Bullies and their victims

Article Outline

• Copyright

The enormous impact of bullying in schools has become a topic of broad public discussion. Scholarship on the topic, however, has been slow to develop. This issue of The Journal features a provocative study by a group in Seattle, examining the association between bullying and school problems. The study addressed three groups: bullies, victims of bullies, and children who were both. A couple of points are of particular interest in this study. First of all, over a quarter of the children studied in this urban public school fell into one of these three groups. This is clearly a problem of very high prevalence. Secondly, the identified school problems were present in all three groups; being “sad most days,” for example, was a concern for the bullies themselves as well as for their victims. In light of some recent high-profile incidents, the observation that victims were more likely to believe that carrying a gun to school was acceptable is noteworthy.