Saturday, April 17, 2010
Bullying in Schools
This week's blog comes on a much more somber note than my past entries. The article comes from Time Magazine and it deals with bullying in the educational environment and some of the consequences of bullying. It starts off with a story about an Irish-American girl named Phoebe Prince. Phoebe was a freshman in high school when she decided to take her life due to constantly being harassed and bullied at school. Since Phoebe was new to the school and began dating a popular football player, envious girls began to harass her. This harassment apparently went on for months and Phoebe's mom tried to get the school to do something about it but to no avail. After one horrible day where Phoebe was harassed in the school library, in the halls, and on her way home from school, she went home and hung herself with a scarf given to her by her sister on Christmas. The girl's flung insults at her calling her an Irish slut and Irish whore. The girls even went as far as making fun of Phoebe's suicide on Facebook. You have to truly be an evil person to make fun of someone's death; this is nothing to play about. Seven girls and two boys were charged in incidents leading up to Phoebe's death rightfully so. The manner in which this article is written is quite clear. The author of this article is creating an audience with Phoebe's story, an audience that is clearly against bullying. That makes this article a constitutive rhetoric. This allows for the story to be more touching and persuasive after you see what the effects of bullying has on certain people. After all, not all people who get bullied commit suicide but there are many cases out there of people who have done so or either goes on to take someone else's life. Bullying has very serious side effects whether the bully knows it or not.
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It’s interesting to me that you brought up the idea of bullying in educational environments. I honestly think it was great to bring up such an issue, only because it is becoming a big topic all over the world and in schools. I can’t believe the story of the young teenage girl Phoebe, it is truly horrible what happened to her and what she went home and did. Bullying needs to be taken a lot more seriously in school. I believe that teachers had to be aware of what was going on and just weren’t doing anything about it. The seven girls and boys that were charged should have been charged because what they did was very serious to this young girl. I believe bullying is worse then getting into a school fight. Bullying can make people do crazy things, and in this case Phoebe committed suicide. It’s very sad to think that she was afraid to talk to anyone, and felt she had to take her own life. Bullying obvious has a big side effect. I believe on E News this week, they will be premiering the E True Hollywood Story of kids that are bullied. This is clearly a bigger deal, then many people believe. It needs to be taken care of, not only in school environments but also everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThis article really bothered me. I had not heard about this young girl, Phoebe, taking her life due to bullying at her new school, before reading this post. Applying this to constitutive rhetoric was a great idea. Because it is such a touching, yet disturbing story, it may truly have an effect on people, especially young adults, who have bullied or been bullied. Maybe once this article really gets around and is well know, people will start bulling prevention programs to assist students like Phoebe. Even if she had not taken her life, she would have been emotional distraught and needed some type of therapy. Kids who fall victim to bullying need help, but normally don’t know where to find it. Hopefully Phoebe’s story will open up some eyes.
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