Is Pink Shirt Day Making a Difference?
Prince George, B.C. – If you have a pink shirt in your wardrobe, you’re encouraged to put it on today for national pink shirt day.
“Wear it as a kind of promise to help strike-out bullying,” says Big Brothers Big Sisters executive director Tim Bennett. “Here locally, the last couple of weeks, we’ve been selling pink shirts in partnership with Save-On-Foods and Canadian Tire with all the proceeds helping support our local mentoring programs.”
He says mentoring is one of the most effective ways to help combat bullying.
“It’s an effective solution for both children that are being bullied but also for children who are bully’s. Providing a positive role-model helps build a child’s self-esteem and self confidence to really give them the skills to identify that bullying is wrong.”
Increasing awareness is great, but is pink shirt day making a difference?
“I think that’s a great question.We hear stories each and everyday that are just extremely heartbreaking and I wish that I could say that tomorrow we’re going to effectively strike-out bullying in Prince George and the country but I think there’s still a long way to go.”
Bennett admits one of the toughest challenges has been the advent of social media.
“It wasn’t that long ago that I was in school and social media just wasn’t a thing. And now it is so easy with things like Facebook, Yik Yak, and Ask that allow you the ability to be anonymous,” he says.
“And we need to be able to teach everybody that just because you have the ability to be anonymous, doesn’t mean you need to abuse that ability.”
One organization that plans to show its support for bullying awareness today is the Prince George RCMP.
“Bullying is something we take very seriously, we are in support of pink shirt day and any anti-bullying type program,” says Corporal Craig Douglass. “And to support pink shirt day our staffers at the detachment will be wearing pink shirts as well as our leaders.”
Comments
While I love the idea of the pink shirt day and the symbolism it represents and fully support it bullying unfortunately is very much alive and well.
I hear tough talk about it at the schools all the time however when it comes to dealing with bullies in the school system it is very much a hit and miss affair which I have seen first hand with my own nieces one of which was bullied a lot and depending on the teacher and the day the school would either listen to it or out right ignore it.
Kids are extremely impressionable and learn to bully from social media or family and peers and family are the absolute worst for recognizing their child is a bully and when confronted often deny their child would do such a thing.
Education is great but action would help as well.
It sure is making a difference. The sale of pink apparel has sky rocketed and males are now willing to war pink at least one day of the year.
Children see their parents get what they want through bullying, so it is hardly surprising the parents deny that their kids bully; it is tantamount to admitting their own bullying behavior. The effort to eliminate (reduce?) bullying is still in its infancy and it will likely take another generation before the message starts to percolate through families. Bullying in popular culture doesn’t help the problem either, even in the example of people on this website who slag and insult others for their opinions.
Seems to me that bullying should be taken head on in the schools, workplace, etc;. This has been a problem for many many years, so why are we not getting a handle on it.
Should the media be reporting on it without using names, so that we can get a better understanding of what is happening in the community.
Fully agree Krusty. Kindness is in short supply in our society. You’ll see some white knuckled senior doing 5 km under the limit and some F350 warrior with his kids in the back cursing and seeing how close he can get behind them. What do his kids take from this? Instead of taking the position – nice old person, I’ll give them lots of room, cause that’s the kind thing to do. Until adults exhibit kindness as a general attitude, children will mop up whatever they see, and for some reason, they tend to emulate our worst characteristics.
Want to stop your kid from getting bullied at school? I hate to say this, but keep them home and teach them at home – if you can. Because the school system really has it’s hands tied when it comes to dealing with the bully- because the bully has a litany of excuses for his bad behavior – almost all rooted in some kind of medical condition.
And maybe, just maybe when another 500 kids disappear from the pubic system – and the money that goes with them, someone will come up with the idea of segregating bullies into their own school, and let the kids who want to learn, do so in safety.
Of course it isn’t making an ounce of difference, but lets pretend wearing a certain color helps out…
The real issue is the lack of any real balls in the school district, to deal with the problem. Kids act like animals with zero recourse. Troubled kids disrupting the school environment and making the other students suffer. Bully someone, slap on the wrist with no course of action.
I like how they school district buries their head in the sand, and pretends wearing pink is addressing some sort of social issue though.
Ski51: I Like your comments , they say what I have been thinking. I only wish that I was not “too soon old, too late smart” maybe I could have been a better role model for my own children.
PG101: don’t you think that maybe the pink might help to empower some kids, individually, or as a group, to stand up to bullies?
In general, I think that the most difficult form of bullying to address is cyber-bullying. It can be carried out from a remote location so to speak, and where the bully is not observed by anyone;
Just the thing for scared cowards who feel the urge to spread their misery around.
metalman.
schools don’t want to deal with bullying! my nephew stood up to his bully ended up fighting my nephew won the little scuffle but what does the school do…. they call social services saying my nephew is violent and something must be going on at home. That was a pain in the butt! what happened to the bully well not much he is still the bully now the school says they don’t know what to do because my nephew can stick up for himself and has not yet been beat up by the bully.
As long as you have schools with Centre for Learning Alternatives staff, you are going to have bullying. My daughter was bullied right out of her 12 th year just 5 weeks before graduation. So they bought her off by just giving her the certificate. She did not however get to go to graduation. They treated the bully like gold.
I fully agree with all the above.. But no one mentions the adults that bully their parents and others and a few of them work with kids… Go figure
The largest area of bullying is not at the school itself but rather at home when the kids get on facebook and other social media sites. Not sure if anything can ever be done about bullying, it will just morph into other areas sad to say.
I think it is a farce. I have 4 school age children and pink shirt day in my experience is nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig. My wife and I moved our 10 year old in March of last year because of years of assault, harassment and torment from a couple of classmates.
We engaged the principal and teachers over the years about the problems. The issues were becoming extreme last year and the school basically said there was nothing to do, then because they were concerned with what our child would do they insisted that our child take anger and aggression management “seminars/exercises” because they were worried that our child would snap and hurt the “bullies”. We saw this as a slap in the face and a form of “blame the victim”.
I have come to loath the word ‘bullying” because it downplays what really happens which is assault and harassment. If an adult did what a lot of these so called bullies do than that adult would likely be searving time.
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