gets worse.

"Those two things really jump out at me," he said.

The MPAB was started almost three years ago by the Maine Department of Education using federal grant funds. Its mission was the develop curriculum, materials and resources for schools to use in attacking the problem of harassment in schools.

When project members started doing research, however, they found that curriculum materials were already available from several sources.

With no hard data about how extensive the problem was in Maine schools, the project shifted its focus toward developing and undertaking the survey, according to Saufler.

Many of the surveys in other states had focused on high school and middle-school students. Research, however, showed that bullying starts in kindergarten and is often established by third grade.

"We wanted to get a handle on it earlier, closer to when it starts," he said.

Survey results are available for each school, which gives individual elementary schools an idea of how bad their bullying problem is, according to Saufler.

Each schools that returned the surveys was offered a free six-hour training on how to recognize bullying and strategies for combating the problem.

So far, Project trainers have conducted two such Saturday seminars, one for eight schools in the midcoast area and another for eight schools in the Holbrook area.

"Unfortunately, it's a one-shot deal," Saufler said.

"And the research is clear that if you want to address this, you need to do it in a sustained way. Some group (at each school) needs to own the issue and say, 'We're going to attend to this.' "

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