[ti:suicide ]
[00:01.179]This  is  the  VOA  Special  English  Education  Report.
[00:03.145]An  old  problem  is  getting  new  attention  in  the  United  States:
[00:08.762]bullying.Recent  cases  included  the  tragic  case  of  a  fifteen-year-old  girl
[00:16.892]whose  family  moved  from  Ireland.
[00:21.329]Phoebe  PrincePhoebe  Prince  hanged  herself  in  Massachusetts  in  January  following  months  of  bullying.Her  parents  criticized  her  school  for  failing  to  protect  her.
[00:33.641]Officials  have  brought  criminal  charges  against  several  teenagers.
[00:40.455]Judy  Kuczynski  is  president  of  an  anti-bullying  group  called  Bully  Police  USA.
[00:47.140]Her  daughter  Tina  was  the  victim  of  severe  bullying  starting  in  middle  school  in  the  state  of  Minnesota.
[00:56.642]JUDY  KUCZYNSKI:"Our  daughter  was  a  very  outgoing  child.She  was  a  bubbly  personality,very  involved  in  all  kinds  of  things,had  lots  of  friends.
[01:06.330]And  over  a  period  of  time  her  grades  fell  completely.
[01:09.705]She  started  having  health  issues.She  couldn't  sleep.
[01:14.831]She  wasn't  eating.She  had  terrible  stomach  pains.
[01:18.763]She  started  clenching  her  jaw  and  grinding  her  teeth  at  night.Didn't  want  to  go  to  school."
[01:23.897]Bullying  is  defined  as  negative  behavior  repeated  over  time  against  the  same  person.
[01:29.266]It  can  involve  physical  violence.Or  it  can  be  verbal --for  example,insults  or  threats.
[01:38.580]Spreading  lies  about  someone  or  excluding  a  person  from  a  group  is  known  as  social  or  relational  bullying.
[01:47.203]And  now  there  is  cyberbullying,which  uses  the  Internet,e-mail  or  text  messages.
[01:56.143]It  has  easy  appeal  for  the  bully  because  it  does  not  involve  face-to-face  contact  and  it  can  be  done  at  any  time.
[02:07.264]The  first  serious  research  studies  into  bullying  were  done  in  Norway  in  the  late  nineteen  seventies.
[02:14.768]The  latest  government  study  in  the  United  States  was  released  last  year.
[02:21.204]It  found  that  about  one-third  of  students  age  twelve  to  eighteen  were  bullied  at  school.
[02:29.645]Examples  included  being  made  fun  of,pushed,spit  on,threatened  or  excluded  from  activities.
[02:38.773]Some  students  had  their  property  damaged.
[02:43.206]About  four  percent  reported  being  the  victims  of  cyberbullying.
[02:50.768]The  study  took  place  in  two  thousand  seven.
[02:57.455]Susan  Swearer  is  a  psychologist  at  the  University  of  Nebraska-Lincoln  and  co-director  of  the  Bullying  Research  Network.
[03:02.333]She  says  schools  should  treat  bullying  as  a  mental  health  problem  to  get  bullies  and  victims  the  help  they  need.She  says  bullying  is  connected  to  depression,
[03:17.271]anxiety  and  anti-social  behavior,and  bullies  are  often  victims  themselves.
[03:24.22]What  can  be  done  to  prevent  bullying?That  will  be  our  subject  next  week.
[03:30.770]And  that's  the  VOA  Special  English  Education  Report,written  by  Nancy  Steinbach.