Reversing the culture of bullying

August 15, 2024

MANILA – The Philippines was ranked in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) as the “bullying capital of the world,” according to Second Congressional Commission on Education II executive director Karol Mark Yee. In the 2018 Pisa, 65 percent of Filipino students reported experiencing actions that can be considered as forms of bullying while the more recent Pisa in 2022 indicated that one out of three Filipino students have experienced bullying. The new head of the Department of Education, Secretary Sonny Angara, seems keen to address this and hopes to monitor the schools’ compliance of the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013, of which he is one of the authors.

There are many significant school-related factors that affect the incidence of bullying. At the same time, I contend that there is also something we can do at home. We do not get to this point where majority of Filipino students have experienced bullying without realizing that we have, as a nation, normalized bullying. Changing the culture of bullying may seem daunting. But like most things, this change starts at home.

First, what is bullying? Bullying requires that there is a differential of power: that someone stronger or more powerful is being aggressive toward you. Two children fighting does not automatically make it bullying. One has to be significantly stronger, older, or with more support and resources and is using these advantages to cause harm or injury. When looking at bullying through this lens, we can connect how currently existing power imbalances can contribute to a bullying environment.

We need to take inventory of the ways in which we enable imbalances of power, starting in our own homes. In family therapy, we assume that