The Humanity Project

We were very interested to read a newspaper report this week about bullying. As you know, the Humanity Project is not just an anti-bullying group but our innovative Anti-bullying Through The Arts program reaches thousands of kids, teaching them how to use cooperation and social connection as tools to help stop bullying in their schools. The newspaper article was headlined, “Bullying often underreported.” It was based on information in Florida, which passed a strong anti-bullying law three years ago. But doubtless the same reality would apply in most, if not all, states in the U.S.

Elementary student gets ready for the Humanity Project anti-bullying program

That reality, as outlined in the story, is this: We don’t really know how bad the bullying problem is. That’s because schools are handing out unreliable numbers, the newspaper said. Bottom line — the schools are not diligent about collecting and tabulating accurate figures about bullying, no doubt because bullying incidents reflect badly on those schools. The Humanity Project urges every school in Florida and around the nation to focus more energy on accurately reporting all bullying incidents rather than to sweep the problem under their doormats. Bullying is serious enough these days that no less than President Obama recently hosted a White House meeting to “dispel the myth that bullying is just a harmless rite of passage or an inevitable part of growing up,” according to the president. Bullying won’t go away by ignoring it. Or by pretending it’s less common than it is. The Humanity Project believes the solution requires an honest assessment of the problem and a new attitude about bullying in our society, one that makes clear bullying is socially unacceptable behavior. That’s what our Anti-bullying Through The Arts program teaches kids, helping them to stop bullying by including bystanders in a common schoolwide effort. Bullying is a major issue in today’s world. Let’s encourage our schools to help us all examine this issue realistically, armed with accurate figures about bullying incidents. We can’t fix something if we don’t know how badly it’s broken.

Tags: anti-bullying, helping kids, Humanity Project, positive psychology, school bullies, school bullying, stop bullying, The Humanity Project

This entry was posted by Bob Knotts on Friday, May 13th, 2011 at 8:45 am and is filed under Our Programs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.