Mr. John Curtis:

In the context of post-primary schools and the kids we deal with, the big telltale sign in early days relates to groups and who is not in a group. Students tend to be creatures of habit. They walk the same ways, sit in the same places and congregate around the same lockers. We can see quite quickly, in the first couple of weeks, which first-year students do not seem to hang out with anybody else, for want of a better phrase.

One should have good people keeping an eye on that. One will always have an intuitive sense of where the problems might be. Prevention is better than cure in that one should get in quickly enough, have a quick chat with the child and, if necessary, have a little conversation with the parent. One should watch the dynamics of movement and engagement. That is the first telltale sign one sees, that is, who is hanging out with whom and which children are on their own and are isolated.

One will find that many pupils lack the social skills to be able to engage with other children, especially in the early days of coming into school, because there is so much going on. We can be proactive in much of what we do. However, it necessitates a little bit of manpower, having people watch out for it and identifying people at school level who have the skills in those arenas. Those are the subtle things one watches out for.

We all have to deal with the very overt bullying cases. One thing that I found useful was that it was explained to me that about 2% of people – adults and children - do not have empathy. These are people who do not feel the feelings of others. It is very hard to develop social skills there. Those are the children one needs to work on as well. One should be aware that in any given school there is a number of children who just do not get it when it comes to proper social etiquette. Again, it is about trying to identify early on who those children might be in any given year and any given class and intervening and helping as much as possible. That can be very difficult because oftentimes the impasse can be with parents in that arena. No parent wants their child to be called a bully, or to be accused of bullying or insensitive behaviour. That is where the difficulties are.

Much of this is about awareness. When I say that we have taken our eye off the ball, I do not mean this in any pejorative sense. It has been a number of years since we have looked at the bullying issue. It is now time to re-engage, to reacquaint ourselves with what is going on and to try help the students as best we can.