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Public school students more likely to hit
Julie Mack, Religion News Service
December 07, 2010
3 MIN READ TIME

Public school students more likely to hit

Public school students more likely to hit
Julie Mack, Religion News Service
December 07, 2010

A recent survey of 43,000

high school students found that public school students were more likely to

participate in physical violence, while private school students were more

likely to have teased or taunted someone, and more likely to have felt bullied

themselves.

Fifty-two percent of public

school students say they have hit someone in anger in the past year, according

to the study by the Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics, compared to 47

percent of students in private religious high schools and 41 percent of

students in

secular private high

schools.

The study found that 60

percent of boys at religious school have “bullied, teased or taunted” someone

at least once in the past year, compared to 55 percent of boys in public or

secular private schools.

Girls in religious schools

also were more likely to have verbally bullied someone than girls in the other

two categories.

About a quarter (23 percent)

of religious-school students have “mistreated someone because he or she

belonged to a different group,” compared to 21 percent of public school

students and 15 percent of secular private students.

A major conclusion that can

be drawn from the survey is that girls from all types of schools are nicer to

their schoolmates than boys — or perhaps the boys are more honest.

Overall, boys were more

likely than girls to agree with these statements: “I’m prejudice against

certain groups,” “It’s sometimes OK to hit or threaten someone when I am very

angry,” “I have bullied, teased or taunted someone,” “I have used racial slurs

or insults,” and “I have been under the influence of illegal drugs or alcohol

at school.”

Boys were three times more

likely than girls to “strongly agree” with the question on prejudice. Boys also

were 50 percent more likely to have bullied or teased someone twice or more in

the past year, or hit someone because they were angry.

The survey did not detect

much difference in civility — or lack of it — when comparing different regions

of the country. Seniors are more civil than freshmen, but not by a huge margin.

Student leaders,

college-bound students, honor students, female athletes and those in youth

activities reported more civil behavior than others. Male athletes, however,

were slightly more likely to have bullied than male non-athletes.

Officials at the Los

Angeles-based Josephson Institute said the real take-away of the survey is not

the demographic differences, but the fact that bullying is so pervasive in

American high schools.

“If the saying, Sticks and

stones will break my bones but names will never harm me,’ was ever true, it

certainly is not so today,” Michael Josephson, founder and president of the

Institute, said in a statement.

“Insults, name calling,

relentless teasing and malicious gossip often inflict deep and enduring pain,”

he said. “It’s not only the prevalence of bullying behavior and victimization

that’s troublesome. The Internet has intensified the injury. What’s posted on

the Internet is permanent, and it spreads like a virus — there is no refuge.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Mack writes

for The Kalamazoo Gazette.)