DR SHEETAL BHOOLA

South African schooling needs dire help, and the need is not always financial. Amidst a call for teacher retrenchments because of budget deficits, South African schools are challenged with escalating various types of bullying.

Often, the types of bullying incidents that have been reported on involve physical harm and activity, whereas subtle forms of bullying such as manipulation, verbal abuse, alienation and disrespect. The abuse can include swearing, insults in the form of sarcasm and humour, intimidation, words that demean and disrespect and hate speech. There are multiple ways to bully someone through alienation and inclusion. Often, children are manipulated to being included within certain social groups of friends.

The psychological and emotional impact of being a victim of verbal bullying can be far more traumatic than physical, especially if such incidents go unnoticed in schools and are continual. Many children are often encouraged to ignore unhealthy comments and the verbal violence that bullies comfortably engage in when trying to identify a victim. In our multicultural society, the other reality and challenge is that most South Africans speak more than one language, and not everyone is fluent in languages other than English.

Although schools have second languages as an examinable subject, it is not the language of instruction and functionality, which limits the learner's capacity to thoroughly contextualise the idioms and meanings of words, whether they are derogatory or not.

Bullies often use derogatory words in their native or first language, being fully aware that the victims cannot fully understand the language. Their tone of voice and body language often carry out the message to the identified victim.

A stance towards schools that can encourage multilingualism or bilingualism can also assist in the fight against the prevalence of bullying.

Continually ignoring a bully's comments and remarks can be effective sometimes, but not all perpetrators walk away from wanting to bully someone else. Children can easily succumb when the perpetrator confidently continues to bully them verbally and rallies with 2 or 3 other bullies in the school.

Alienation has become an impactful approach to bullying, and this is also achieved when languages are spoken at school other than the instructional official language. For instance, not all learners may be vocationally fluent in isiZulu or Afrikaans and often feel alienated when conversations occur in those languages. These learners can use language to alienate or exclude someone from social settings.

The victimised child then feels very insecure and feels compelled to succumb to the requests of the bullying. Often, ignoring a bully is inappropriate, especially if the victimised child has multiple incidents with the bully. The child will then respond through the emotions of fear, aggression, and hurt. These responses are the onset of various types of violent incidents at schools.

Victimised children and the perpetrators often both struggle with personal self-esteem issues, identity concerns, individual emotions and interpersonal development. Teenagers and children usually do not have the intellectual and emotional maturity to identify their emotional stance, resulting in destructive behaviour choices. In addition to these personal growth challenges, children are not adequately informed of the power of language and its capacity to impact one's mental health.

In addition, children fluent in more than one language are often advantaged, as they can quickly identify and contextualise comments in various languages. South Africa has endorsed as many as eleven national languages, and only some schools in South Africa are bilingual in their official functionality. Languages, too, provide insight into different cultures, which can ease cohesiveness and understanding between people from other cultures and race groups.

A central key to developing healthy relationships and minimal conflict between people is understanding one another. This process in our society can be encouraged through learning languages that are different from English and home or native languages. Knowledge-sharing teaching and learning processes are complex, multifaceted and fundamental for society's development.

However, language competence and comprehension are the means to communicate effectively and accurately. This can only be achieved when each of us in our communities learns to accept and develop through the applicability of multiculturalism. Diversity within our community is central to positive relationships and can easily contribute towards eliminating bullying within our society.

Bullying may also have its origins in societies and families. Many of us have normalised the use of varied forms of verbal violence and have been taught to withstand these incidents. Children need to be informed of the various categories of verbal bullying and given a discourse on what to do in each school when they experience such an incident.

More importantly, the cultural demographics of the school should be considered so that there can be initiatives to contribute towards the development and sustenance of multiculturalism. These initiatives should include vocational lessons in a 3rd or 4th language other than the two examinable schooling subjects within the curriculum. The strength of having appropriate vocational skills in more than one language is that it can positively influence relationships to be healthier and mutually respectful.

South African schools need to develop a detailed discourse that addresses all aspects of bullying and be timely about sharing this knowledge. The knowledge should be made available to teachers and learners. Initiatives such as learning new languages for vocational purposes only, not as an examinable subject, are worth investigating. Language, after all, is a doorway into cultures. Understanding each other in a diverse society can only eliminate the bullying and hurt we inflict on one another.

Dr Sheetal Bhoola is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Zululand, and the director at StellarMaths (Sunningdale).

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